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برچسب: Covid

  • Covid recovery funds are gone; what now for California students?

    Covid recovery funds are gone; what now for California students?


    Credit: Pexels / Mikhail Nilov

    California’s most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores revealed troubling trends in student achievement. Despite significant financial investments, student performance continues to struggle to reach full academic recovery. Worse, achievement gaps between the highest- and lowest-performing students widened even further.

    The timing of these results couldn’t be worse. With California districts spending the last of their $23 billion in federal relief funds last year, schools are now facing a critical juncture. With declining enrollment reducing their budgets and only modest new state investments coming this year, it will be tough for districts to dramatically scale up promising initiatives like high-dosage tutoring or extensive summer programming.

    So, what levers do state and local policymakers have at their disposal? By looking at the data and learning from other successful low-cost interventions, the state has an opportunity to reverse its slide and drive student gains.

    First, kids have to be in school to learn. In California, chronic absenteeism rates have come down significantly from their pandemic levels, but they’re still nearly twice as high as they were five years ago. Black students, English learners, students with disabilities, and other marginalized groups are missing too much school. 

    Fortunately, there are low-cost, high-impact strategies that schools can adopt to ensure students are present and engaged. For example, a research study looking at a large California district found that missing a part of the school day — for referrals for in-school discipline or participation in extracurricular activities — predicted short- and long-run outcomes for students. Many school districts are already tracking these measures; the next step is using them to inform and implement interventions such as parent notifications or individualized support.

    Second, once kids are back in school, the next step is ensuring that classroom time is used well. This is especially critical in California, given that it ranks in the bottom 10 states in terms of total instructional hours per school year. Last year’s law to ban or limit the use of cell phones during school hours should help reduce digital distractions, but the research on attention is clear that humans are not good at multitasking and can take a long time to refocus when our thinking is interrupted.

    For schools, that means that every little interruption counts. Students being pulled out of class for special interventions or testing, outdoor noise and intercom announcements are all important in their own way, but they also add up. One study found that a typical classroom might be interrupted 2,000 times per year and that these disruptions can result in the loss of 10 to 20 days of instructional time. School district leaders could conduct attention audits to maximize and better understand how schools are using time and all of their technological tools.

    Last but not least is the question of what students are (and are not) learning. California’s test results suggest that reading is a particular problem area. Since 2019, California’s reading scores on NAEP are down 4 points in fourth grade and 5 points in eighth grade. But those are averages. Last year, just 7% of California’s Black students met the “Proficient” benchmark and 72% fell below “Basic” in fourth grade reading.

    When students lack foundational reading skills, the impact compounds across subjects. All students need and deserve evidence-based literacy instruction, with sustained focus on the relationships between sound and print, exposure to rich text, thought-provoking content, and both general and domain-specific vocabulary that builds knowledge of the world.

    Improving reading scores is hard work, and other states are dealing with similar challenges. But California — unlike many other states — has not yet passed a comprehensive reading bill.

    This is where California could stand to learn from some of the higher-performing states on NAEP, sometimes called “the nation’s report card.” Specifically, it might surprise some readers to learn that Mississippi made the largest reading gains over the last 10 years. Last year, Mississippi ranked seventh overall but third for Black students and first for low-income students. California, in contrast, came in 37th, 33rd and 28th, respectively.

    How did Mississippi make this turnaround? It took a long-term, systematic approach to its literacy efforts. It invested in teacher development and coaching, identified and supported struggling readers as early as possible and equipped teachers with high-quality instructional materials.

    This combination of high-quality instructional materials with diagnostic data and student supports has the potential to improve outcomes for California’s most vulnerable students, and to create a more equitable education system for all. By leveraging data it already tracks and focusing on the delivery of core instruction, California can build a stronger foundation for student success.

    •••

    Lindsay Dworkin is senior vice president of policy and government affairs at NWEA, a K-12 assessment and research organization.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Five years after Covid shuttered schools, parent empowerment lives on

    Five years after Covid shuttered schools, parent empowerment lives on


    Five years ago, when Esti Iturralde’s daughter was in the first grade, the little girl struggled with learning to read. The teacher told her mother not to worry, Winnie just wasn’t ready yet, but Iturralde knew in her heart something was wrong. 

    She blamed herself, until the pandemic hit, the schools shuttered, and remote learning gave her a chance to peek inside the classroom. What she saw opened her eyes and shocked her into action. 

    “It really wasn’t until the school closures that I began to understand what she was missing,” said the Piedmont mom of two. “I got to see up close what was wrong with the lessons.”

    Five years after Covid shuttered schools, the parent empowerment it sparked is going strong. While the pandemic inexorably disrupted everyone’s lives, parents faced a double whammy. Amid heated debates over masks, vaccines and school shutdowns, many parents found themselves on the front lines of hot-button issues on an almost daily basis. In that time of crisis, some families lost trust in the ability of the schools to meet the needs of their students. 

    Like Iturralde, some came to the conclusion that they had to fend for themselves. That’s one reason the pandemic became a watershed moment for a generation of parents. It shifted the dynamics between communities and schools, and, for some families, shook their faith in the school system in a lasting way.

    “When schools remained closed for far longer than any other institution or business,” said Scott Moore, head of Kidango, a nonprofit that runs many Bay Area child care centers, “this broke the social compact that schools are compulsory for children because it is a critical function of civil society. It left parents in the lurch.”

    That rude awakening spurred some parents to question all aspects of their child’s education, from the length of school closures to how reading is taught and how parental notification policies should work. Parents from all over the ideological spectrum, from people of color fighting for equity to conservative parents upholding traditional values, began to push for change. That surge of parental empowerment may be one of the lasting impacts of the pandemic.

    “Parent empowerment and engagement certainly reached a peak during Covid school closures,” said Megan Bacigalupi, co-founder of CA Parent Power, an advocacy group. “The academic, social and mental health harms done to kids by those lengthy closures kept many parents engaged in their districts long after they reopened. One of the silver linings is that parents got a window into the classroom.”

    All sorts of school governance issues that had long been taken for granted came under intense scrutiny, sparking a shift in thinking about public education. Some families got fed up. Instead of waiting for the system to adapt to their needs, they took matters into their own hands. 

    The dawning realization that Winnie was being taught to read by looking primarily at pictures, instead of words, was a red flag for Iturralde, who has a doctorate in behavioral science. 

    Esti Iturralde and her daughter Winnie read “Harry Potter” together at home in the living room while their dog Roscoe hangs out in August 2022.
    Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

    She decided to teach her kiddo to read at home, to see if she would bloom with more phonics, which she did. Winnie was soon reading above grade level. That showed Iturralde that sometimes you have to take charge of your child’s learning. 

    “Before, I was content to just trust and trust, and now I’m less trusting,” said Iturralde, who shared some of her lessons on YouTube to help other parents. “It’s like the curtain gets pulled away, and you see, all of a sudden, there’s no wizard out there.” ​​

    To be sure, Lakisha Young had long walked the do-it-yourself path, but the Covid era gave her new fire. She believes the pandemic merely highlighted the ways public education has always failed to meet the needs of low-income children of color. Nearly 70% of Oakland students failed to meet the standard for reading on the state’s Smarter Balanced test in 2023.

    “Nobody is coming to save us,” said Young, the co-founder and CEO of Oakland REACH, a parent advocacy group. “The system is broken. Black and brown kids are typically already behind their white peers before they even get to kindergarten, and then those gaps just get bigger. The reality is, we keep seeing generation after generation failing. Somebody’s got to stop the bleeding.”

    Young has worked with families where illiteracy has been passed down from one generation to the next, like an heirloom. She has tried to empower parents, to put families in the driver’s seat.

    “We’re freeing our families from the system,” said Young. “We’re liberating them from the system. If a parent shows up, does her part or his part, their kid’s going to get what they need.”

    During lockdown, Young connected families to everything from laptops and cash assistance to a virtual academy. Now REACH is a hub for parent and caregiver tutors, which they call “liberators,” who go into classrooms, teaching reading and math in partnership with Oakland Unified.  

    “These babies have to learn how to read and do math,” she said. “We have to empower families to make sure their kids don’t get left behind.”

