So how is education post Pandemic? I know I’m not a teacher anymore, but I found an article that reminded me why I wanted out of education.

This article from the Associate Press proclaims that test scores show that American students are way behind because of the pandemic. While reading this, my teacher’s senses started to buzz. So I wanted to break down my thoughts about it.

Qui Custodit Ipsos Custodes – Who Watches The Watchers?

The study by the research organization NWEA, which also administers assessments in K-12 schools, lands as the 2024 deadline approaches quickly for schools to spend the last of the $190 billion in federal pandemic relief money.

So the organization responsible for administering assessments says we need more assessments? I’m sure the ice cream salesman says we need more ice cream in our life too.

When I used to teach students about media literacy, we would start with who is providing the message. While a reputable source publishes this article, I have to question where the information comes from and what they must get out of it.

It feels like the multibillion-dollar education testing industry would want to increase the need for testing. So, why would I want to listen to them, especially when there is a deadline for more spending?

Schools Can Fix The Pandemic Gap By Doing What We’ve Always Done

There are ways schools can take better advantage of their limited resources and time to boost learning, said Chase Nordengren, the group’s lead researcher for instructional strategies. He said schools could group students based on their needs and provide targeted instruction, for example, adjusting groups as individuals progress.

I love how they articulate that schools have limited resources. Maybe if the amount of money administrators put into studies like this back into education, the resources wouldn’t be as limited.

I’m pretty sure most teachers already do this mentally. We also do this as much as we can legally because we aren’t supposed to group kids anymore. Teachers are told to differentiate instruction for each child, to find the way that helps them learn at the level they are on already. So how would they provide more targeted instruction?

What about SPED students? Would this group all the Special Education students, students with learning disabilities, into one group? It doesn’t make much sense to me.

Re-Thinking Education in a Post-Pandemic World

“We’ve been trying to send the message that this is a multiyear, if not decades-long recovery period and is going to require some fundamental rethinking of the ways that not only we educate students but we think about how students are grouped and how we think about their learning,” he said.

In our urgency to return to normal as the pandemic subsided, we bonked it. As a profession, we didn’t stop to adjust how we did things as we returned to class, tried to make it as normal for the students as possible, and tried to survive.

For example, it’s unbelievable that school funding is still tied to attendance. We just went through a global pandemic where we told people to stay home if sick. However, if students don’t attend school, the school doesn’t get funding.

Texas school districts are hurting because kids aren’t coming to school as much, and the state hasn’t changed how it calculates funding. So are we trying to force students back into the classroom when they are sick and spread germs? Did we learn nothing?

But there are also the kids who went and got jobs while doing asynchronous school. Being in a classroom will never be replaceable. It is where the best learning comes from, but some excel at online school. Some need more flexibility in their schedule to learn.

Could we have remodeled the school system? I’ve long thought that maybe we could shorten classes for instructional purposes. Teachers could teach their lessons in ten to fifteen minutes during the mornings. Students would have the afternoon to work or have office visits if they don’t understand. Students would have more time for themselves. Students that needed more help could get more personalized help at conferences.

Who is Held Accountable

But the analysis found that the average student still would need the equivalent of 4.1 additional months of schooling to catch up in reading and 4.5 months for math. Black and Hispanic students, meanwhile, would need even more time to catch up — about a month or more. And “that really only brings them back to the pre-pandemic levels of inequality that we already saw,” Lewis said.

Okay, here’s the main issue, the achievement gap. Supposedly, students are so far behind that they need months to return to pre-pandemic levels. But I argue that test scores are not the key metric.

From my time in the classroom, I can tell you that it isn’t the test or the lack of education in a classroom that is causing the gap. The problem is the accountability of the student vanished a long time ago. The pandemic simply exacerbated the issue.

Students don’t have any accountability in their learning anymore. They have been pushed along whether they were ready because of No Child Left Behind. During the pandemic, everyone got a pass because accountability grew harder.

They know that failure doesn’t mean anything. They will be pushed through. So if we want the achievement gap to close, one way we can improve education is to allow some of them to fail. Of course, I also have other ideas for improving education , but this should be step one.

“I think that perhaps we’ve neglected filling in the holes of the last two years in a rush to get back to grade-level content and we’re seeing the impact of that, that kids are not able to keep up because they’re still missing some foundational pieces.”

Now, I only have my years as a teacher and school to draw from, but I don’t think the education my colleagues provided created or neglected holes. There was something in these students before the pandemic hit. Pre-pandemic and Post-pandemic, the students that I had didn’t seem lesser in skills. They appeared more deficient in motivation and consequence.

Students stopped fearing failing a class. They became more addicted to their phones. They learned they could do their work from home and stopped doing it in class. So their need to pay attention could also take a break.

Now, look, I don’t want kids to fail. I want everyone to have a chance to be educated. But when kids don’t have risk in their education and forget what’s on the line, education will become more complex.

Education Post Pandemic is Fine

I don’t like this article. I think the information is flawed and comes from a source with self-interest. Did anyone ask the teachers, the ones doing the work, about the educational gap? It doesn’t usually happen that way because we, as a country, don’t value teachers. Why would I expect it to happen in education post pandemic?

But to address the failings of the tested students, I would question their dedication to their education. If kids want to learn, they will find a way to learn.

But what do I know? I’m not a teacher anymore. And this is one of the reasons that drove me away from the profession.