CURATED
FROM...
Is Learning “Lost” When Kids
Are Out of School?
Anguish and even
anger are entirely
appropriate reactions
to the fact
that Covid-19 infection rates
are still too high in most areas
to permit the safe reopening of
schools. Not only do many of
our kids miss their friends and
the chance to make new ones, but
school attendance is a prerequisite
for millions of parents to go
to work. Also, schools provide
healthy meals, which matters in
a country with appalling levels of
poverty and hunger.
The lockdown is bad enough.
Must we also deal with the fear
that children who aren’t going
to school are destined to fall
behind academically?
Not necessarily. The research that
fuels dire warnings, which largely
extrapolates from claims about
“summer learning loss” (SLL), is
much less persuasive than most
people realize.
For example, Paul T. von Hippel
at the University of Texas at
Austin looked carefully last year
at a foundational study on SLL in
low-income students and discovered
he was unable to replicate its
findings, partly because of problems
with its methodology, such
as a failure to adjust for the difficulty
level of the questions.
More important, none of the
research on this topic actually
shows a diminution in learning—
just a drop in standardized test
scores (in some subjects, in some
situations, for some kids).
By now we shouldn’t be surprised
that older studies on SLL,
along with attempts to apply
it to our current situation, uncritically
conflate the results of
standardized tests with broader
concepts like learning, achievement,
educational excellence, or
academic success. After all, many
politicians, journalists, parents,
and even educators make the
same mistake.
But as numerous analyses have
shown, standardized tests are not
just imperfect indicators; they
measure what matters least about
teaching and learning. And their
flaws aren’t limited to specific tests
or to how often they’re administered
or to the way their results
are used. Standardized testing
itself, particularly when exams
are timed or consist primarily of
multiple-choice questions, mostly
tell us about two things: the socioeconomic
status of the population
being tested, and the amount of
time that’s been spent training students
to master standardized tests.
It is entirely possible to raise
scores without improving the
by Alfie Kohn, Reprinted with the author's
permission from the Boston Globe
quality of teaching and learning
at all, which means that a
bump in those scores isn’t particularly
meaningful. Worse,
concerted efforts to raise scores
often have the effect of lowering
the quality of teaching
and learning, which means
“Warnings about academic loss are not
just dubious; they’re dangerous. They
create pressure on already-stressed-out
parents to do more teaching at home…”
that improved test results may
actually be bad news. Indeed,
several studies have found
that higher scores can signify
shallower thinking.
Standardized testing simultaneously
overestimates students
who are just skilled test-takers
and underestimates talented
thinkers who aren’t. Sadly, these
flawed scores are still widely
used to evaluate students,
teachers, and schools, which
makes them hard to ignore, at
least for the time being. But
we should view skeptically any
claims about education based
on these scores—including the
supposedly negative effects of
missing school.
So, too, for those who are rightly
concerned about race- or
class-based “achievement gaps:”
If these gaps are defined mostly
by test results, the goal will be to
narrow the test-score gap, which
may widen the gap in high-quality
instruction and deep learning.
Anyone who warns that poor
children will suffer disproportionately
from closed schools may
be romanticizing what was really
going on in their schools. The
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