Back to school 2022: What to expect in Year 4 of COVID-19

by Cricket

It’s hard to believe that we’re embarking on the fourth year of school with COVID-19. My son, who is starting 5th grade, will soon have spent more time in elementary school with COVID’s existence than without it. With the CDC lifting many regulations for schools, this year will more closely resemble pre-COVID times, but what can students, teachers, and parents expect, and what changes should we make as we learn from the past few years? 

Students

• What to expect: School looking and feeling more like “normal” than it has in the past three years with the elimination of mask mandates, testing, and mandatory quarantines due to exposures.

• Changes: Access to wrap around services that address the needs of the whole child. An abundance of research proves the need for healthy schools that acknowledge children’s physical and mental health, as well as their social, emotional, and academic wellbeing. As the COVID pandemic underscored, healthy kids are better learners! 

Teachers

• What to expect: A smoother year with less severe aftershocks from lockdown and remote learning, but with many teachers reporting that last year was as hard if not harder than the year before, burn out and exhaustion may persist

• Changes: Positive shifts in the expectations, structural support, and respect for teachers. A new survey by the Christensen Institute shares that teachers’ jobs post-lockdown, tracking down chronically absent students and addressing unfinished learning and social behavior issues, are unsustainable. With teachers being the most critical drivers in shaping students’ learning, it is essential they are given the resources they need (e.g. socio-emotional support, professional learning, compensation) and their input is requested and valued.

Parents

• What to expect:  More learning continuity with children making academic gains but also with continued unfinished learning due to disruptions and remote learning.

• Changes: Access to grade-level content and evidence-based interventions, such as high-dosage tutoring. A recent study by ReadWorks and TNTP found that students were spending less time on grade-level work than they were before the pandemic, particularly in high-poverty schools. This contradicts the research showing that students need and deserve opportunities to engage in grade-level work to accelerate learning to return to pre-pandemic levels. For students in need of additional support, a meta analysis showed that high-dosage tutoring increases achievement by an additional three to 15 months across all grade levels.