The American Rescue Plan Can Rescue Education, If We Use It to Fund What Works

The American Rescue Plan was passed in the U.S. Congress this week. This $1.9 trillion bill provides funding for a lot of things I care about as a citizen, but as an educator, I’d like to focus on the portion of it allocated to healing Covid learning loss. This is $29 billion, or roughly double the usual amount spent annually on Title I. This is a major investment in the students whose educations were harmed the most by Covid school closures. These are mostly disadvantaged students and rural students who could not gain access to remote teaching, or who did not have assistance at home to take advantage of remote instruction. Data from all over the country is showing the educational damage these children have sustained.

Clearly, the new money in the ARP could make a substantial difference in the achievement and adjustment of all students returning to in-person schooling. But if educational research tells us anything at all, it tells us these two things:

Making a big difference in educational outcomes costs money.
However, lots of well-meaning uses of money do not make any perceptible difference in outcomes.

Of course, the only way to tell effective uses of new funds from ineffective uses is through rigorous research.

One of the unusual aspects of the ARP education funding is that the legislation is not very specific about how the money is to be used. This is due in part to the fact the ARP was passed using a reconciliation procedure that does not allow for much specificity. The U.S. Department of Education will be drafting guidelines for the money soon, but these guidelines are likely to be relatively flexible, because the legislation itself was not very specific.

This flexibility is likely to allow anything from very good uses of money to very poor uses. My guess is that state and district leaders, and individual principals, will have plenty of freedom to use plenty of money. How novel!

I hope states and districts will use this opportunity to clearly define what is most important to accomplish in their post-Covid planning and then insist on choosing programs, practices, and policies based on the best evidence available. This time, educators will have the opportunity to use research-proven programs not because Congress or the U.S. Department of Education tells them to, but because they care about the learning and emotional well-being of their students.

In the period following the passage of the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), state, district, and building leaders learned how to use services such as the What Works Clearinghouse and our www.evidenceforessa.org website to find out the strength of the evidence supporting various programs. I hope schools will continue to use these resources to select programs that have been proven effective. I’ve written many times about the importance of using proven tutoring programs, and this is indeed the most effective strategy by far for students who are far behind in reading or math. But there are many other approaches proven to be effective, especially for disadvantaged students. There is good evidence of effectiveness not only for classroom approaches to reading and math, but also programs for creative writing, science, social-emotional learning, early childhood education, and much more. The ARP funding allows schools to invest in proven programs and find out for themselves whether they work. ARP money will not be around forever, but wouldn’t it be a great use of the money to find out what works, so that when things return to normal, school and district leaders will know more than ever before what works and what doesn’t for their particular students and their particular schools?

In the first months after all schools open for in-person learning, schools are sure to be thinking in emergency mode, about investments in tutoring and other relatively expensive but highly effective strategies. But the damage Covid has done will have long-lasting impacts, and even if schools use proven tutoring methods to help the students at the greatest risk, it is also important to build for the long haul for all students, using proven programs of all kinds. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the terrible experience we have all been through leads to a more rational, evidence-driven approach to schooling, creating a lasting benefit not only for today’s children, but for future generations who will receive better educations than they would have before Covid?

This blog was developed with support from Arnold Ventures. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Arnold Ventures.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, just send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org.

Summer 2021 Re-Imagined: A Grand Opening to a Successful Year

If you follow my blogs, you’ll note that I have been writing recently about the ineffectiveness of summer school (here, here, and here). Along with colleagues, I wrote a review of research on summer school, which is summarized here. The reason for the ineffectiveness of summer school, I proposed, is that when summer school resembles regular school, it can be boring. Kids are sitting in school while their friends are playing outside. As a result, attendance in summer school programs intended to help struggling students can be very poor, and the motivation of those who do attend may also be poor.

However, there are two major exceptions to the otherwise dismal outcomes of studies of summer school. One is a Los Angeles study by Schacter & Jo (2005), and the other is a study by Zvoch & Stevens (2013), done in a small city in the Northwest.

Both of these studies focused on disadvantaged students in grades 1 or K-1. Both provided small-group tutoring interventions. Schacter & Jo (2005) gave students phonics instruction in groups of 15, followed by small-group tutoring. The Gates-MacGinitie reading effect size was +1.16. Zvoch & Stevens (2013) also provided group phonics instruction followed by tutoring to groups of 3 to 5. The effect size on DIBELS measures was +0.69.

The large effect sizes seen in these two studies contrast sharply with all the other studies of summer classroom programs, which had a mean effect size near zero. What this suggests is that the best instructional use of summer may be to provide one-to-one or small-group tutoring to struggling students.

In summer, 2021, the rationale for summertime tutoring is particularly strong. If current trends maintain, most teachers will have received Covid vaccines by summer, and increasing numbers of schools will open by the end of the current semester. To close schools that could be open for summer vacation seems a waste. Also, assuming the American Rescue Plan is passed (as expected), it will make a great deal of money available to serve students who have lost ground due to Covid school closures, so schools will be able to afford to pay for tutoring during the summer.

The problem with summer school is that it cannot be made mandatory, and many students will not want to attend. However, in summer 2021, providing tutoring during the summer for students who do choose to attend (and keep attending regularly) could be of great value, even if most students who need tutoring do not attend. The reason is that there are so many students who will need tutoring in September, 2021, that not all of them can be tutored right away. Providing tutoring in the summer gives some students a full dose of tutoring before school officially opens, so that schools will not be under pressure to tutor more students than they are able to serve in fall, 2021.

How Can Summer Tutoring Work?

Summertime allows schools to provide more hours of tutoring each day than would be possible during the school year. For example, teaching and tutoring were provided 2 hours a day for 7 weeks in the Schacter & Jo (2005) study, and 3½ hours per day for 5 weeks in the Zvoch & Stevens (2013) study. If tutoring were alternated with sports or music or other fun activities, one might imagine providing two or three tutoring sessions each day, for as many as 8 weeks during the summer.

These sessions might be offered during a half day, so teachers and teaching assistants might teach one morning and one afternoon session each day. In fact, tutors might provide three two-hour sessions, and reach even more students.

The tutoring methods should be ones proven effective in rigorous experiments. While any whole-class teaching should be done by teachers, teaching assistants can be trained to be excellent tutors. They will need extensive training and in-class coaching, but this is worthwhile, especially because most of these tutors will continue working with additional students during the school day starting in the fall.

Tutoring in summer 2021 will provide a pilot opportunity for schools and districts to hit the ground running in September. It will provide time and resources for providers of tutoring to greatly increase their scale of operations. And it may attract students who have been out of school for many months by offering small group, supportive tutoring with caring tutors, to help ease the transition back into school.

Summertime need not be a time for summertime blues. Instead, it can serve as a “grand opening” for a successful re-entry to school for millions of students.

References

Schacter, J., & Jo, B. (2005). Learning when school is not in session: A reading summer day-camp intervention to improve the achievement of exiting first-grade students who are economically disadvantaged. Journal of Research in Reading, 28, 158-169. Doi:10.111/j.1467-9817.2005.00260.x

Zvoch, K., & Stevens, J. J. (2013). Summer school effects in a randomized field trial. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 28(1), 24-32. Doi:10.1016/j.ecresq.2012,05.002

This blog was developed with support from Arnold Ventures. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Arnold Ventures.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, just send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org.

Avoiding the Errors of Supplemental Educational Services (SES)

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.” –Albert Einstein

Last Friday, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives passed a $1.9 trillion recovery bill. Within it is the Learning Recovery Act (LRA). Both the overall bill and the Learning Recovery Act are timely and wonderful. In particular, the LRA emphasizes the importance of using research-based tutoring to help students who are struggling in reading or math. The linking of evidence to large-scale federal education funding began with the 2015 ESSA definition of proven educational programs, and the LRA would greatly increase the importance of evidence-based practices.

But if you sensed a “however” coming, you were right. The “however” is that the LRA requires investments of substantial funding in “school extension programs,” such as “summer school, extended day, or extended school year programs” for vulnerable students.

This is where the Einstein quote comes in. “School extension programs” sound a lot like Supplemental Educational Services (SES), part of No Child Left Behind that offered parents and children an array of services that had to be provided after school or in summer school.

The problem is, SES was a disaster. A meta-analysis of 28 studies of SES by Chappell et al. (2011) found a mean effect size of +0.04 for math and +0.02 for reading. A sophisticated study by Deke et al. (2014) found an effect size of +0.05 for math and -0.03 for reading. These effect sizes are just different flavors of zero. Zero was the outcome whichever way you looked at the evidence, with one awful exception: The lowest achievers, and special education students, actually performed significantly less well in the Deke et al. (2014) study if they were in SES than if they qualified but did not sign up. The effect sizes for these students were around -0.20 for reading and math. Heinrich et al. (2009) also reported that the lowest achievers were least likely to sign up for SES, and least likely to attend regularly if they did. All three major studies found that outcomes did not vary much depending on which type of provider or program they received. Considering that the per-pupil cost was estimated at $1,725 in 2021 dollars, these outcomes are distressing, but more important is the fact that despite the federal government’s willingness to spend quite a lot on them, millions of struggling students in desperate need of effective assistance did not benefit.

Why did SES fail? I have two major explanations. Heinrich et al. (2009), who added questionnaires and observations to find out what was going on, discovered that at least in Milwaukee, attendance in SES after-school programs was appalling (as I reported in my previous blog). In the final year studied, only 16% of eligible students were attending (less than half signed up at all, and of those, average attendance in the remedial program was only 34%). Worse, the students in greatest need were least likely to attend.

From their data and other studies they cite, Heinrich et al. (2010) paint a picture of students doing boring, repetitive worksheets unrelated to what they were doing in their school-day classes. Students were incentivized to sign up for SES services with incentives, such as iPods, gift cards, or movie passes. Students often attended just enough to get their incentives, but then stopped coming. In 2006-2007, a new policy limited incentives to educationally-related items, such as books and museum trips, and attendance dropped further. Restricting SES services to after-school and summertime, when attendance is not mandated and far from universal, means that students who did attend were in school while their friends were out playing. This is hardly a way to engage students’ motivation to attend or to exert effort. Low-achieving students see after school and summertime as their free time, which they are unlikely to give up willingly.

Beyond the problems of attendance and motivation in extended time, there was another key problem with SES. This was that none of the hundreds of programs offered to students in SES were proven to be effective beforehand (or ever) in rigorous evaluations. And there was no mechanism to find out which of them were working well, until very late in the program’s history. As a result, neither schools nor parents had any particular basis for selecting programs according to their likely impact. Program providers probably did their best, but there was no pressure on them to make certain that students benefited from SES services.

As I noted in my previous blog, evaluations of SES do not provide the only evidence that after school and summer school programs rarely work for struggling students. Reviews of summer school programs by Xie et al. (in press) and of after school programs (Dynarski et al., 2002; Kidron & Lindsay, 2014) have found similar outcomes, always for the same reasons: poor attendance and poor motivation of students in school when they would otherwise have free time.

Designing an Effective System of Services for Struggling Students

There are two policies that are needed to provide a system of services capable of substantially improving student achievement. One is to provide services during the ordinary school day and year, not in after school or summer school. The second is to strongly emphasize the use of programs proven to be highly effective in rigorous research.

Educational services provided during the school day are far more likely to be effective than those provided after school or in the summer. During the day, everyone expects students to be in school, including the students themselves. There are attendance problems during the regular school day, of course, especially in secondary schools, but these problems are much smaller than those in non-school time, and perhaps if students are receiving effective, personalized services in school and therefore succeeding, they might attend more regularly. Further, services during the school day are far easier to integrate with other educational services. Principals, for example, are far more likely to observe tutoring or other services if they take place during the day, and to take ownership for ensuring their effectiveness. School day services also entail far fewer non-educational costs, as they do not require changing bus schedules, cleaning and securing schools more hours each day, and so on.

The problem with in-school services is that they can disrupt the basic schedule. However, this need not be a problem. Schools could designate service periods for each grade level spread over the school day, so that tutors or other service providers can be continuously busy all day. Students should not be taken out of reading or math classes, but there is a strong argument that a student who is far below grade level in reading or math needs a reading or math tutor using a proven tutoring model far more than other classes, at least for a semester (the usual length of a tutoring sequence).

If schools are deeply reluctant to interrupt any of the ordinary curriculum, then they might extend their day to offer art, music, or other subjects during the after-school session. These popular subjects might attract students without incentives, especially if students have a choice of which to attend. This could create space for tutoring or other services during the school day. A schedule like this is virtually universal in Germany, which provides all sports, art, music, theater, and other activities after school, so all in-school time is available for academic instruction.

Use of proven programs makes sense throughout the school day. Tutoring should be the main focus of the Learning Recovery Act, because in this time of emergency need to help students recover from Covid school closures, nothing less will do. But in the longer term, adoption of proven classroom programs in reading, math, science, writing, and other subjects should provide a means of helping students succeed in all parts of the curriculum (see www.evidenceforessa.org).

In summer, 2021, there may be a particularly strong rationale for summer school, assuming schools are otherwise able to open. The evidence is clear that doing ordinary instruction during the summer will not make much of a difference, but summer could be helpful if it is used as an opportunity to provide as many struggling students as possible in-person, one-to-one or one-to-small group tutoring in reading or math. In the summer, students might receive tutoring more than once a day, every day for as long as six weeks. This could make a particularly big difference for students who basically missed in-person kindergarten, first, or second grade, a crucial time for learning to read. Tutoring is especially effective in those grades in reading, because phonics is relatively easy for tutors to teach. Also, there is a large number of effective tutoring programs for grades K-2. Early reading failure is very important to prevent, and can be prevented with tutoring, so the summer months may get be just the right time to help these students get a leg up on reading.

