It can be easy to think of school closures, remote learning and masked classrooms as part of the pandemic past.
But educators across the country know better. They see the learning loss that persists, despite their best efforts to provide some measure of consistency amid all the disruption.
While new data suggest students are making a “ ‘surprising’ rebound,” findings also show math and reading levels for elementary and middle school students are nowhere near pre-pandemic levels.
Worse yet, systemic inequality has actually worsened, with students in the poorest communities falling even further behind their more affluent peers.
Recognizing near the start of the pandemic that U.S. public schools required vast support, federal and state government officials appropriated historic levels of help via elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds.
They must continue this funding.
Educators are just beginning to deeply experience and understand the pandemic’s ongoing seismic effects on children and staff. Learning loss remains one of the most challenging hurdles educators must overcome to ensure that an entire generation of students does not fall off track.
Related: PROOF POINTS: Three views of pandemic learning loss and recovery
As a recently retired superintendent of schools, I’ve watched, with immense frustration, as state and federal officials followed up their initial funding with blindly conceived appropriations tied to inflexible and short-sighted deadlines.
Now that funding is drying up at precisely the wrong time; districts will be left trying to fund nascent positions and programs on top of their normal operational costs.
In the aftermath of the pandemic, educators have been switching focus from acute short-term challenges to the chronic and stubborn ones poised to become generational pain points. Novel educational impacts of the pandemic are still emerging while others persist.
Classroom teachers and school administrators are seeing more challenging student behaviors and family distress on top of the learning gaps.
That’s why federal funding must not end. We would never ask doctors to treat their patients before they began exhibiting symptoms. So why would we ask our educators to essentially do the same?
As deadlines for the expenditure of federal dollars loom and intersect with next year’s budget development, school districts once again face the uncertainty of not having sufficient resources for challenges that they do not yet fully understand.
Short-term funding will not be sufficient for navigating out of a once-in-a-century global public health problem that fundamentally changed the way the U.S. educates our youth.
We need a more logical, reasonable and, most importantly, sustainable approach to combat pandemic-induced learning loss, in whatever form it appears. Although federal and state funding is typically allocated yearly, future funding should be targeted and guaranteed for multiple years.
Without taking a different funding approach, we will only guarantee that the impacts linger or worsen. Right now, well-intentioned federal funding may actually be widening the achievement gap. We are seeing economically disadvantaged communities starting to lag in their rate of learning as measured by standardized testing.
Leaders holding the power of the purse will need to recognize that the new playing field is still unequal, and that economic disparities among communities will continue to yield different learning outcomes. Leveling the playing field means better distribution of funds.
The federal funding that is set to expire in 2024 cannot wipe away the adverse learning impacts of the pandemic. While it can be tempting and politically expedient to declare the pandemic over, turning the page prematurely leaves students and teachers behind and potentially exacerbates existing challenges.
We can and must do better.
Hamlet Michael Hernandez is an assistant teaching professor of education and director of the Educational Leadership program at Quinnipiac University.
This story about pandemic learning loss was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.
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