While 2020 and 2021 saw a dramatic shift in the way education was taught, with most schools resorting to remote or hybrid learning in response to the COVID pandemic, the end result appears to be a disaster for Virginia students.
Based on reading- and math-assessment data published by Renaissance Learning Inc., Virginia is showing greater learning loss this year compared to last year than any other state except New Mexico — minus 9% for math and minus 3% for reading.
Math proficiency loss based on Renaissance Learning data, published in the Daily Mail.
Math proficiency loss based on Renaissance Learning data, published in the Daily Mail.
There is hope however, as when it came to the change in scores for the tests – which are given to students twice a year, first in the fall and then in the winter – the study found that the winter marks had improved slightly, indicating some improvement in the latter part of 2021, when students started to head back to school in person. While that does indicate that scores are improving, they are still well below how they were pre-Covid.
‘There are not signs of a recovery if you define that as getting back to where we were performing before all this,’ said Gene Kerns, chief academic officer of Renaissance Learning Inc.
The full study, which can be found here, concludes:
“Time is of the essence in catching students up. Changes in overall student performance will not be mitigated until we are able to achieve above-typical growth … over multiple seasons. Now more than ever, we need to prioritize instruction on skills that are most essential for progress.”
Only time will be able to tell if Virginia schools will be able to bounce back and get children’s education back in the positives.