The Learning Recovery Act can make life-changing differences for millions of children in serious difficulties. If the LRA changes its emphasis to the implementation of proven tutoring programs during ordinary school times, it is likely to accomplish its mission.

SES served a useful purpose in showing us what not to do. Let’s take advantage of these expensive lessons and avoid repeating the same errors. Einstein would be so proud if we heed his advice.

Correction

My recent blog, “Avoiding the Errors of Supplemental Educational Services,” started with a summary of the progress of the Learning Recovery Act. It was brought to my attention that my summary was not correct. In fact, the Learning Recovery Act has been introduced in Congress, but is not part of the current reconciliation proposal moving through Congress and has not become law. The Congressional action cited in my last blog was referring to a non-binding budget resolution, the recent passage of which facilitated the creation of the $1.9 trillion reconciliation bill that is currently moving through Congress. Finally, while there is expected to be some amount of funding within that current reconciliation bill to address the issues discussed within my blog, reconciliation rules will prevent the Learning Recovery Act from being included in the current legislation as introduced.

References

Chappell, S., Nunnery, J., Pribesh, S., & Hager, J. (2011). A meta-analysis of Supplemental Education Services (SES) provider effects on student achievement. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 16 (1), 1-23.

Deke, J., Gill, B. Dragoset, L., & Bogen, K. (2014). Effectiveness of supplemental educational services. Journal of Research in Educational Effectiveness, 7, 137-165.

Dynarski, M. et al. (2003). When schools stay open late: The national evaluation of the 21^st Century Community Learning Centers Programs (First year findings). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.

Heinrich, C. J., Meyer, R., H., & Whitten, G. W. (2010). Supplemental Education Services under No Child Left Behind: Who signs up and what do they gain? Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 32, 273-298.

Kidron, Y., & Lindsay, J. (2014). The effects of increased learning time on student academic and nonacademic outcomes: Findings from a meta‑analytic review (REL 2014-015). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory Appalachia.

Xie, C., Neitzel, A., Cheung, A., & Slavin, R. E. (2020). The effects of summer programs on K-12 students’ reading and mathematics achievement: A meta-analysis. Manuscript submitted for publication.

This blog was developed with support from Arnold Ventures. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Arnold Ventures.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, just send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org.

Highlight Tutoring Among Post-Covid Solutions

I recently saw a summary of the education section of the giant, $1.9 trillion proposed relief bill now before Congress. Like all educators, I was delighted to see the plan to provide $130 billion to help schools re-open safely, and to fund efforts to remedy the learning losses so many students have experienced due to school closures.

However, I was disappointed to see that the draft bill suggests that educators can use whatever approaches they like, and it specifically mentioned summer school and after school programs as examples.

Clearly, the drafters of this legislation have not been reading my blogs! On September 10th I wrote a blog reviewing research on summer school and after school programs as well as tutoring and other approaches. More recently, I’ve been doing further research on these recommendations for schools to help struggling students. I put my latest findings into two tables, one for reading and one for math. These appear below.

As you can see, not all supplemental interventions for struggling students are created equal. Proven tutoring models (ones that were successfully evaluated in rigorous experiments) are far more effective than other strategies. The additional successful strategy is our own Success for All whole-school reform approach (Cheung et al., in press), but Success for All incorporates tutoring as a major component.

However, it is important to note that not all tutoring programs are proven to be effective. Programs that do not provide tutors with structured materials and guidance with extensive professional development and in-class coaching, or use unpaid tutors whose attendance may be sporadic, have not produced the remarkable outcomes typical of other tutoring programs.

Tutoring

As Tables 1 and 2 show, proven tutoring programs produce substantial positive effects on reading and math achievement, and nothing else comes close (see Gersten et al., 2020; Neitzel et al., in press; Nickow et al. 2020; Pellegrini et al., 2021; Wanzek et al., 2016).

Tables 1 and 2 only include results from programs that use teaching assistants, AmeriCorps members (who receive stipends), and unpaid volunteer tutors. I did not include programs that use teachers as tutors, because in the current post-Covid crisis, there is a teacher shortage, so it is unlikely that many certified teachers will serve as tutors. Also, research in both reading and math finds little difference in student outcomes between teachers and teaching assistants or AmeriCorps members, so there is little necessity to hire certified teachers as tutors. Unpaid tutors have not been as effective as paid tutors.

Both one-to-one and one-to-small group tutoring by teaching assistants can be effective. One-to-one is somewhat more effective in reading, on average (Neitzel et al., in press), but in math there is no difference in outcomes between one-to-one and one-to-small group (Pellegrini et al., 2021).

Success for All

Success for All is a whole-school reform approach. A recent review of 17 rigorous studies of Success for All found an effect size of +0.51 for students in the lowest 25% of their grades (Cheung et al., in press). However, such students typically receive one-to-one or one-to-small group tutoring for some time period during grades 1 to 3. Success for All also provides all teachers professional development and materials focusing on phonics in grades K-2 and comprehension in grades 2-6, as well as cooperative learning in all grades, parent support, social-emotional learning instruction, and many other elements. So Success for All is not just a tutoring approach, but tutoring plays a central role for the lowest-achieving students.

Summer School

A recent review of research on summer school by Xie et al. (2020) found few positive effects on reading or math achievement. In reading, there were two major exceptions, but in both cases the students were in grades K to 1, and the instruction involved one-to-small group tutoring in phonics. In math, none of the summer school studies involving low-achieving students found positive effects.

After School

A review of research on after-school instruction in reading and math found near-zero impacts in both subjects (Kidron & Lindsay, 2014).

Extended Day

A remarkable study of extended day instruction was carried out by Figlio et al. (2018). Schools were randomly assigned to receive one hour of additional reading instruction for a year, or to serve as a control group. The outcomes were positive but quite modest (ES=+0.09) considering the considerable expense.

Technology

Studies of computer-assisted instruction and other digital approaches have found minimal impacts for struggling students (Neitzel et al., in press; Pellegrini et al., 2021).

Policy Consequences

The evidence is clear that any effort intended to improve the achievement of students struggling in reading or mathematics should make extensive use of proven tutoring programs. Students who have fallen far behind in reading or math need programs known to make a great deal of difference in a modest time period, so struggling students can move toward grade level, where they can profit from ordinary teaching. In our current crisis, it is essential that we follow the evidence to give struggling students the best possible chance of success.

References

Cheung, A., Xie, C., Zhang, T., Neitzel, A., & Slavin, R. E. (in press). Success for All: A quantitative synthesis of evaluations. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness.

Figlio, D., Holden, K., & Ozek, U. (2018). Do students benefit from longer school days? Regression discontinuity evidence from Florida’s additional hour of literacy instruction. Economics of Education Review, 67, 171-183.

Gersten, R., Haymond, K., Newman-Gonchar, R., Dimino, J., & Jayanthi, M. (2020). Meta-analysis of the impact of reading interventions for students in the primary grades. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 13(2), 401–427.

Neitzel, A., Lake, C., Pellegrini, M., & Slavin, R. (in press). A synthesis of quantitative research on programs for struggling readers in elementary schools. Reading Research Quarterly.