    Left to their own devices at the kitchen table, many in the dyslexia community also experienced the pandemic as a lightning rod. 

    “People were frustrated their children were not getting the services they deserved,” said Megan Potente, co-state director of Decoding Dyslexia CA, an advocacy group. “There was a lot of learning happening among parents, who may have left things up to school if it weren’t for the unprecedented times of the pandemic and heightened feelings of urgency associated with seeing your child struggle at home.”

    Many parents first organized out of frustration with extended school closures, she said, but then parlayed that momentum to push for education reforms, such as evidenced-based reading instruction, amid the state’s deepening literacy crisis.

    “California schools are failing at their core function: teaching,” said Moore. “How many decades of data — showing less than half of students achieving proficiency in language and math — are needed before big innovation occurs?”

    Lakisha Young
    Credit: Courtesy of Oakland Reach

    Emboldened by having to step up in a crisis, many parents began to demand a voice. Parents Supporting Teachers (PST) in Los Angeles began as a Facebook group during the LAUSD teachers strike in 2019 but gained momentum during the pandemic as parents began asking questions about how the district uses its funding.

    “It’s important that we parents have a seat at the table when it comes to our children’s education,” said Vicky Martinez, a mother of three Los Angeles Unified (LAUSD) students and member of PST. “We know our kids best. You empower yourself with knowledge and ask questions and do some research and don’t be afraid. We need to be a part of the process so we can support our kids.”

    Many hope that parental empowerment will remain robust even as the Covid years recede into memory. They are optimistic that families will continue to push for more transparency about academic standards and practices in the wake of falling test scores and widening achievement gaps. 

    “People want a fair shake, for themselves and their children,” said Moore. “Education is seen as the main vehicle for upward economic and social mobility. Yet the reality is, California’s education system only does well for those born into privilege, and it fails most everyone else.”

    Many parents will continue to play a more active role in the education of their children. Iturralde, like most parents, has “bad memories” of the pandemic years and struggling to get her daughter what she needed, but all that effort has paid off. 

    She used what she learned about the science of reading, from the need for phonics to the importance of background knowledge, to tutor her younger daughter, Lorea, as well. She now also coaches Winnie on math, a subject in which she is poised to skip ahead a year. 

    “What I try to advise parents to do is to take care of your kid and advocate for your kid, but also try to think about the community,” she said. “When I make a fuss about something, I’m doing it because I think there are other kids whose parents are not going to be able to help them. You’ve got to zoom out and think about the big picture.”





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  • How Covid changed teaching in California: fewer pencils, more technology

    How Covid changed teaching in California: fewer pencils, more technology


    The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly changed how students and teachers spend their time in the classroom. Now, instead of writing with paper and pencil, students use computers for most assignments.

    Teachers lecture less and spend more time on individualized instruction, social-emotional learning and relationship building.

    The last five years have not been easy. Students returned to campuses in the spring of 2021, after spending more than a year learning alone from home on computers. They had knowledge gaps, and many felt isolated and unsure, often resulting in chronic absenteeism and bad behavior. 

    Thousands of California teachers, discouraged by disciplinary problems, quit the profession.

    But others doubled down on individualized instruction and social-emotional support, spending a good portion of class time reacquainting their students with how to behave in the classroom and encouraging them to socialize with their peers.

    Now, five years after Covid closed schools, student scores on the state’s standardized Smarter Balanced tests have improved slightly, although achievement is still not back to pre-Covid levels. 

    California teachers interviewed by EdSource are optimistic, reporting that interventions are working and that student discipline is improving.

    “They don’t miss their houses,”  said Erika Cedeno, who teaches Spanish at Golden Valley High School in Santa Clarita. “They don’t miss anything related to Covid. They want to be at school, and they are enjoying sports. They are playing tennis and swimming. It’s very different. I think we are probably getting to the point that we were before Covid.”

    More personalized learning

    Teachers report placing a greater emphasis on small-group instruction and personalized learning to accommodate students who returned from school closures with diverse learning needs, according to “Rewiring the classroom: How the Covid-19 pandemic transformed K-12 education,” released in August by the Brookings Institution. 

