When planning for the school year during COVID-19, schools and districts should weigh public health factors alongside educational factors such as potential learning loss¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 2 claims (2 mixed) · 2 studies (1 quant-synthesis, 1 associational), q1–q3 · 0 of 2 report an effect size · 2 claims rest on one study

Description¶

This strategy captures the publication's framing of how districts should approach 2020-2021 school-year planning during pandemic building closures. The page states that "Schools and districts are considering public health and educational factors such as potential learning loss when planning for the 2020–2021 school year," noting that closures since spring 2020 have been "dramatically impacting learning for students." It directs planners to treat reduced-density reopening precautions and learning-recovery concerns as joint considerations rather than separate ones.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Districts must have information on both public health conditions and the educational consequences of building closures, such as potential learning loss, available when making reopening plans.

Constraints¶

• The page offers no data on the magnitude of learning loss; it presents this as planning context rather than a tested result.

Target Learners¶

• K-12 students in U.S. schools affected by COVID-19 building closures

Target Learning Goals¶

• Recovering learning lost during school building closures while maintaining safe in-person conditions

Claims¶

• The visualizations address how student growth changed since school buildings closed in March 2020 [~W]
• One year or more after the first lockdown, students had not recovered the learning deficits caused by Covid-19 school closures [~W]

Related Strategies¶

• Attend to a set of interrelated engagement-support factors when designing remote and hybrid instruction
• State education agencies can commission regional educational laboratory analytic support to develop COVID-19 mitigation guidance for school reopening
• Educational leaders should weigh the demographic shift in tested students and other contextual data when planning student growth and recovery support
• Multi-pronged policy strategy for COVID-19 learning recovery for BIPOC students

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Regional Educational Laboratory Mid-Atlantic. (2020). Reopening Schools Safely: New Evidence on Mitigating COVID-19 Spread. Regional Educational Laboratory Mid-Atlantic. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/midatlantic