Pellegrini, M., Neitzel, A., Lake, C., & Slavin, R. (2021). Effective programs in elementary mathematics: A best-evidence synthesis. AERA Open, 7 (1), 1-29.

Wanzek, J., Vaughn, S., Scammacca, N., Gatlin, B., Walker, M. A., & Capin, P. (2016). Meta-analyses of the effects of tier 2 type reading interventions in grades K-3. Educational Psychology Review, 28(3), 551–576. doi:10.1007/s10648-015-9321-7

This blog was developed with support from Arnold Ventures. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Arnold Ventures.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, just send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org.

Building Back Better

Yesterday, President Joe Biden took his oath of office. He is taking office at one of the lowest points in all of American history. Every American, whatever their political beliefs, should be wishing him well, because his success is essential for the recovery of our nation.

In education, most schools remain closed or partially open, and students are struggling with remote learning. My oldest granddaughter is in kindergarten. Every school day, she receives instruction from a teacher she has never met. She has never seen the inside of “her school.” She is lucky, of course, because she has educators as grandparents (us), but it is easy to imagine the millions of kindergartners who do not even have access to computers, or do not have help in learning to read and learning mathematics. These children will enter first grade with very little of the background they need, in language and school skills as well as in content.

Of course, the problem is not just kindergarten. All students have missed a lot of school, and they will vary widely in their experiences during that time. Think of second graders who essentially missed first grade. Students who missed the year when they are taught biology. Students who missed the fundamentals of creative writing. Students who should be in Algebra 2, except that they missed Algebra 1.

Hopefully, providing vaccines as quickly as possible to school staffs will enable most schools to open this spring. But we have a long, long way to go to get back to normal, especially with disadvantaged students. We cannot just ask students on their first day back to open their math books to the page they were on in March, 2020, when school closed.

Students need to be assessed when they return, and if they are far behind in reading or math, given daily tutoring, one-to-one or one-to-small group. If you follow this blog, you’ve heard me carry on at length about this.

Tutoring services, using tutoring programs proven to be effective, will be of enormous help to students who are far behind grade level (here, here, here). But the recovery from Covid-19 school closures should not be limited to repairing the losses. Instead, I hope the Covid-19 crisis can be an opportunity to reconsider how to rebuild our school system to enhance the school success of all students.

If we are honest with ourselves, we know that schooling in America was ailing long before Covid-19. It wasn’t doing so badly for middle class children, but it was failing disadvantaged students. These very same students have suffered disproportionately from Covid-19. So in the process of bringing these children back into school, let’s not stop with getting back to normal. Let’s figure out how to create schools that use the knowledge we have gained over the past 20 years, and knowledge we can develop in the coming years, to transform learning for our most vulnerable children.

Building Back Better

Obviously, the first thing we have to do this spring is reopen schools and make them as healthy, happy, welcoming, and upbeat as possible. We need to make sure that schools are fully staffed and fully equipped. We do need to “build back” before we can “build back better.” But we cannot stop there. Below, I discuss several things that would greatly transform education for disadvantaged students.

1. Tutoring

Yes, tutoring is the first thing we have to do to build better. Every child who is significantly below grade level needs daily one-to-small group or one-to-one tutoring, until they reach a pre-established level of performance, depending on grade level, in reading and math.

However, I am not talking about just any tutoring. Not all tutoring works. But there are many programs that have been proven to work, many times. These are the tutoring programs we need to start with as soon as possible, with adequate training resources to ensure student success.

Implementing proven tutoring programs on a massive scale is an excellent “build back” strategy, the most effective and cost-effective strategy we have. However, tutoring should also be the basis for a key “build better” strategy

2. Establishing success as a birthright and ensuring it using proven programs of all kinds.

We need to establish adequate reading and mathematics achievement as the birthright of every child. We can debate about what that level might be, but we must hold ourselves accountable for the success of every child. And we need to accomplish this not just by using accountability assessments and hoping for the best, but by providing proven programs to all students who need them for as long as they need them.

As I’ve pointed out in many blogs (here, here, here), we now have many programs proven effective in rigorous experiments and known to improve student achievement (see www.evidenceforessa.org). Every child who is performing below level, and every school serving many children below grade level, should have resources and knowledge to adopt proven programs. Teachers and tutors need to be guaranteed sufficient professional development and in-class coaching to enable them to successfully implement proven programs. Years ago, we did not have sufficient proven programs, so policy makers kept coming up with evidence-free policies, which have just not worked as intended. But now, we have many programs ready for widespread dissemination. To build better, we have to use these tools, not return to near universal use of instructional strategies, materials, and technology that have never been successfully evaluated. Instead, we need to use what works, and to facilitate adoption and effective implementation of proven programs.

3. Invest in development and evaluation of promising programs.

How is it that in a remarkably short time, scientists were able to develop vaccines for Covid-19, vaccines that promise to save millions of lives? Simple. We invested billions in research, development, and evaluations of alternative vaccines. Effective vaccines are very difficult to make, and the great majority failed. But at this writing, two U.S. vaccines have succeeded, and this is a mighty good start. Now, government is investing massively in rigorous dissemination of these vaccines.

Total spending on all of education research dedicated to creating and evaluating educational innovations is a tiny fraction of what has been spent and will be spent on vaccines. But can you imagine that it is impossible to improve reading, math, science, and other outcomes, with clear goals and serious resources? Of course it could be done. A key element of “building better” could be to substantially scale up use of proven programs we have now, and to invest in new development and evaluation to make today’s best obsolete, replaced by better and better approaches. The research and evaluation of tutoring proves this could happen, and perhaps a successful rollout of tutoring will demonstrate what proven programs can do in education.

4. Commit to Success

Education goes from fad to fad, mandate to mandate, without making much progress. In order to “build better,” we all need to commit to finding what works, disseminating it broadly, and then finding even better solutions, until all children are succeeding. This must be a long-term commitment, but if we are investing adequately and see that we are improving outcomes each year, then it is clear we can do it.

With a change of administrations, we are going to hear a lot about hope. Hope is a good start, but it is not a plan. Let’s plan to build back better, and then for the first time in the history of education, make sure our solutions work, for all of our children.

This blog was developed with support from Arnold Ventures. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Arnold Ventures.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, just send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org.

An Open Letter To President-Elect Biden: A Tutoring Marshall Plan To Heal Our Students

Dear President-Elect Biden:

Congratulations on your victory in the recent election. Your task is daunting; so much needs to be set right. I am writing to you about what I believe needs to be done in education to heal the damage done to so many children who missed school due to Covid-19 closures.

I am aware that there are many basic things that must be done to improve schools, which have to continue to make their facilities safe for students and cope with the physical and emotional trauma that so many have experienced. Schools will be opening into a recession, so just providing ordinary services will be a challenge. Funding to enable schools to fulfill their core functions is essential, but it is not sufficient.

Returning schools to the way they were when they closed last spring will not heal the damage students have sustained to their educational progress. This damage will be greatest to disadvantaged students in high-poverty schools, most of whom were unable to take advantage of the remote learning most schools provided. Some of these students were struggling even before schools closed, but when they re-open, millions of students will be far behind.

Our research center at Johns Hopkins University studies the evidence on programs of all kinds for students who are at risk, especially in reading (Neitzel et al., 2020) and mathematics (Pellegrini et al., 2020). What we and many other researchers have found is that the most effective strategy for struggling students, especially in elementary schools, is one-to-one or one-to-small group tutoring. Structured tutoring programs can make a large difference in a short time, exactly what is needed to help students quickly catch up with grade level expectations.

A Tutoring Marshall Plan

My colleagues and I have proposed a massive effort designed to provide proven tutoring services to the millions of students who desperately need it. Our proposal, based on a similar idea by Senator Coons (D-Del), would ultimately provide funding to enable as many as 300,000 tutors to be recruited, trained in proven tutoring models, and coached to ensure their effectiveness. These tutors would be required to have a college degree, but not necessarily a teaching certificate. Research has found that such tutors, using proven tutoring models with excellent professional development, can improve the achievement of students struggling in reading or mathematics as much as can teachers serving as tutors.

The plan we are proposing is a bit like the Marshall Plan after World War II, which provided substantial funding to Western European nations devastated by the war. The idea was to put these countries on their feet quickly and effectively so that within a brief period of years, they could support themselves. In a similar fashion, a Tutoring Marshall Plan would provide intensive funding to enable Title I schools nationwide to substantially advance the achievement of their students who suffered mightily from Covid-19 school closures and related trauma. Effective tutoring is likely to enable these children to advance to the point where they can profit from ordinary grade-level instruction. We fear that without this assistance, millions of children will never catch up, and will show the negative effects of the school closures throughout their time in school and beyond.

The Tutoring Marshall Plan will also provide employment to 300,000 college graduates, who will otherwise have difficulty entering the job market in a time of recession. These people are eager to contribute to society and to establish professional careers, but will need a first step on that ladder. Ideally, the best of the tutors will experience the joys of teaching, and might be offered accelerated certification, opening a new source of teacher candidates who will have had an opportunity to build and demonstrate their skills in school settings. Like the CCC and WPA programs in the Great Depression, these tutors will not only be helped to survive the financial crisis, but will perform essential services to the nation while building skills and confidence.

The Tutoring Marshall Plan needs to start as soon as possible. The need is obvious, both to provide essential jobs to college graduates and to provide proven assistance to struggling students.

Our proposal, in brief, is to ask the U.S. Congress to fund the following activities:

Spring, 2021

Fund existing tutoring programs to build capacity to scale up their programs to serve thousands of struggling students. This would include funds for installing proven tutoring programs in about 2000 schools nationwide.
Fund rigorous evaluations of programs that show promise, but have not been evaluated in rigorous, randomized experiments.
Fund the development of new programs, especially in areas in which there are few proven models, such as programs for struggling students in secondary schools.

Fall, 2021 to Spring, 2022

Provide restricted funds to Title I schools throughout the United States to enable them to hire up to 150,000 tutors to implement proven programs, across all grade levels, 1-9, and in reading and mathematics. This many tutors, mostly using small-group methods, should be able to provide tutoring services to about 6 million students each year. Schools should be asked to agree to select from among proven, effective programs. Schools would implement their chosen programs using tutors who have college degrees and experience with tutoring, teaching, or mentoring children (such as AmeriCorps graduates who were tutors, camp counselors, or Sunday school teachers).
As new programs are completed and piloted, third-party evaluators should be funded to evaluate them in randomized experiments, adding to capacity to serve students in grades 1-9. Those programs that produce positive outcomes would then be added to the list of programs available for tutor funding, and their organizations would need to be funded to facilitate preparation for scale-up.
Teacher training institutions and school districts should be funded to work together to design accelerated certification programs for outstanding tutors.

Fall, 2022-Spring, 2023

Title I schools should be funded to enable them to hire a total of 300,000 tutors. Again, schools will select among proven tutoring programs, which will train, coach, and evaluate tutors across the U.S. We expect these tutors to be able to work with about 12 million struggling students each year.
Development, evaluation, and scale-up of proven programs should continue to enrich the number and quality of proven programs adapted to the needs of all kinds of Title I schools.

The Tutoring Marshall Plan would provide direct benefits to millions of struggling students harmed by Covid-19 school closures, in all parts of the U.S. It would provide meaningful work with a future to college graduates who might otherwise be unemployed. At the same time, it could establish a model of dramatic educational improvement based on rigorous research, contributing to knowledge and use of effective practice. If all goes well, the Tutoring Marshall Plan could demonstrate the power of scaling up proven programs and using research and development to improve the lives of children.

References

Neitzel, A., Lake, C., Pellegrini, M., & Slavin, R. (2020). A synthesis of quantitative research on programs for struggling readers in elementary schools. Available at www.bestevidence.org. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Pellegrini, M., Inns, A., Lake, C., & Slavin, R. (2020). Effective programs in elementary mathematics: A best-evidence synthesis. Available at www.bestevidence.com. Manuscript submitted for publication.

This blog was developed with support from Arnold Ventures. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Arnold Ventures.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, just send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org.

Handling Outbreaks after COVID-19 Re-openings: The Case of Germany

By guest blogger Nathan Storey*

As schools across the U.S. are beginning to reopen in hybrid or full formats, unanticipated outbreaks of COVID are bound to occur. To help schools prepare, we have been writing about strategies schools and districts in other countries have used to combat outbreaks.

In this week’s case study, I examine how Germany has responded to outbreaks and managed school reopening nationwide.

Germany

Over one month since reopening after the summer holiday, German schools are largely still open. Critics and health experts worried in the early weeks as cases in the country appeared to increase (Morris & Weber-Steinhaus, 2020), but schools have been able to continue to operate. Now students sit in classes without masks, and children are allowed to move and interact freely on the playground.

Immediately following the reopening, 31 outbreak clusters (150 cases) were identified in the first week of schooling, and 41 schools in Berlin (out of 825 schools in the region) experienced COVID-19 cases during the first two weeks of schooling, requiring quarantines, testing, and temporary closures. Similar issues occurred across the country as schools reopened in other states. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the first state to reopen, saw 800-plus students from Goethe Gymnasium in Ludwigslust sent home for quarantine after a faculty member tested positive. One hundred primary school students in Rostock district were quarantined for two weeks when a fellow student tested positive. Yet now one month later, German schools remain open. How is this possible?

Germany has focused its outbreak responses on individual student and class-level quarantines instead of shutting down entire schools. Due to active and widespread testing nationwide in the early stages of the outbreak, the country was able to get control of community-level positivity rates, paving the way for schools to reopen both in the spring, and again after summer break. Rates rose in August, but tracking enabled authorities to trace the cases to people returning from summer vacation, not from schools. At schools, outbreaks have generally been limited to one teacher or one student, who have contracted the virus from family or community members, not from within the school.