    The spring 2023 survey of 1,000 K-12 teachers and administrators across the country revealed that students now spend less time in lectures and more time working on educational software tailored to their needs. The increased use of technology by students, teachers and parents is the biggest change in the classroom since Covid-19 closures, said Brian Jacob, who co-authored the Brookings report. 

    After months of working on educational software during pandemic school closures, teachers are now more likely to incorporate it into their classrooms, according to the report. In early 2023, 70% of all students and 80% of all middle and high school students in the United States had a personal computing device.

    “I use technology more freely in the classroom now, and it’s an expected part of the day,” Todd Shadbourne, a sixth grade teacher at Foulks Ranch Elementary School in Elk Grove, told EdSource. 

    “We used to do a research project and everybody had to go to the library and get a book, and hope they could get a book,” Shadbourne said. “And we couldn’t study biographies when my neighboring class was doing biographies because there’s only so many books. … Now you have other resources because you have a computer in front of you.”

    Too much technology isn’t good

    There are some drawbacks to the increased use of technology in schools, however. Research shows that reading comprehension is better when students read printed texts instead of online materials, Jacob said. Students also struggle with writing and spelling because all their school work is done on computers equipped with programs that correct spelling and grammar, he said.

    “School officials and researchers really need to look at that carefully and determine how much time students are spending on devices, and how is that going?” Jacob said.

    Some California teachers try to limit their students’ screen time and require them to spend more time reading text, writing with pencil and paper and collaborating with their classmates.

    San Diego special education teacher Carly Bresee says the use of technology by students outside the classroom has also increased, prompting her to use less technology in class than before the pandemic.

    “I know that general ed teachers are kind of facing that question,” Bresee said. “How much computer use is healthy and positive for the students? They are having difficulty with that balance, knowing what the best formula is for learning.”

    Back to classroom carts at some schools

    School officials at James Lick Middle School have decided to go back to classroom computer carts because the school, in financially strapped San Francisco Unified, could no longer afford to maintain and replace student computers that are broken, lost or outdated.

    “Kids have broken them on purpose,” said Keith Carames, who teaches theater arts and English at the school. “Kids have lost them. Kids have dropped them.”

    That move away from technology is a big disappointment to Carames, who became a convert after spending three months learning how to use Zoom, Google Classroom and other online education programs. 

    “I saw the light,” Carames said. “I can edit stuff online with them (the students). I can post videos. I have resources that are accessible. If they are absent, they can get work. There are letters that you can send to the family and newsletters and interactive things. It changed my practice as an educator. ”

    Carames calls the transition back to paper and pen “a nightmare.”

    “There are some kids who don’t even know how to spell their own first name,” he said.

    Changing views on school attendance

    The biggest change for Elk Grove’s Shadbourne since Covid is the perception among some students and parents that attending school is optional. Students go on vacation during the school year or decide to work from home on a given day because they think they can get assignments on Google Classroom and email them to the teacher.

    “And the social benefits of school, and the problem-solving that we do as a group, and the common culture we hope to create, it’s hard to do that when people are gone,” Shadbourne said. 

    The impact of absences is amplified in special education, where a student might make progress one day, miss a day of school, and lose that progress, Bresee said.

    Students need social-emotional support

    Since schools reopened in 2020, California teachers have been spending more time greeting their students at the door, sending them notes and planning activities that encourage communication and help build relationships. Making these connections helps students develop social-emotional skills and encourages them to come to school.

    “In special education, we saw a huge increase in maladaptive behaviors, and that was really difficult both for the students, the support staff and for teachers,” said Bresee, a TK-1 special education teacher at Perkins K-8 School. “… It was hard to maintain a regular routine because it felt like we were more frequently in crisis mode.”

    Students, especially younger ones, had to learn how to play and communicate effectively with others. That meant more time was set aside for adult-facilitated playtime than before the pandemic, Bresee said.

    “It became, in my eyes, an even more important part of the day, right up there with our literacy and math lessons,” Breese said.

    The effort seems to be paying off. This year, student behavior has improved, and the class routine is back on track, according to Bresee.

    Social-emotional support and building connections between students and their teachers and classmates are equally important for older students.

