A Jan. 25 brief from Policy Analysis for California Education finds that there has been significant learning loss in both English language arts and mathematics, with students in earlier grades most affected. Additionally, low-income students and English learners are among...
Results for America and the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University released four new EdResearch for Recovery briefs that highlight evidence-based strategies to help policymakers and educators address key challenges.
The start of the 2020–21 academic year illustrated the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of school-aged students and their families, and has heightened the need to catalyze the systems that support them. AIR partnered with...
California educators and families have made great efforts to meet the teaching and learning challenges brought by the pandemic and the need to shift to teaching in a virtual environment. The diverse and unique challenges have been met with thoughtfulness...
The school year has been challenging for students and educators alike as they adjust to remote programs. As a result, Palm Springs Unified School district reports failing grades are up 10 to 15 percent in their middle and high schools...
Americans believe that schools are essential institutions. That’s why public schools absorb half of local government spending, and why the nation spends $14,000 per year on each child in K–12 public schools. Yet, even as the educational establishment insists its...
California is on the verge of creating a cradle-to-career data system that could help policymakers identify effective educational policies while providing students and families with new tools to investigate college and career options. With support from Governor Newsom, the Cradle-to-Career...
Ten months into the pandemic, San Francisco’s schools remain closed, and there is no firm timetable for when students can return. The debate around reopening schools has been a controversial issue for parents, children and educators for months, but has...
As of yesterday, Californians are in the midst of what you might call an uncontrolled experiment brought on by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s sudden move to lift the state’s regional stay-at-home order, allowing outdoor dining and other business operations to resume...
A new study revealed that young and low-income students in California have been hit the hardest by pandemic-related school closures, showing a significant drop in test scores that has researchers worried the gap may be hard to overcome. The study...
A study on the extent of pandemic-induced learning loss in 18 California districts reveals younger, lower-income students and English learners were the hardest hit by school closures last spring. The research from Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) shows significant...
The closure of most California public school campuses since last March has been widely acknowledged to have hurt student learning, but a study this week brings that into sharper focus, finding significant loss in both language arts and math, and...
The first California study measuring declines in learning during the first months of the pandemic parallels findings nationally: There has been a significant drop in test results in the early grades, with low-income students and English learners showing the least...
The impact of the pandemic on California students' learning, gauged from 18 school districts in the CORE Data Collaborative, highlights significant learning loss in English Language Arts (ELA) and Math, primarily affecting younger grades. The equity gap is pronounced, notably among low-income students and English language learners (ELLs), experiencing more substantial setbacks than their counterparts. Socioeconomically disadvantaged students faced slower growth, while others accelerated their learning, intensifying existing achievement disparities. Upper-grade ELLs encountered severe setbacks due to challenges in virtual language development. These findings underscore the urgent need for targeted support to redress these disparities, emphasizing the gravity of unequal experiences during the pandemic. Yet, data limitations call for deeper investigations into absent student groups to refine learning loss estimates. Addressing this crisis necessitates a student-centric approach, prioritizing social-emotional well-being and systemic educational reforms to accommodate diverse student needs.
As COVID-19 continues to disrupt educational experiences of students across the nation, newly analyzed survey research by the California Education Lab at the University of California, Davis, details the high level of uncertainty and financial stress experienced by California high...
Safe, high-quality recess can play an important role in children’s adjustment to school when they begin returning to in-person class, according to a policy brief by Policy Analysis for California Education.
Over the past 10 months, K-12 school districts in California have faced unprecedented challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To help reduce the spread of the virus in spring 2020, districts largely transitioned to distance-learning, with some or all of...
California’s long-awaited roadmap to reshape early childhood care and education in the state took a critical first step on Tuesday with the release of a first-ever 10-year master plan, but some advocates say more specifics are needed to ensure progress.
The 2020 Breaking Barriers Interagency Symposium took take place exclusively online over four consecutive Thursday mornings. Each of these Thursday sessions focused on one of the four pillars: Shared Leadership, Shared Data, Shared Community, and Shared Finance.
Almost midway through the school year, it has become increasingly clear that virtual learning is failing a sizable number of Texas public school students whose parents decided to keep them home as COVID-19 grips the state. The disturbing number of...
Teachers across the country are struggling to adapt to hybrid classroom approaches cobbled together in response to the enduring pandemic. Many say they’re having trouble reaching the students who need their help the most.
Students at Ánimo Ellen Ochoa Charter Middle School in East Los Angeles are learning at one-and-a-half to two times the pace of their grade-level peers, based on their state standardized (CAASPP) test scores for the last three years compared to...
English learners, like their peers, have lost a large portion of instructional time due to the rapid shift to online learning caused by COVID-19. However, data indicates that the digital divide amongst underserved students, including English learners, has led to...
Deep into the pandemic, some districts are finding an alarming percentage of students are missing from the virtual classroom—with the worst absentee rates occurring among homeless students, foster youth, English learners, Black students and high school seniors. Two San Francisco...
Arizona State University Professor Geoffrey D. Borman has great empathy for middle schoolers. He knows how painful the transition can be when elementary students have to make the jump to junior high school. The stresses of navigating grades, mental well-being...