An optimistic people, perhaps especially when it comes to the benefits of education, Americans aren’t used to anything resembling the idea that a year in school could be one in which students experience “learning loss.”
We’re supposed to always be gaining, never losing, right?
But learning loss is the term of art educators are using to describe the experience of high school students who suffered through the experience of “remote learning” necessitated by the global coronavirus pandemic.
Not all students failed entirely to thrive as classes were taught through computer screens. For a few, the lack of distractions is actually more conducive to learning than being in a noisy classroom is.
Still, as administrators get ready to welcome back for the fall semester students who have not been in the traditional campus environment for a year and a half, many are worried that some or even most of them will have fallen behind.
Leaders at California colleges are “concerned that many freshmen have suffered some or even significant learning loss as a result of all the remote high school instruction during the pandemic,” Larry Gordon reports at EdSource.
“Colleges and faculty plan to provide extra tutoring, more academic counseling, some changes in courses and, if necessary, a slower teaching pace at first to help students rebuild their academic and social strengths.”
Those all sound like the right kinds of approaches. Particularly practical is a plan at Sacramento State to add a lot of one-credit courses taught by upper-division undergrads paid to help freshmen with large and difficult math, history, economics and biology survey courses.
Academics are only the half of it. COVID-19 threw all of us a curve, and the only sure thing about getting back to normal is that at first it’s going to be abnormal. UC campuses will require all students to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, for instance — when freedom of medical choice meets that new regulation, there will be issues.
These are unprecedented times. But young people are resilient. Jennifer Brown, UC Riverside’s dean of undergraduate education, says: “My gut tells me they may need a little bit of extra support, but they will be able to bounce back.”