    Cedeno greets her Spanish students at the door every day and then spends roughly seven minutes at the beginning of each class asking questions to draw students into conversations meant to help them connect with her and their classmates.

    “Cuál es tu color favorito (What is your favorite color)?” she asks one day. “Cuál es tu dulce favorito (What is your favorite candy)?” she asks on another day.

    Cedeno also invites students to have lunch in her classroom if they need a safe space to relax and a microwave to heat their food.

    “We are trying to rebuild this step by step,” Cedeno said. “We are not there yet. But I think we are going to get there if we put in a lot of effort, a lot of compassion and empathy, because these kids, they need this.”





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  • California teachers recall long road back from Covid

    California teachers recall long road back from Covid


    Left to right: Carly Bresee, Erika Cedeno, Todd Shadbourne, Sesar Carreño and Keith Carames.

    The last five years have not been easy for students or their teachers.

    During Covid school closures, teachers, accustomed to using overhead projectors and pencil and paper in classrooms, had to learn to use new technology so their students could learn from home.

    When students returned to campuses a year later, some had learning and socialization gaps. There were more behavior problems and chronic absenteeism.

    Thousands of California teachers, discouraged by classroom discipline problems, quit the profession. But many took on the challenge, offering students social-emotional support and individualized instruction.

    Now, teachers interviewed by EdSource are optimistic. They report that students are making academic and social-emotional progress. 

    Keith Carames: Pandemic didn’t stop James Lick thespians

    Drama teacher Keith Carames takes the adage “the show must go on” quite literally. 

    Keith Carames

    A pandemic didn’t stop Carames and his students at James Lick Middle School in San Francisco from producing a show, even if it meant doing it virtually.

    During school closures in the first year of the pandemic, Carames hired a director through the American Conservatory Theater to use digital storytelling and voiceovers to help students bring the Amanda Gorman poem “The Hill We Climb” to life in a five-minute video.

    Once school reopened, Carames was reluctant to have actors masked in live productions, something other schools were doing.

    “This is horrible,” Carames recalled. “Like it’s so disingenuous. We’re not using their full instrument. You don’t see their faces. It just made me sick.”

    So, Carames hired two playwrights to work with students to write eight original plays based on their experiences during Covid. He then collaborated with the San Francisco Opera Guild to turn two of the plays into musicals.

    “Everybody’s in the classroom with masks on,” Caramas said. “We rehearsed with masks on. I was like, OK, we’re going to do a show this year, but it’s not going to be like normal.”

    Carames’s answer was to rent a theater space where Covid-tested students could act and be filmed on stage without a mask for 10 minutes at a time. A production company filmed the eight plays.

    “We had fans blowing, and we had air filtration, and we had all the protocols in place,” Carames said. 

    The result was a one-night event titled “Unmasked: The Covid Chronicles,” complete with a red carpet.

    Much has changed since then. Last month, students in Carames’ after-school drama program performed the musical “SpongeBob” in front of a live audience. No one wore masks. Last week, the student actors gathered after school to watch a recording of the video and to eat Mediterranean food provided by their teacher.

    “Isn’t that cool?” Carames said.

    Sesar Carreño: Central Valley school gets technology boost

    Earlimart Middle School classrooms in Tulare County have had a technology boost since Covid closed schools. 

    Sesar Carreño
    Credit: Lifetouch Photography

    Students who once shared computers now each have one provided by Earlimart School District. Students and their families also have district-provided internet access in their homes, said Sesar Carreño, an eighth-grade teacher at the school.

    Now teachers use giant smart TVs to share their computer screens during lessons, instead of using overhead projectors and pull-down screens. 

     Carreño says the increased technology in the classroom has been a plus, but the increased access to everything the internet has to offer means more effort by teachers to keep students’ attention.

    “They wander off, watch YouTube videos and things like that,” he said. “You say, ‘Hey, hey, don’t do that. Stay on task.’ “

    Plagiarism can also be a problem when students copy and paste from the internet a little too often when doing homework. But it’s easy to catch,  Carreño said.