When these outbreaks occur, schools close for a day awaiting test results, but reopen quickly once affected individuals are tested negative and can return to class. At Sophie-Charlotte High School in Berlin, three days after reopening, the school received word that two students tested positive from the girls’ parents. The school in turn informed the local health authority, leading to 191 students and teachers asked to quarantine at home. Everyone was tested and two days later they received their test results. Before the week was up, school was back in session. By one estimate, due to the efficient testing and individual or class quarantines, fewer than 600 Berliner students have had to stay home for a day (out of more than 366,000 students) (Bennhold, 2020).

So far, there has been one more serious outbreak at Heinrich Hertz School in Hamburg, where a cluster of 26 students and three teachers have all received positive diagnoses, potentially infected by one of the teachers. The school moved to quarantine grades six and eight, and mask wearing rules were more strictly followed. The school and local health authorities are continuing to study the potential transmission patterns to locate the origin of the cluster.

Testing in Germany is effective because it is extensive, but targeted to those with direct contact with infections. At Heinz-Berggruen school in Berlin, a sixth grader was found to be infected after being tested even though she had no symptoms. Someone in her family had tested positive. Tracing the family member’s contacts, tests determined the source of the infection stemmed from international travel, and Heinz-Berggruen remained open, with just the infected student quarantined for two weeks. At Goethe Gymnasium in Ludwigslust, mentioned earlier, the infected teacher was sent home, and all 55 teachers were subsequently tested. The school was able to reopen less than a week later.

Some challenges have arisen. As in the US, German states are responsible for their own COVID-19 prevention measures and must make plans for the case of outbreaks. One city councilor in the Neukölln district of Berlin revealed there was confusion among parents and schools about children’s symptoms and response plans. As a result, children whose only symptoms are runny noses, for instance, have been sent home, and worries are increasing as to how effectively schools and districts will differentiate COVID-19 from flu in the winter.

The German case provides some optimism that schools can manage outbreaks and reopen successfully through careful planning and organization. Testing, contact tracing, and communication are vital, as is lowering of community positivity rates. Cases may be rising in Germany again (Loxton, 2020), but with these strategies and new national COVID management rules in place, the country is in an excellent position to address the challenge.

*Nathan Storey is a graduate student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education

References

Barton, T., & Parekh, A. (2020, August 11). Reopening schools: Lessons from abroad. https://doi.org/10.26099/yr9j-3620

(2020, June 12). As Europe reopens schools, relief combines with risk. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/10/world/europe/reopen-schools-germany.html

Bennhold, K. (2020, August 26). Germany faces a ‘roller coaster’ as schools reopen amid Coronavirus—The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/world/europe/germany-schools-virus-reopening.html?smid=em-share

Holcombe, M. (2020, October 5). New York City to close schools in some areas as Northeast sees rise in new cases. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/05/health/us-coronavirus-monday/index.html

Loxton, R. (2020, October 15). What you need to know about Germany’s new coronavirus measures for autumn. The Local. https://www.thelocal.de/20201015/what-you-need-to-know-about-germanys-new-coronavirus-measures-for-autumn-and-winter

Medical Xpress. (2020, August 7). Germany closes two schools in new virus blow. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-germany-schools-virus.html

Morris, L., & Weber-Steinhaus, F. (2020, September 11). Schools have seen no coronavirus outbreaks since reopening a month ago in Germany—The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/covid-schools-germany/2020/09/10/309648a4-eedf-11ea-bd08-1b10132b458f_story.html

Noryskiewicz, A. (2020, August 25). Coronavirus data 2 weeks into Germany’s school year “reassures” expert. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-school-germany-no-outbreaks/

The Associated Press (2020, August 27). Europe is going back to school despite recent virus surge—Education Week. AP. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/08/27/europe-is-going-back-to-school_ap.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news2&M=59665135&U=&UUID=4397669ca555af41d7b271f2dafac508

This blog was developed with support from Arnold Ventures. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Arnold Ventures.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, just send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org.

Learning from International Schools Part II: Outbreaks after COVID-19 Re-openings: The Case of Israel

By guest blogger Nathan Storey*

The summer is over and fall semester is underway across the United States. Schools are reopening and students are back in the classroom, either virtually or in the flesh. Up to now, the focus of discussion has been about whether and how to open schools: in person, using remote instruction, or some mix of the two. But as schools actually open, those with any element of in-person teaching are starting to worry about how they will handle any outbreaks, should they occur. In fact, many countries that opened their schools before the U.S. have actually experienced outbreaks, and this blog focuses on learning from the tragic experience of Israel.

In in-person schooling, outbreaks are all but inevitable. “We have to be realistic…if we are reopening schools, there will be some Covid,” says Dr. Benjamin Linas, associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Boston University (Nierenberg & Pasick, 2020). Even though U.S. schools have already reopened, it is not too late to put outbreak plans into place in order to stem any future outbreaks and allow schools to remain in session.

Israel

On Thursday, September 17, Israel’s school system was shut down due to rising positivity rates; 5,523 new cases were recorded in one day prior to the decision, in a country about one fortieth the size of the U.S. The closures are due to last until October 11, though special education and youth-at-risk programs are continuing. The spike in COVID cases reported by health officials centered around children 10 years of age and up. “The government made the wrong decision, against professional recommendations,” COVID commissioner and Professor Ronni Gamzu wrote in a letter to Health Minister Yuli Edelstein and Education Minister Yoav Gallant.

Israel has been a cautionary tale since reopening schools in May. By July, 977 students and teachers were diagnosed with COVID, 22,520 had been quarantined, and 393 schools and kindergartens had been closed by the Education Ministry (Kershner & Belluck, 2020; Tarnopolsky, 2020). At the beginning of September, 30 “red” cities and neighborhoods were placed under lockdown due to spikes. Almost 4,000 students and over 1,600 teachers are currently in quarantine, while more than 900 teachers and students have been diagnosed with the virus (Savir, 2020).

Schools initially reopened following a phased approach and using social distancing and mask protocols. Students with diagnosed family members were not allowed back, and older staff members and those at risk were told not to return to the classroom. It seemed as if they were doing everything right. But then, a heat wave wiped all the progress away.

Lifting the face mask requirement for four days and allowing schools to shut their windows (so they could air condition) offered new opportunities for the virus to run rampant. An outbreak at Gymnasia Rehavia, a high school in Jerusalem, turned into the largest single-school outbreak seen so far, soon reaching to students’ homes and communities. Outbreaks also appeared outside of the Jerusalem area, including in an elementary school in Jaffa. Reflecting on the nationwide spread of the virus, researchers have estimated that as much as 47% of the total new infections in the whole of Israel could be traced to Israeli schools (Tarnopolsky, 2020), introduced to schools by adult teachers and employees, and spread by students, particularly middle-school aged children.

