As schools around the region reopen for in-person learning, some students may be struggling to meet grade-level expectations due to more than a year of educational challenges related to the pandemic.
In a June report titled “Education in a Pandemic: The Disparate Impact of COVID-19 on America’s Students,” the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights reviewed a wide range of public documents and determined that “the pandemic has negatively affected academic growth, widening pre-existing disparities” nationwide, according to available evidence.
These disparities are especially pronounced in communities of color and among English learners, students with disabilities and students who are caregivers for others, the report reads, and English and math were identified as the core subjects in which students are most at risk.
Many school districts across western Massachusetts are working to identify any student at risk of regression, and they are launching new programs to intervene quickly.
As in other districts, educators in Northampton are aware of students who may have fallen behind in their studies during school closures, remote learning and the other social challenges caused by the pandemic.
Superintendent John Provost said 250 students were enrolled in the district’s summer learning program this year. The program was offered to students with disabilities and English learners “who were at substantial risk of regression,” Provost said.
Although some students are in need of intervention at the end of any school year, this summer’s enrollment broke records for the 2,700-student district.
“I can tell you, definitively, it’s the largest summer program we’ve ever had, at least as long I’ve been here, and maybe in the history of the district,” said Provost, who was hired in 2014.
High school students could also take advantage of credit recovery and pre-calculus classes during the summer in order to keep themselves on track to meet grade-level expectations.
For the coming school year, students in Grades 3 to 5 who need to build skills in English and math can enroll in Liftoff Learning, a new small-group, after-school program designed in response to the pandemic. The program starts on Sept. 14 and runs from 2:10 to 3:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Enrollment in Liftoff Learning is by invitation from the school principal.
The first day of school is Thursday, and unlike last year’s truncated schedule of 170 days, this year will run for a full 180 days.
In Hadley, several programs were run over the summer, with a range of options for students to choose from, said Superintendent Anne McKenzie. More students were identified as struggling at Hopkins Academy than at Hadley Elementary School.
“We reached out to any student who had a high rate of absenteeism, was disengaged or failed courses last year and offered them options for summer learning, tutoring (and) credit recovery,” McKenzie said.
Some of these efforts included a creative writing club, a camp for English Language Learners and a book club in which students and their parents could participate.
Hatfield public schools offered their usual extended school-year program for students with special needs, and also ran three learning academies for learning acceleration into the new year, said Michael Wood, the interim superintendent.
Wood said interventionists are also prepared to assist with learning at Hatfield Elementary School this fall.
“We are fortunate to have small class sizes that enable our teachers to differentiate on a regular basis to assist with any variable in student achievement,” Wood said.
When South Hadley students walk into their school buildings on Wednesday, educators will be initially focused on asking easy but vital questions: “How are you?” “Are you alright?” according to new Superintendent Jahmal Mosley.
Mosley said the district will first prioritize social and emotional needs. Only after addressing that component of a student’s well-being will educators begin to talk about course recovery or assess regression.
“It’s not going to be one or done — our kids have been out of school for about a year and a half,” Mosley said. “It’s a long haul.”
In order to eventually determine what kind of extra interventions a student will need, the district will use assessments that will point to areas where those students could use extra work. Interventions can be done before or after school, Mosley said.
But the focus will be on a student’s long-term success, Mosley said, noting that the recovery process won’t just take a few weeks or months.
“This is going to be, in some cases, a year or two,” he said.
District Receiver-Superintendent Anthony Soto said that the first step to helping students who may have fallen behind is warmly welcoming them back into buildings, where some have not set foot for 18 months.
“The first few weeks of school are really just trying to foster a sense of belonging with students, making sure that on a social-emotional level, their needs are met,” Soto said, “and then switching gears to assessments.”
Soto said that the district regularly does assessments at the beginning of the year, but that this year’s will help educators understand what students might have missed during the pandemic. From there, the district is following a roadmap created by the educational organization TNTP that will guide the “accelerated learning” needed to catch students up.
The district also has posted jobs for academic intervention teachers in math and English language arts for every school — something Soto said Holyoke hasn’t had since he joined the district five years ago.
“These are going to be critical positions to help identify which students need more and make sure those students get that ‘more,’” Soto said.
Kristen Smidy, the new superintendent for the Gateway Regional School District, said the district will use data to ascertain where its students are at in their education. However, she said that the focus will be on making school a welcoming place.
“We’re really just focused on taking really good care of our kids,” she said.
Smidy also said that if just Gateway had to do remote learning last year, it would be more concerning, but it was something students experienced around the country.
At Hampshire Regional School District, new superintendent Diana Bonneville said the district is focused on using the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s acceleration map as a guide to prevent students from falling behind, and to identify their needs.
“Students will have gaps in their knowledge, so teachers will need to focus on the most critical pieces of missing information while maintaining grade-level appropriate work,” Bonneville said via text.
At the William E. Norris School in Southampton, Principal Aliza Pluta said the school expanded summer learning, providing one-on-one instruction for those who needed it. She also said that the school did interim assessment testing in the spring and will embed those results into teaching this year.
Additionally, she said that professional development on Sept. 28 will conduct data analysis on how the students are doing in the first few weeks of school.
“We’re taking an approach that is more like an acceleration rather than a remediation,” she said.
Staff writers Dusty Christensen, Bera Dunau and Scott Merzbach contributed to this report.