Resources, Flexibility Needed to Combat COVID-19’s Negative Impact on DC Students
The COVID-19 public health emergency school closures will have deep and lasting effects on D.C. students. EmpowerK12’s recently released study illustrates the profound impacts that prolonged closures of the District’s public schools may have on student achievement rates. Further, students who already face the most obstacles to success are likely to be more negatively impacted by the school closures due to disconnection from vital services to support their academic, social-emotional, and basic needs.
For the 2020–21 school year and beyond, schools will need resources to overcome this unprecedented learning loss, the flexibility to adapt to meet the academic and socio-emotional needs of their students, and innovative measures to ensure that as schools reopen, more students have access to high-quality learning environments.
Magnifying Inequities, Setting Vulnerable Students Further Back
· Economically disadvantaged students and students with disabilities are bearing the negative consequences of school closures most acutely. The District’s most vulnerable students are likely to experience more learning loss, food insecurity, barriers to accessing high-quality health care and disconnection from vital services such as special education and behavior health resources. These impacts are likely to be significant and enduring.
Schools and Educators Work to Fill Gaps for Students and Families
· Schools and educators continue to work tirelessly to fill major gaps in the social safety net — despite massive costs and challenges. Across the District, school leaders and teachers are making incredible efforts to provide resources and supports for students and families through the period of school closures. Their investment of time, funds and other resources to become whole-of-community resource centers in a valiant effort to blunt the very worst of this crisis for thousands of District students and families.
Unprecedented Learning Loss
· If students are out for the remainder of the school year, districtwide math proficiency rates in 2021 could decline by more than 10 percent and English language arts (“ELA”) by more than 16 percent, compared to the likely performance of DC students on next year’s PARCC assessment, according to the EmpowerK12 study.
· A decline of this magnitude is the equivalent of some 15,600 fewer students reading on grade level and more than 9,800 fewer students performing on grade level in math, based on current student enrollment figures.
· Every school day lost has a negative impact on students. For every day of lost instruction, the probability that a student meets annual PARCC growth expectations in math drops by about 1%. In ELA, every three days of lost instruction reduces a student’s chance of meeting annual typical growth by 2%. If students do not return to school this academic year, they will lose 60 regular instruction days or one-third of the regular year.
· Students at homes with more learning resources and technology will fare better; those with fewer resources will see the biggest declines. The COVID-19 public health crisis has highlighted the District’s stark digital divide.
· To address this, schools and educators are making unprecedented efforts to get devices, internet access and other technologies to their students. Schools with the resources and flexibility to respond quickly are likely to see better outcomes for their students.
· The DC Education Equity Fund — a partnership between Education Forward DC, the DC Public Education Fund and the Greater Washington Community Foundation — is bringing philanthropic support to support students’ basic needs and to help close the District’s digital divide. The fund already has raised more than $2 million to date. More at www.dcedequity.org.
Substantial Social-Emotional Impacts
· Students are much more than one test score and the effects of the loss of social supports, mentorships, friendships, and more are difficult to quantify. However, coupled with the loss of academic progress, the social-emotional toll of being out of school — and for our most challenged students potentially in less supportive environments, generally — the impacts on students are likely to be wide-ranging.
How the District Must Respond in the FY2021 Budget:
1. Local Stimulus and Recovery Efforts Must Include Education Investments
Maintain the 4 percent per-student funding increase for fiscal year 2021 to ensure all schools have the resources necessary to address historic learning losses due to the COVID-19 closures and advance new learning. Elected leaders in other jurisdictions have already announced massive cuts to education spending. The District has an opportunity to chart a smarter course. Prior to the public health emergency, Mayor Bowser committed to increasing per-student funding by 4 percent. In light of the learning loss our students now face, that 4 percent is vital. Schools will need to significantly expand learning opportunities and supports for students next year and beyond — an unachievable feat with reduced resources. Failing to do so risks relegating an entire generation of District students to diminished futures.
2. Resources and Flexibility to Meet Vulnerable Student Needs
More than ever, ensuring sufficient funding for our most vulnerable students through an enhancement to the At-Risk Funding Weight is essential. The data are clear: disadvantaged students will be most acutely impacted by the school closures. The District must make them a priority and provide schools the ability to determine what their unique student populations need most. Schools know their students the best — the challenges they face, the needs that are most urgent — and so should be given the latitude to deploy the strategies best-suited to support their students in this unprecedented time. Overly restrictive or prescriptive directives and requirements from policy makers will only tie the hands of the educators and school leaders best positioned to provide the support that students, regardless of background, will need.
3. Expand Student Access to Behavioral Health Supports
In the wake of the school closures, the District should expand access to behavioral health supports, mental health professionals, and trauma-informed instructional practices. For thousands of students across the District, schools are a haven from homes and communities affected by trauma. The reopening of schools means not only a return to academic instruction, but for these students, a return to the nurturing and supportive environment upon which they have come to depend. Schools will need the resources and professionals to support student wellbeing.
4. Revenue Enhancing Facilities Strategies to Support All Students
The District currently spends millions of dollars each year on unused and underutilized former and current school buildings. Given the tight revenue picture, the District should put these educational facilities to full use, saving and even generating new funds for public schools in the process. Rather than spend public funds on maintenance and security for empty or nearly empty former school buildings, the District should move to establish revenue-generating leases to public charter schools. The revenue generated by these leases would flow into the District’s coffers rather than those of the private sector and could be used to fund any number of essential public services. Expanding co-locations of DCPS and public charter schools also represents a revenue expanding opportunity. In tandem with a budget mechanism to dedicate a portion of these charter school lease proceeds to the school-level budget of the “host” DCPS school, co-locations would provide additional resources for DCPS’s most under enrolled schools — schools that also serve large populations of at-risk students — without increasing the District’s overall budget. It would both provide more high-quality learning environments and at the same time keep more funding within the public education system to better support students during this period of significant budget constraints.
