Last year, when the Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ) summarized the literature regarding impact of COVID-19 on students and education, we reached troubling conclusions about the state of our students’ mental health and learning, the learning opportunities they were experiencing, the challenges in assessing students’ learning and how best to support learning during COVID-19.
Another year into the pandemic and the conclusions from our updated literature review are no less troubling. The pandemic continues to negatively affect our students’ learning and well-being, especially our students of color. Our educators are overwhelmed with the challenge of moving students forward. Here’s what we have learned since last year.
Mental health needs are rising to unprecedented levels in K-12 students
This began shortly after the pandemic began, and continues. In one study, parents were 2.5 times more likely to report externalizing mental health problems in their children, and four times more likely to report clinical levels of internalizing symptoms. In the Minnesota Safe Learning Survey, educators, families and students all emphasized the challenges of maintaining mental health, the need to adapt instruction and instructional environments to support mental health, and the demand for mental health services. In many districts, mental health services are delivered to lower-income students in schools; while some were able to transition to telehealth during the pandemic, there were significant interruptions in service delivery and some students were lost in the transition. It is unclear how delivery of mental health services has been restored with the inconsistency of in-person learning this school year.
Students are not making the academic progress expected in non-pandemic years
Test scores reflect drops in reading and math, with greater declines in math. The academic progress of students who are BIPOC or living in poverty is most negatively affected. National studies show students are three to seven percentile points behind in reading and nine to 11 percentile points in math comparing fall 2019 to fall 2021 scores. BIPOC students had lower levels of proficiency and greater declines. The incomprehensible achievement gap for students in Minneapolis Public Schools has widened, now a 50-point difference between 2nd-8th grade BIPOC and white students.
Most students transitioned to in-person learning in the fall of 2021, but have since also experienced disruptions in learning environments. Inequities in in-person learning exist. Learning environments also changed. Throughout the pandemic, more students of color learned from home compared to their white peers, either because they were in schools with distance learning, they chose to learn at home, or they were being homeschooled. Quarantining, temporary pivots to distance learning, and staffing challenges complicated the return to consistent in-person instruction. Homeschooling rates doubled across the nation; the rates for Black students homeschooled increased five-fold. NAZ parents reported that almost 50% of their children changed schools this year, due to the Minneapolis Public Schools’ (MPS) Comprehensive District Design (CDD) plan, rethinking schools during COVID-19, and expected school change by grade.
Nationally, students were more likely to be absent in an online environment; online instruction was more likely to be offered by schools with higher proportions of disadvantaged students. Rates of absenteeism were higher for students who were BIPOC or living in lower income areas.
Educators are also struggling with mental health concerns and burnout
School districts are faced with staff shortages, staff and educator exposure to COVID-19, instructional challenges, and supporting staff and students’ mental health needs.
Our ongoing review of the literature yielded the following recommendations.
To promote student mental health:
- Focus resources on multi-tier systems of support (MTSS) for supporting social-emotional needs. MTSS is a framework of tiered infrastructure that involves targeting academic and social-emotional behavior areas that students are struggling with; implementing evidence-based interventions; and assessing outcomes to determine next steps remain the evidence-based suggestion for schools/districts to direct resources in order to effectively support student mental health and thereby decrease stress on teachers.
To promote student attendance and learning:
- Engage in activities that center on building trust and relationships with students and families
- Identify barriers to attending school, provide accurate health information to families, and send “nudges” like texts or emails to families about absences
- Implement incentives and home visiting programs to find missing students
- Research and conceptualize individualized learning strategies to help students catch up on necessary content
- Offer multiple interventions, including high-intensity tutoring, individualized attention, and small classroom opportunities woven into the day
- Engage in real-time assessment linked to learning
To promote educator mental health and prevent burnout:
- Design and implement school structures and policies that offer autonomy and support from school leaders
- Offer mental health and self-help interventions for all staff
- Reduce sources of stress for educators and staff with regular check-ins, opportunities for safely debriefing, and provide ongoing training on social-emotional learning and trauma-informed educational strategies
Clearly, it is time to ring the bell, sound the alarm and bring all the financial and human resources we can to support our students and educators, especially those recovering from the MPS strike. The longer it takes for us to address this human crisis, the longer it will take for our students to recover and forge ahead.
Amy Susman-Stillman, Ph.D. is the director of evaluation for the Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ) and Marissa Marsolek is a research assistant with NAZ. NAZ has a mission to end generational poverty and build a culture of achievement in North Minneapolis where all low-income children of color graduate from high school, college and are career-ready.
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