    “They don’t change the font … or it looks better than something I wrote at Cal State Northridge or UCLA,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Wow, that’s brilliant.’ We try to catch that, and I do ding them for that.”

    Other than policing students on the internet, Carreño says he doesn’t have any more discipline problems than before the pandemic.

    “We just had a fight 30 minutes ago in the yard,” he said. “We’re a middle school, so things will happen.”

    Carly Bresee: Classrooms are getting back to normal

    Carly Bresee was optimistic about her new career when she began her first full year of teaching in 2019. She had wanted to be a special education teacher since she was 5 years old.

    Carly Bresee

    But a lifetime of dreaming about teaching didn’t prepare her for teaching during Covid school closures or the increased social-emotional needs of her young students when they returned to school a year later. Bresee teaches transitional kindergarten through first-grade special education students with extensive support needs at Perkins K-8 School in San Diego Unified.

    Bresee couldn’t teach her students online like most other teachers. So, she donned a face mask and gloves and made weekly home visits during Covid school closures. 

    “You know, kids, especially at that age, and then especially again with students with disabilities, sitting in front of a computer for school just wasn’t a possibility,” she said. “It wasn’t accessible learning.”

    But returning to school was even harder, Bresee said. Students had increased social-emotional needs and unexpected behavior that left Bresee and other classroom staff exhausted.

     “We would go home and not be able to do anything else,” she said. “I would go home and fall asleep at like 4:30 in the afternoon.”

    Bresee considered leaving the profession then, but is now more optimistic.

    “I’m feeling good this year,” she said. “Things are getting back into a routine in my classroom. … It does feel like I’m getting my feet under me again. So, it does feel like I’m headed in the right direction.”

    Todd Shadbourne: Teachers became technology converts

    Foulks Ranch Elementary teacher Todd Shadbourne was a self-described “pencil-paper guy” until the Covid pandemic closed schools, including his campus in Elk Grove, in the spring of 2020. 

    Todd Shadbourne

    Suddenly, he needed to learn to use online video conferencing programs, classroom management tools and other technology to ensure his students could learn from their homes.

    “I’m almost 60, and I was surrounded by younger colleagues who totally just collaborated with me,” Shadbourne said. “I worked with my colleagues and I learned how to do it, and I’m really confident at it now.”

    When students returned to school, the computers, classroom management tools and online lessons came with them. The technology now allows students and their parents more access to teachers’ lesson plans and other classroom materials, Shadbourne said.

    “I think it has helped me to communicate with parents more,” said Shadbourne, who teaches sixth grade. “I’ve been teaching for a long time, and I remember when they were introducing emails and I remember when we were going to workshops for voicemail. And now, there are so many ways that I can communicate with parents. It’s almost too much.”

    And now, when there are technical problems in the classroom, the entire class jumps in to help solve problems, he said.

    Shadbourne says his newfound confidence in his ability to use technology has made him more self-assured in other areas as well.

    “I’m more willing to try new things, and I’m not afraid to mess up,” Shadbourne said.

    Erika Cedeno: Building connections key to student learning

    Spanish teacher Erika Cedeno believes connecting with her students is crucial to establishing good relationships with them. She thinks it is even more important since students returned to school after a year of learning in isolation.

    Erika Cedeno

    Cedeno says she doesn’t have any behavior problems in her classes. Mutual respect and trust are key, she said.

    She builds connections, in part, by setting aside time to have conversations with students, and by inviting them to use her classroom to heat up meals or just to hang out during lunch.

    “To say hello at the door is not enough,” said Cedeno, who was recently named Teacher of the Year at Golden Valley High School in Santa Clarita. 

    “They need to trust you, and they need to like you,” Cedeno said. “Because if they don’t like you, they’re not going to learn.”

    As chair of the world languages department at the school, Cedeno has encouraged other teachers to use project-based learning and to focus more on social-emotional support in the classroom.

    She recently applied for a grant to replace the desks in her classroom with tables, so that the students can collaborate in small groups.

    “When you collaborate in the real world, you don’t collaborate in rows,” Cedeno said. “With tables, you collaborate, you give feedback, you talk and you say your point of view. I’m creating that environment, and my principal is loving it.”





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