school closures – Public Policy Institute of California

Without Testing, Challenges for School Districts Add Up

Distance learning due to COVID-19 is not going to be a temporary phenomenon. Now, with K–12 campuses closed since mid-March and likely to stay shuttered for the remainder of the school year, students will miss out on about a third of their 180 in-person instructional days. The timing of these closures means no statewide end-of-year standardized tests, posing significant difficulties for teachers and districts when schools reopen.

Even before most districts announced the end of in-person classrooms, most California public school parents expressed concerns over providing productive learning at home—70% say they are somewhat or very concerned, in PPIC’s April Statewide Survey.

And success at distance learning for some students is uncertain because access to the internet and devices, curriculum, the demands of home life, and learning needs—especially for English Learners and students with disabilities—can vary so widely. Differences are already being revealed—according to a survey of public school teachers in late April, 25% of students are not logging in or making contact with their teachers during distance learning. In districts where poverty rates exceed three-quarters of the student population, 36% of students are not in contact with their teachers.

When schools do reopen, teachers must determine how to accelerate the learning of students who fell behind—whether opening happens in July, as Governor Newsom has advocated, or through expanded summer school, or on planned fall start dates. And without results from spring 2020 standardized tests, helping students catch up may require a sustained effort. Some local education agencies are making plans to use formative assessments to assist in reopening, given that California, like all other states, has received a waiver for the federally required statewide assessments.

Typically, students in grades 3–8 and in grade 11 take statewide standardized tests in the spring. These tests of English language arts, math, and science help measure student learning during the year and may be used to place students in fall math courses. Such end-of-year assessments to gauge student learning are essential to California’s accountability system.

The results can also give teachers more insight into the mix of students who show up in their classroom in the fall, as well as identify schools and districts in need of extra support. For 11th graders, the assessments can signal how prepared they are for the rigors of college coursework: the results are later used to place students in English and math in the CSU system.

Furthermore, few districts completed the standardized tests that measure the English proficiency of English Learners before spring closures, tests that determine if students can exit English Learner status. In some districts, English proficiency test results determine the courses students take in the fall.

Given how rapidly the COVID-19 crisis unfolded, these test cancellations were unavoidable. But the absence of test results compounds the challenges of reopening schools: teachers will lack vital knowledge about how distance learning has impacted their students.

Teachers and school staff will likely conduct plenty of assessing on their own, planning lessons for the diverse needs of their students. The hope is their efforts can smooth the way for students’ return to their classrooms; but we are at least a year away from understanding how the crisis has impacted our students systemwide.

Students Prepare for AP Exams during COVID-19

In response to disruptions from COVID-19, the 2020 AP exams will be open book/open note format and taken online at home, according to the College Board. The new exams are scheduled May 11–22. At 45 minutes each, the exams will be much shorter and cover less material—focusing on content covered prior to March school closures.

An increasing number of colleges, including those in the University of California system, have affirmed they will award college credit for 2020 AP exams that score a 3, 4, or 5. While these changes give flexibility to students still hoping to earn college credits, all students may not benefit equally.

Nearly 380,000 students in California public schools took an AP exam in 2019, up 63% from a decade ago. Participation among Latino students grew from 16% in 2009 to 33% in 2019. However, participation by African American students plateaued in 2015.

For disadvantaged and vulnerable students, limited access to learning options at home may cause a dip in participation and performance. Nearly half of students from low-income families do not have broadband access at home; neither do a third of Latino or African American students. And broadband access remains problematic in rural areas, where 41% of school-aged children do not have access.

Students with special educational needs may face additional challenges. The pandemic and resulting school closures have had a disproportionate impact on this student population, with many losing access to special education support professionals and services.

Efforts to close these gaps are underway: the state Superintendent recently formed a new task force to close the digital divide, and the governor announced several cross-sector partnerships to support distance learning. The California School Board Association just announced its effort to push for a $2 billion broadband bond on the November ballot to address rural connectivity.

AP assessments begin in just a few weeks. The College Board has suggested that students without internet or a device contact them for assistance, but the scope of the organization’s ability to respond is untested. In addition, test preparation and participation may be difficult for students who are also caregivers at home and lack separate, quiet testing space.

