Be careful how we judge 'behind'

No sooner have most public-school students returned to face-to-face learning than the clarion cry for accountability has begun.

The problem is real: Many students who went the all-remote route during the pandemic are behind in their studies and have significant gaps in their learning. Additionally, many high school students are coming back credit deficient, which could impact their graduation.

Districts are scrambling to institute extended hours and summer programs to address these gaps, even as medical professionals caution that this pandemic may not be entirely in the rearview mirror.

Infection rates are beginning to creep up in several states, to say nothing of what might happen as college students return from spring-break revels with the virus hitching a ride onto their campuses.

(I am old enough to remember when spring break was an opportunity to pick up extra hours at whatever jobs I had so I could remain in college for another semester. But I digress.)

In this rush to test returning public-school students in math, language, science and history, to schedule them for remedial coursework, to quantify and categorize every datapoint on every high-stakes test, let us remember this: Students are behind only because groups of mostly anonymous adults, somewhere, say they are behind, based on more or less arbitrary measurements.

And remember, too, that these kids are survivors. They have done something that no adults in their lives did at a comparable age: weathered a pandemic.

That survival has taught them skills that aren’t so easily measured on a test. For teens, the pandemic mighhave taught them how to hold down part- or full-time jobs and serve as primary breadwinners in their families. It may have taught them about loss — of grandparents, parents, siblings, or friends — cut down by COVID.

The pandemic has most certainly taught them about isolation and sacrifice, made them ponder big questions of mortality and spirituality, and caused them to look differently at the system of safety nets designed to support them through challenging times.

It has certainly opened their eyes to inequities, how some of their peers could ride out the coronavirus crisis in relative comfort while others struggled to secure the basics. These differences were more apparent in poor and minority students, where learning gaps can sometimes be more profound because of policies and procedures that privilege the upper-middle class and the wealthy.

And it is these very inequalities that make testing so important, testing advocates argue. Educators need to measure the gaps before they can address them, and policymakers need to wrestle with just how pronounced some of the deficits are across different socioeconomic groups.

But while all this is occuring behind the scenes, let’s make sure we are honoring these kids’ sacrifices and the tough spots they have been in. Let’s not overwhelm them with how far behind they might be and swamp them with endless remediation.

Because, in the end, standards can ease, exceptions can be made, and students can be credited for some of the life lessons they’ve learned instead of chastised for all of the book learning they’ve missed. Learning which, again, has been predetermined without considering the disruptions from a global pandemic.

It took students more than a year to fall behind. They might not catch up in three months, or six, no matter how hard they try. Asking them to do so is unfair.

Let’s be careful about how much educational angst we heap onto a demographic that is still digging out from under emotional and economic debris.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter