March 15, 2023

Welcome to the latest edition of the Evidence Project newsletter. 

This issue includes:

• CRPE’s call for proposals on Covid-19 rapid research

• Pandemic learning loss and tutoring programs designed to address it
• New data on teacher turnover and staffing shortages
• Recent trends in K-12 enrollment and absenteeism, as well as what they mean for the postsecondary pipeline
• How districts are spending ESSER funding 
• Our recovery roundup, which highlights innovative strategies for learning recovery 

As always, if you have feedback or want to alert us to new research, please email EvidenceProject@exchange.asu.edu.

Sincerely,

The Evidence Project Team and newsletter co-writers

Cara Pangelinan, Center on Reinventing Public Education

Dan Silver, University of Southern California Center for Applied Research in Education

The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE),  with generous support from the Walton Family Foundation, has opened a request for rapid research proposals on the effects of Covid-19 on high school students and recent graduates. Grants are available for up to 12 months and $50,000. CRPE is particularly interested in supporting innovative policies and interventions that improve access to opportunity and success both in high school and beyond. Grants may use existing data or include original data collection, and are open to the full range of research methodology. You can visit the Evidence Project website to learn more about potential topics, requirements, and the application process. Proposals are due April 7, 2023 at 5 p.m. PDT. 

State test results from California and Missouri continue to suggest years of lost learning. Additionally, a team of Polish researchers estimated that school closures may produce a loss in future student earnings, up to 7.2% of Poland’s GDP. On a brighter note, curriculum company Amplify reported encouraging evidence of improved literacy skills and narrowed racial and ethnic achievement gaps for early elementary students. Both learning gaps and inadequate funding have been associated with greater time spent in remote schooling.

Tutoring has emerged as a popular strategy to combat learning loss. Recently published evidence from one math tutoring program showed large increases in test scores and course grades, and in a recent survey, four out of five Tennessee teachers credited tutoring with improving their students’ academic performance. But to reap tutoring’s substantial benefits, a school-based program must be “high-dosage,” connected to the curriculum, and aligned with the school’s goals and available resources, experts say. A Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) report discusses some of the implementation difficulties with scaling up tutoring programs, and researchers at University of Southern California’s Center for Applied Research in Education (including one of this newsletter’s co-authors) found that only about 2% of U.S. households have students receiving high-dosage tutoring.

Further reading:

• The Hechinger Report produced a useful survey of tutoring research.
• Chalkbeat covers tutoring data from USC and other states.
• ChatGPT could be used as a tutoring software. Is this an exciting opportunity that makes tutoring cheaper and available to more students or a further headache for educators and existing tutoring companies?
• Summer school is another tool for addressing learning loss. Brown University’s Annenberg Institute published a set of free resources to make summer learning more effective. Summer schools are often the beneficiaries of ESSER funding (and philanthropic support), but some worry about their sustainability after federal aid ends.

Separate analyses by RAND and Chalkbeat confirm that teacher turnover has increased markedly since last year. An analysis by Paul Bruno at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign shows that these shortages are concentrated among paraprofessionals, can vary substantially between schools, and likely contribute to educational inequities. A report from McKinsey researchers discusses strategies schools and districts might use to retain educators, including increasing compensation and decreasing ancillary work obligations.

Efforts are underway to address staffing shortages, including hiring student teachers as substitutes and expanding programs to recruit and train teachers of color. But the most notable national proposal for addressing the educator shortage, introduced by U.S. Reps. Frederica Wilson (D-Florida) and Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) and endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), is increasing teacher base pay to $60,000. States like Alabama, Pennsylvania, and Oregon are also exploring their own teacher pay bumps. An Education Week analysis found that no states currently have a starting salary of $60,000 for teachers, although a similar policy in Houston has yielded promising early results. Teacher compensation expert Michael Hansen cautions that a blanket minimum K-12 salary may not produce equitable results.

Further reading:

• A new RAND survey examines how leaders of 300 districts are handling current events, funding, school staffing, and more.
• A Vox article explores the shortage of after-school program staff and its impact on working parents.
• The CEO of the Friendship Charter School network reflects on how virtual teaching positions allow her schools to compete for teaching candidates with other industries that offer fully-remote positions.

