By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
“Learning losses from COVID-19 could cost this generation of students close to $17 trillion in lifetime earnings,” according to a report from the World Bank on Dec. 6, 2021. Senator Everett Dirksen long ago famously observed: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money." But this is trillion, with a “t.”
A meta-analysis (summary of many studies) across Western countries just published in the journal “Nature Human Behavior” likewise found that “…students lost out on about 35% of a normal school year’s worth of learning” with math learning loss greater than reading loss.
This was no surprise to the Office of Economic Cooperation and Development that also confirmed that “a loss of one-third of a year in effective learning for just the students affected by the closures of early 2020 will, by historical data, lower a country’s GDP by an average of 1.5% over the remainder of the century.”
The OECD historical data includes a detailed study of the effects of German “Short School Years.” In that case, German schools that were previously on a calendar year were re-scheduled to align with the normal fall-spring school year of the rest of Europe. This major disruption from April 1966 through July 1967 resulted in students receiving a total of three-fourths of a year less instruction.
Carefully following this age group, researchers found their math skills were a quarter of a standard deviation lower and over the long term, reduced their earned income about five percent during their working lives. Simply, learning loss from a major school disruption, ranging from war to the Flu of 1918 and now COVID-19, remains with a school generation forever.
One major problem with the meta-analysis was that it did not include East Asian and Pacific countries such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China, Singapore and Vietnam. In contrast to the Western countries surveyed, schools in the Far East minimized the time they were in lockdown and returned to classrooms under daily testing, universal masking and wise educational practices such as the temporary suspension of music that involved breath (no trumpets but violins okay). Therefore decreases in advancing learning in reading, math and other topics occurred but was considerably less than for Western schools that relied heavily on closing schools and using online learning.
This research, combined with past research into earlier educational interruptions and their long-term effects, provide solid evidence that Education School remedies using online tutoring, “accelerated learning” and other gimmicks simply do not work. Face-to-face teaching providing seat time with genuine interaction do work. —But at normal speed. And some windows of time for learning do close.
However, despite clear evidence that the pandemic learning loss will follow this generation of students through their life, hope springs eternal that students can somehow surge ahead and catch up to where they would have been had there been no pandemic.
States including Oklahoma, Idaho and Kansas are using money from the American Rescue Plan Act’s State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund to provide grants to low-income students whose educational achievement was impacted by school closures and remote learning. Depending on each state’s definitions, this could help pay for tutoring, school supplies, academic day-camps, language classes, and curricular and educational materials, including musical instruments.
But this solid research just released shows that this funding will not reverse the learning loss that this current generation of K–12 students has experienced.
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Resources involved in this analysis include:
“A systematic review and meta-analysis of the evidence on learning during the COVID-19 pandemic” by Bastian A. Betthäuser, Anders M. Bach-Mortensen & Per Engzell, Jan. 30, 2023; Nature Human Behaviour at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01506-4
“The Economic Impacts of Learning Losses” by Eric A. Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann,
September 2020, is available at: https://www.oecd.org/education/The-economic-impacts-of-coronavirus-covid-19-learning-losses.pdf
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John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities during 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.