This crisis serves to illustrate just how important it is for education leaders, teachers, and students to remain vigilant in prevention efforts. The Israeli schools largely had the right ideas to ensure prevention. Some challenges existed, particularly related to fitting students into classrooms while maintaining six feet separation given large class sizes (in some cases, classrooms of 500 square feet have to hold as many as 38 students). But by relaxing their distancing regulations, the schools opened students, staff, and communities to a major outbreak.

Schools responded with quarantining individual students, classmates of infected students, teachers, and staff; and when a second unconnected case was detected, schools would close for two weeks. But Israel did not place a priority on contact tracing and testing. Students and staff were tested following outbreaks, but they experienced long wait times to take the test, increasing the opportunities for spread. In the case of one school outbreak, Professor Eli Waxman of Weizmann Institute of Science reported that school officials could not identify which buses students took to reach school (Kershner & Belluck, 2020). Having this type of information is vital for tracing who infected students may have come into contact with, especially for younger students who may not be able to list all those with whom they’ve been in close contact.

Before the fall semester began, it looked as if Israel had learned from their previous mistakes. The Education Ministry disseminated new regulations adapted to the local level based on infection rates, and once more planned a phased reopening approach starting with K-4^th grades, followed by middle- and high-school students, who were set to follow a hybrid remote and in-person instruction approach. Schools planned to use plastic barriers to separate students in the classroom. Education leaders were to develop a guidebook to support the transition from in-person to distance learning and procedures to maintain distancing during celebrations or graduation ceremonies.

These precautions and adaptive plans suggested that Israel had learned from the mistakes made in the summer. Upon reopening, a new lesson was learned. Schools cannot reopen in a sustainable and long-term manner if community positivity rates are not under control.

*Nathan Storey is a graduate student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education

References

Couzin-Frankel, J., Vogel, G., & Weil, M. (2020, July 7). School openings across globe suggest ways to keep coronavirus at bay, despite outbreaks. Science | AAAS. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/school-openings-across-globe-suggest-ways-keep-coronavirus-bay-despite-outbreaks

Jaffe-Hoffman, M. (2020, September 16). 5,500 new coronavirus cases, as gov’t rules to close schools Thursday. The Jerusalem Post. https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/coronavirus-4973-new-cases-in-the-last-day-642338

Kauffman, J. (2020, July 29). Israel’s hurried school reopenings serve as a cautionary tale. The World from PRX. https://www.pri.org/stories/2020-07-29/israels-hurried-school-reopenings-serve-cautionary-tale

Kershner, I., & Belluck, P. (2020, August 4). When Covid subsided, Israel reopened its schools. It didn’t go well. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/world/middleeast/coronavirus-israel-schools-reopen.html

Nierenberg, A., & Pasick, A. (2020, September 16). For school outbreaks, it’s when, not if—The New York Times. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/us/for-school-outbreaks-its-when-not-if.html

Savir, A. (2020, September 1). 2.4 million Israeli students go back to school in shadow of COVID-19. J-Wire. https://www.jwire.com.au/2-4-million-israeli-students-go-back-to-school-in-shadow-of-covid-19/

Schwartz, F., & Lieber, D. (2020, July 14). Israelis fear schools reopened too soon as Covid-19 cases climb. Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/israelis-fear-schools-reopened-too-soon-as-covid-19-cases-climb-11594760001

Tarnopolsky, N. (2020, July 14). Israeli data show school openings were a disaster that wiped out lockdown gains. The Daily Beast. https://www.thedailybeast.com/israeli-data-show-school-openings-were-a-disaster-that-wiped-out-lockdown-gains

Photo credit: Talmoryair / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

This blog was developed with support from Arnold Ventures. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Arnold Ventures.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, just send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org.

Learning from International Schools: Outbreaks after COVID-19 Re-openings: The Case of the United Kingdom

By guest blogger Nathan Storey, Johns Hopkins University*

For much of the summer, U.S. education leaders and media have questioned how to safely reopen schools to students and teachers. Districts have struggled to put together concrete plans for how to structure classes, how much of the instruction would be in person, how to maintain social distancing in the classroom, and how to minimize health risks.

Most school districts have focused on preventing outbreaks through masks and social distancing, among other measures. However, this has left a gap—what happens to these well-thought-out plans if and when there’s an outbreak? While many school districts (including 12 of the 15 largest in the United States) have opted to start schooling remotely, many others plan to or have already restarted in-person schooling, often without detailed prevention and response plans in place.

For those districts committed to in-person schooling, outbreaks in at least some schools are all but inevitable. Community positivity rates within the United States remain high, with some states experiencing positivity rates of up to 5.4% (CDC, 2020), compared to 2.3% in Scotland or 0.8% across the entire United Kingdom (JHU, 2020). The image of students without masks packed into the hallways of a Georgia school have already spread nationwide. It is clearly important to put these plans into place as soon as possible in order to stem any outbreaks and allow schools to remain in session.

In a series of case studies, I will examine the experiences of how other countries with similar education systems dealt with outbreaks in their schools and share lessons learned for the United States.

United Kingdom

Schools in England and Wales finally reopened last week for the fall semester, but Scottish schools reopened the week of August 10. Outbreaks in Scotland have been minimal, but a cluster of school outbreaks cropped up in the Glasgow region, most notably at Bannerman High School. Affected schools soon closed for one week following the positive tests, but students who tested positive remained at home in self-isolation for 14 days.

What makes this outbreak notable is that through testing of students and community members, researchers were able to trace the outbreak to a cluster of infections amongst senior managers at McVities biscuit factory, also in Glasgow. Having successfully traced the infections to this source, education leaders and researchers were able to determine that cases were not being transmitted within schools, and put into effect appropriate isolation procedures for potentially infected students and faculty.

Testing and contact tracing were conducted first during the spring and summer months when schools first reopened in the UK, following the national shutdown in March. Researchers (Ismail et al., 2020) were able to determine sources of outbreaks and prevalence amongst students and faculty, finding that transmission was less common within schools, providing crucial information to improve COVID understanding and informing quarantine and school lockdown protocols in the country.

Scotland has put into place a strong contact tracing protocol, coupled with self-isolation, social distancing, and more intensive hygiene protocols. Scientists from England have urged weekly testing of teachers, as well as “test and trace” protocols, but the schools minister, Nick Gibb, instead committed to testing of symptomatic individuals only. Researcher Michael Fischer recently launched the COVID-19 Volunteer Testing Network, hoping to create a network of laboratories across the UK using basic equipment common in most labs (specifically, a polymerase chain reaction or PCR machine) to provide rapid testing. Eventually, as many as 1,000 labs could each do 800 tests a day, providing rapid response to COVID-19 tests and enabling more effective contact tracing and allowing schools to isolate students and staff members without requiring entire schools to be shut down.

Another means of accelerating testing and contact tracing is through group or pooled testing. One scientist in England pointed to this form of testing—in which multiple individuals’ samples are pooled together and tested simultaneously, with subsequent individual tests in the event of a positive test result—as a means of providing quick testing even if testing materials are limited. This could be particularly useful for schools implementing clustered classrooms or educational pods, keeping students together throughout the day and limiting contact with other students and staff.

