The need is dire. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported early this month on scores from statewide annual accountability tests known as the Standards of Learning assessments. These results usually arrive in August, but the Virginia Department of Education delayed them this year, contrary to plan, before revealing last week what the local paper had already uncovered: Learning among students in the third through the eighth grade is largely stagnant.
This is worse news than it sounds because achievement is stuck behind where students were before the pandemic. Similar to last year, this year over one-quarter of kids failed the reading exam; almost one-third failed the math exam. Virginia has seen some of the largest drops in the nation in its scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress since before the pandemic.
The Youngkin administration announced last week a strategy for spending the $418 million devoted to learning loss recovery in the budget just passed by the Virginia General Assembly. School divisions have discretion over exactly how to use these funds, but the plan recommends that 20 percent of the money go to expanding the Virginia Literacy Act — last year’s legislation intended to align teaching with the science of reading. Ten percent, the strategy suggests, should go toward addressing chronic absenteeism. And the greatest share should go toward “high-dosage” tutoring.
These ideas are all sound — and in line with the evidence on how best to catch kids up. But their success will depend on implementation. The Literacy Act expansion effort hinges on the hiring and training of reading specialists for grades four through eight, an intervention that has worked well elsewhere, including notably in Mississippi and Tennessee. Yet retaining these professionals on a permanent basis with the one-time pot of state money could prove difficult. And whether the funds are sufficient to recruit enough of these specialists is also uncertain.
Similarly, the administration is wise to create a task force on chronic absenteeism — which has almost doubled in the past five years, so that now nearly 20 percent of students miss 18 or more days of school a year. The “playbook” promised to school divisions on how to increase attendance should help, too, especially if it embraces data-driven best practices: tracking absences more granularly, calling parents and visiting homes, smoothing commutes, and, most complicated of all, ensuring that kids’ schedules are engaging and campuses welcoming. But what really matters is whether school divisions embrace these practices, too. The Board of Education’s decision this spring to reintroduce chronic absenteeism rates as a metric for evaluating school quality should at least provide some incentive.
Finally, Mr. Youngkin is smart to seize on high-dosage tutoring as the key to revitalizing achievement in Virginia. The evidence shows that gathering kids in small groups for ample time every week is the single most effective way to boost their learning. The evidence also shows, however, that high-dosage tutoring pays off only when it is done right — and doing it right is hard.
The administration recommends a 1-to-10 teacher-to-student ratio. This is about double the 1-to-5 ratio that experts consider the gold standard, but the choice is also a concession to reality. Staffing is going to be a challenge. Lisa Coons, Virginia’s superintendent of public instruction, said in a school board meeting this week that her team is issuing an all-call for volunteers, focusing not on only current teachers but also retired teachers, and liaising with deans of education at colleges across the state to see whether, through partnerships, they can provide instructors.
The suggested range of three to five hours a week of tutoring also diverges from ideal practice. The state will give divisions various models for tutoring programs. Some will be closer to best practice than others — but if the administration delivers on-the-ground collaboration with every division, all of them could improve on the hodgepodge of programs, including opt-in and digital forms of instruction, that are falling short today.
The biggest problem of all is that school divisions don’t have to listen to the administration’s recommendations in any of these areas. Virginia’s plan for covid recovery in education puts the focus where it ought to be: on the need for students to learn, according to the science on how to ensure that they will. This aim merits all the attention that more controversial, less deserving matters have received.
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