According to NPR, many students are struggling with the return to five days a week of in-person schooling. While attendance in some areas (like Chicago) is on the rise, other areas (such as Minnesota and Ohio) continue to struggle with low enrollment and high absenteeism. Last year, overall K-12 enrollment was 2% lower than projected, according to a report from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. And while K-12 graduation rates were higher in some places than they were during the height of the pandemic, they continued to drop in others.

A national survey of teens from underserved populations found that less than half were considering attending a four-year college after high school. An article by the Associated Press posits that teens who graduated high school during the pandemic may see traditional college as less valuable than older cohorts of students. If these shifts hold, postsecondary institutions may struggle to fill freshman classes with high school graduates in coming years.

School funding expert Marguerite Roza writes about the high-stakes funding decisions states and districts will face in the final 20 months of ESSER stimulus funding. Groups like McKinsey, FutureEd, and some states (like Arizona) have attempted to track how much ESSER funding is being spent. Despite efforts at transparency, a Wall Street Journal article found evidence of millions of dollars of misspent funds. An analysis by the Associated Press found that poor districts were more likely to spend ESSER funds on facilities as opposed to learning recovery, potentially exacerbating academic achievement gaps caused by learning loss.

Further reading:

• States like Alabama are worried about finding enough personnel to spend down ESSER funding before the 2024 deadline.

We start this week’s recovery roundup by covering a few developments that do not aid pandemic recovery. An article in Fortune magazine describes how some schools have failed to accurately communicate their students’ academic progress, misleading parents into believing their children are meeting grade-level expectations when they are actually falling short. However, parents are misleading schools in turn. In a study published by JAMA Network Open, 10% to 25% of parents reported that they misrepresented their child’s Covid status or ignored Covid protocols because they did not want their child(ren) to miss school or fun events. Additionally, the state of Florida recommended that its schools stop participating in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey designed to monitor teens’ mental health--because ignoring problems usually makes them go away, right? In all seriousness, we hope spotlighting these developments sheds light on the potential harm they can cause. 

Moving on to more laudable recovery strategies: New York City Mayor Eric Adams released a citywide “mental health plan” to provide children with better access to appropriate mental health care. New York state lawmakers are also considering a bill that would allow school psychologists to practice outside schools in an effort to mitigate the state’s youth mental health crisis. But despite these positive steps toward addressing youth mental health and well-being, New York has not yet made available the $100 million that it earmarked for academic recovery programs last year.

Outside New York, Atlanta Public Schools is offering telehealth to all its students, following in the footsteps of districts such as Los Angeles Unified and others. Laura Smith of the ILO Group, whose surveys have been featured in this newsletter before, gives advice for addressing the youth mental health crisis. Social media giant TikTok is getting in on the mental health recovery efforts, announcing that its default settings will now limit teens’ usage to one hour per day (until the teen changes this setting). And in contrast to nearly all findings around youth mental health, a recent Education Week poll found that teens are more optimistic now than they were before the pandemic.

Further reading:

• Chilean researchers describe a new social and emotional wellbeing diagnosis tool that’s now part of a national academic recovery plan.
• Utah legislators voted to do away with the old A-F school grading system in favor of a dashboard that contains information related to academics and social and emotional learning. Texas is also updating its A-F school grading system, whereas Maryland released school ratings under its pre-pandemic system for the first time since 2019, with most schools retaining their pre-pandemic ratings.
• The U.S. Department of Education is launching resources to help educators better engage and partner with families to support student success.
• Some parents in Oregon who liked remote learning are upset that Portland Public Schools plans to close its virtual learning academy.
• A Chalkbeat article links children’s mental health struggles to the increase in difficult behaviors that teachers and school leaders have reported in recent years.
• The BBC reported on a study that claims the pandemic had a "minimal" impact on mental health, despite a glaring limitation: the study did not review effects on lower-income countries, young people, or other disadvantaged groups. Twitter users absolutely roasted the report. 

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