This issue of Preventing School Failure is devoted to COVID-19 and the effect it had on instruction for school-aged children, including children in need of special instruction and support and those at-risk of falling behind for a variety of reasons. Preventing School Failure has always focused on the needs of children and youth with learning challenges and behavior problems. The pandemic produced a series of complications to which policy makers and educators had to quickly respond to deliver instructional programs to the students. Some emerging data suggest that a significant percentage of students may not have grown as much as they might have absent a pandemic. These data indicate a noteworthy percentage of students’ academic test scores substantially declined during the pandemic. As a result, some researchers have noted a significant number of students are now academically ‘at-risk’. Thus, ‘failure to achieve’ may be a concern for a large number of students, not just students who have special needs. It is imperative, therefore, that educators explore effective educational programs and models.
A great deal has been written, in recent months, about the educational and social stoppages, institutional disruptions, and strategic responses related to COVID-19. Associated with the challenges since the pandemic started has been the predictable finger pointing and calls for well-intentioned efforts to spend more money to assist schools. However, a review of the professional literature offers some cautions in selecting and advancing strategic responses, in that data are often conflicting or insufficient to draw empirical conclusions related to what transpired from this pandemic and which treatments realized efficacy - both medically and educationally.
It is understood that the pandemic was unexpectedly thrust on the world’s educational systems. In a short period of time, schools around the globe were expected to alter their systems of delivery in education. In some cases, this necessitated major changes in program delivery with very little time to make the required changes and ensure quality of delivery. In many cases, schools were shuttered and programs were delivered remotely by hard working teachers who may not have had the training, skills, and resources to plan and implement a remote delivery program suitable for school-aged children. This requirement for instantaneous ‘overnight’ change was simply overwhelming for many teachers and educational systems.
The focus of this special issue of Preventing School Failure, however, is not on the causes or the seemingly dire outcomes of the pandemic, rather attention is given to the lessons that were learned, the practices that were successful in educating students during this extremely difficult time, and the views that children had of their education.
This special issue of the journal takes a broad view of the effects of governmental policy concerning COVID-19. From a review of the literature, it is clear there are multiple methods for measuring infection rates that make it difficult to determine exactly the number of people who were infected worldwide. Likewise, there are conflicting metrics and data used to assess educational programming and interventions used by schools. Moreover, largely left out of this analysis were the programs and challenges facing at-risk students who manifested behavioral and learning problems. There have been, however, some small-scale studies and anecdotal reports of an increase in the number of behavioral and learning problems related to children and youth who are served in programs for students with exceptional needs. Sufficient data, however, do not yet exist related to the analyses of the myriad ways that the pandemic has affected, and continues to affect, the lives of children—especially those who have exceptional educational or behavioral needs.
Some data suggest that school-aged children, in general, have higher rates of anxiety, learning loss, and behavior problems than were manifested prior to the pandemic. Is this also true for children with special needs?—We simply do not know. An assumption might be that these increased rates of behavioral and learning problems in the general school-aged population might be a more serious impediment than for students enrolled in special education programs. However, to date, definitive data regarding increased behavioral or learning problems in children of exceptional needs remain absent.
Chief among the concerns related to the pandemic is the issue of ‘learning loss’. Again, there are differing data, interpretations of data, and definitions of what constitutes learning loss. Some studies suggest that all, or the majority of students, suffered some learning loss which manifested itself in a reduction of knowledge of grade-level material or skill development that was below anticipated academic growth. Other studies suggest that the loss might be negligible or may be reflective of the disparate effects of COVID-19 and governmental responses to the virus. So, which is correct? The simple fact is that a complete answer concerning any of these questions has yet to be established.
Data suggest that there are ongoing disparities with the measurement or reporting of students’ academic growth. A review of the literature makes clear that how we test, measure and score learning can produce significant variation in findings, and these measurement concerns may obscure our understanding. Moreover, there are inadequate data related to the issue of learning loss within the population of students who are at-risk, however, a reasonable assumption is that at-risk populations may be most susceptible to losses in anticipated learning.
Reports also suggest that some schools did better in their response to COVID-19 than others. We know that there were schools and educational policies that were enacted as a response to COVID-19 that worked well in producing an environment in which students could learn effectively, and policies and practices that may not have produced positive outcomes.
We are not here to affix blame. Rather, the focus in this special issue is to report on what educational policies and practices that were perceived as effective in the education of all children in light of program changes that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. The expectation is that we can all learn from these lessons.
In this special issue, a series of articles present various broad scale approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic and examine what lessons have been learned in response to the challenges that schools faced. Throughout the included articles, there assuredly exist some differences of opinion among authors. This diversity of opinion reflects the very real differences that exist among professionals which, perhaps, reflects the absence of agreement about the data as well as the interpretation of the data. But then again, these articles provide an analysis of data and the lessons that can be gleaned from the professional literature.
Authors also worked with various Departments of Education to identify schools understood to have advanced policies and procedures that worked efficiently to deliver effective educational programs to students.
As editors of this special issue, we interviewed representatives from schools and programs that had ‘a story to tell’ about how the personnel in these schools addressed students during the pandemic. These first-person accounts point the way to the development of effective educational programs for all students. In some articles, authors highlighted certain schools’ programs, which addressed the cultural and historical contexts that pertained to their diverse groups of learners. In other articles, authors from schools examined the specific alterations and policies that made a significant difference in the progress of their students. These specifics help us point the way forward so that we do not place blame on past failures and challenges, but embrace the policies and procedures that work and are most likely to aid students, parents, teachers, and administrators as well as paint a picture of resilience that possibly serves as a guide to others in dealing with unforeseen emergencies. The various lessons learned could assist in establishing a foundation for future consideration of good practice.
The schools that are examined in the articles of this special issue are not presented as a definitive and exhaustive list of successful schools and practices. Rather, they provide illustrations of the types of creativity and dedication to service that many of our schools captured during the pandemic. Further, the authors of these articles provide a wealth of information about effective policy and practice in the face of what was a devastating pandemic for which we were not, and could not have been, adequately prepared. Finally, we end the issue with a compelling analysis of the effects of COVID-19 from the perspective of students who were in school during the pandemic.
We have tried to make this special issue reflective of the experiences of a diverse group of participants and their analyses of the effect of COVID-19 as well as their approaches to the various needs of students. We, however, recognize that there are many more stories and lessons that will come through in future months and years. We continue to be hopeful in future efforts that will offer additional examinations of the effects of policies and interventions on the most vulnerable students in the time of a great need.
College of Educational and Professional Studies, University of West Florida, Pensacola, FL, USA
Timothy E. Morse, William Evans, and Amany Habib
School of Education, University of West Florida, Pensacola, FL, USA
[email protected]