Unpacking COVID-19's Long-Term Effects on Students
COVID-19 presents immediate decision making challenges for schools and districts that rely on annual data collection to monitor student progress and performance.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created an unprecedented set of obstacles for schools and exacerbated existing structural inequalities in public education. While preliminary accounts highlight the impact of COVID-19 on a variety of student outcomes, it may take years to unpack how the pandemic affected student learning and social and emotional development and to identify any lasting effects on low-income communities and communities of color.
COVID-19 also presents immediate decision-making challenges for schools and districts that rely on annual data collection to monitor student progress and performance. Such assessments (PDF) are used for a wide variety of purposes, including school and teacher accountability, organizing professional development, supporting formal and informal program evaluation, determining course placements and access to additional supports, and to support instructional decision-making.
The nonprofit RAND Corporation, in collaboration with NWEA, has initiated a research project to provide key guidance on the use of assessment data for schools and school districts in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, our work focuses on developing strategies for addressing the impacts of COVID-19 disruptions on student assessment programs, providing empirical evidence of the strengths and limitations of particular strategies for making decisions in the absence of assessment data, and providing an investigative framework that guides plans for collecting evidence that supports strategy adoption.
As we embark on this project, we have solicited input from local education agencies across the country, using a combination of surveys and structured interviews, to capture districts' needs during this dynamic period. While we caution that our research is in its preliminary stages and our sample of respondents is not nationally representative, the initial feedback focused attention on a few key concerns around decision-making in the absence of spring assessment data.