Through careful and thorough testing and contact tracing, as exemplified by the United Kingdom’s efforts, coupled with careful social distancing and preventative measures, United States school districts in areas with low positivity rates, comparable to those in the United Kingdom, could more systematically address outbreaks, avoiding entire school shutdowns, which can be disruptive to education for students. Preventative measures alone are not likely to be enough to get students and staff through what promises to be a difficult school year. These outbreak responsive systems are likely to be necessary as well.

References

Brazell, E. (2020, April 2). Scientist donates £1,000,000 to massively increase UK coronavirus testing. Metro. https://metro.co.uk/2020/04/02/scientist-donates-1000000-massively-increase-uk-coronavirus-testing-12499729/

CDC. (2020, September 4). COVIDView, Key Updates for Week 33. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html

Davis, N. (2020, August 10). Scientists urge routine Covid testing when English schools reopen. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/10/scientists-urge-routine-covid-testing-when-english-schools-reopen

Duffy, E. (2020, August 19). Scots school closes with immediate effect after multiple confirmed cases of Covid-19. The Herald. https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18662461.kingspark-school-dundee-school-closes-multiple-cases-covid-19-confirmed/

Government of United Kingdom. (2020, September 8). Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK: UK Summary. https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

Ismail, S. A., Saliba, V., Bernal, J. L., Ramsay, M. E., & Ladhani, S. N. (2020). SARS-CoV-2 infection and transmission in educational settings: Cross-sectional analysis of clusters and outbreaks in England (pp. 1–28). Public Health England. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.21.20178574

Johns Hopkins University. (2020, September 8). Daily Testing Trends in the US – Johns Hopkins. Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/individual-states

Macpherson, R. (2020, August 16). Coronavirus Scotland: Another pupil at Bannerman High School in Glasgow tests positive as cluster hits 12 cases – The Scottish Sun. https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/5937611/coronavirus-scotland-bannerman-high-school-covid19/

Palmer, M. (2020, April 1). Call for small UK labs to embrace Dunkirk spirit and produce Covid-19 tests. Sifted. https://sifted.eu/articles/uk-labs-coronavirus-testing/

*Nathan Storey is a graduate student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education

This blog was developed with support from Arnold Ventures. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Arnold Ventures.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, just send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org.

The Case for Optimism

In the July 16 New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote an article with a provocative title: “We Interrupt This Gloom to Offer…Hope.”

Kristof’s basic point is that things have gotten so awful in the U.S. that, in response, with any luck, we could soon be able to make progress on many issues that we could never make in normal times. He gives the example of the Great Depression, which made possible Social Security, rural electrification, and much more. And the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which led to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Civil Rights Act.

Could the crises we are going through right now have even more profound and long-lasting consequences? The Covid-19 pandemic is exposing the lack of preparedness and the profound inequities in our health systems that everyone knew about, but that our political systems could not fix. The Black Lives Matter movement is not new, but George Floyd’s killing and many other outrages caught on video are fueling substantial changes in attitudes among people of all races, making genuine progress possible. The shockingly unequal impacts of both Covid itself and its economic impacts are tearing away complacency about the different lives that are possible for rich and poor. The attacks by federal troops on peaceful demonstrators in Washington and Portland are likely to drive Americans to get back to the core principles in our Constitution, ones we too often take for granted. When this is all over, how can we just return to the way things were?

What is happening in education is appalling. Our inept response to the Covid pandemic makes it literally murder to open schools in many parts of the country. Some districts are already announcing that they will not open until January. With schools closed, or only partially open, students will be expected to learn remote, online lessons, which author Doug Lemov aptly describes as “like teaching through a keyhole.”

The statistics say that a tenth or a quarter or a half of students, depending on where they are, are not logging into online learning even once. For disadvantaged students and students in rural areas, this is due in part to a lack of access to equipment or broadband, and school districts are collectively spending billions to increase access to computers. But talk to just about any teacher or parent or student, including the most conscientious students with the best technology and the most supportive parents. They are barely going through the motions. The utter failure of online education in this crisis is a crisis in itself.

The ultimate result of the school closures and the apparent implosion of online teaching is that when schools do open, students will have fallen far behind. Gaps between middle class and disadvantaged students, awful in the best of times, will grow even larger.

So how can I possibly be optimistic?

There are several things that I believe are highly likely to occur in the coming months in our country. First, once students are back in school, we will find out how far behind they have fallen, and we will have to declare an educational emergency, with adequate funding to match the seriousness of the problems. Then the following will have to happen.

Using federal money, states and districts will contract with local agencies to hire an army of tutors to work individually or in small groups with struggling students, especially in elementary reading and mathematics, where there are many proven programs ready to go. Frankly, this is no longer optional. There is nothing nearly as effective as one-to-one or one-to-small group tutoring. Nothing else can be put in place as quickly with as high a likelihood of working. As I’ve reported in previous blogs, England and the Netherlands have already announced national tutoring programs to combat the achievement gaps being caused by school closures. My own state, Maryland, has recently announced a $100 million program to provide tutoring statewide. Millions of recent college graduates will be without jobs in the recession that is certain to come. The best of them will be ideal candidates to serve as tutors.
America is paying a heavy price for ignoring its scientists, and science itself. Although there has been rapid growth in the evidence base and in the availability of proven programs, educational research and proven programs are still paid little attention in school policies and practices. In the education crisis we face, perhaps this will change. Might it be possible that schools could receive incentive funding to enable them to adopt proven programs known to make substantial differences in learning from Pre-K to 12^th grade and beyond? In normal times, people can ignore evidence about what works in reading or mathematics or science or social-emotional learning. But these are not normal times. No school should be forced to use any particular program, but government can use targeted funding and encouragement to enable schools to select and effectively implement programs of their choice.
In emergencies, government often accelerates funding for research and development to quickly find solutions for pressing national problems. This is happening now as labs nationwide are racing to develop Covid vaccines and cures, for example. As we declare an education emergency, we should be investing in research and development to respond to high-priority needs. For example, there are several proven programs for elementary students struggling in reading or mathematics. Yet we have few if any proven tutoring programs for middle or high schools. Middle school tutoring methods have been proven effective in England, so we know this can work, but we need to adapt and evaluate English models for the U.S., or evaluate existing U.S. programs that are promising but unevaluated, or develop new models for the U.S. If we are wise, we will do all three of these things. In the education emergency we face, it is not the time to fiddle around the edges. It is time to use our national innovative capacity to identify and solve big problems.

If America does declare a national education emergency, if it does mobilize an army of tutors using proven programs, if it invests in creating and evaluating new, ever more effective programs to solve educational problems and incentivizes schools to use them, an amazing thing will happen. In addition to solving our immediate problems, we will have learned how to make our schools much more effective, even in normal times.

Yes, things will someday get back to normal. But if we do the right things to solve our crises, we will not just be returning to normal. We will be returning to better. Maybe a lot better.

This blog was developed with support from Arnold Ventures. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Arnold Ventures.

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