It is unclear how many California students will take the 2020 AP exams, but they are still being encouraged to do so. In an April webinar, the College Board noted that 86% of AP teachers across the nation will still assign a letter grade to their courses during this school closure, with bonus points for completing an AP exam.

At 91%, the vast majority of AP enrollees still want to earn college credits. Schools and teachers across the state are helping students navigate the new system. As the state ramps up efforts to implement distance learning and maintain continuity of learning amid school closures, AP results should be closely monitored so that we understand the impact on socioeconomically disadvantaged students and special education students.

Video: Californians and Education

In the era of COVID-19, about eight in ten adults fear getting sick, and 80% expect bad economic times ahead. At a virtual briefing on Thursday, PPIC researcher Alyssa Dykman said the drop in consumer confidence “is unprecedented in the history of the PPIC survey.”

The event featured Dykman, who presented attitudes on K–12 education, funding, and policy preferences along with concerns over the coronavirus pandemic in the latest PPIC statewide survey. PPIC President and CEO Mark Baldassare supplied deeper context for key findings and responded to online questions.

Approval ratings have hit rare numbers: at 78%, approval has surged for Governor Newsom’s handling of K-12 education, and at 92%, public school parents express overwhelming support for school district handling of school closures. COVID-19, however, has shaken support for school bonds, with about half or fewer adults and likely voters saying it’s a good idea now for state government to fund school construction projects.

Baldassare underscored Californians’ concerns around health and finances, stating that two-thirds of adults are worried about both. Many say their lives are disrupted and about half say the stress is affecting mental health.

What do these concerns mean for California schools? “People are giving state leadership and local leadership a lot of leeway in how they respond to the public health and economic crisis,” Baldassare said. But the state will see its first test of this extraordinary support in May, when the governor submits a revised budget that will reflect revenue loss from a sharp economic downturn.

That may also lead to roadblocks for state and local school funding in November. In the March primary, “the defeat of most of the local school bond measures really caught a lot of people by surprise,” Baldassare said. “It was difficult to pass school funding measures.” At the moment Californians are hesitant to commit more funding to schools, which may impact voting on the split-roll property bond measure and others in the November election.

The survey offers several takeaways around planning for California public education. “We’ve never had anything like the school closures that are taking place,” Baldassare said. He reflected that Californians may reconsider the value of teachers going forward, including whether “teachers have the resources they need in order to do the job,” and noted that the public may have “a new understanding of the important and difficult role teachers play every day in the lives of public school children.”

Californians also may now recognize the struggles of vulnerable students, especially in terms of online access.

“It is going to be a test of Californians’ political will,” Baldassare said, “the degree to which we are committed to improving student outcomes, particularly among the large numbers of English language learners and low income students across the state.”

High School Graduation during the COVID-19 Crisis

With schools closed for in-person instruction in California through the end of the school year, the state has asked districts to implement distance learning. As a result, many students—particularly high school juniors and seniors—are concerned about falling behind or failing to graduate.

Nearly half of students from low-income families do not have broadband access at home. Given this reality, along with the uneven distribution of learning opportunities within and outside of schools across the state, it will be important to address the equity implications of the shift to distance learning during the coronavirus pandemic.

In response to school closures, the California Department of Education is allowing districts to request waivers that exempt individual students from the state’s minimum graduation requirements, which include three years of English, two years of math and two years of science.

In addition, many districts have graduation requirements that exceed the state minimum. In the 2018–19 school year, 59% of districts required a third year of math, and 22% required a third year of science.

These requirements are prevalent across all types of districts—including high-need districts, in which more than 55% of students are low-income, English Learners, homeless, or foster youth; rural districts; and districts with high student-teacher ratios.

Moreover, students in six large districts—including Los Angeles Unified, San Diego Unified, San Jose Unified, and San Francisco Unified—must complete the entire A–G sequence required for admission to University of California (UC) or California State University (CSU) schools in order to graduate.

Districts with graduation requirements that exceed the state minimum will need to work with school boards to modify local policies. UC and CSU have already responded to school closures by temporarily suspending letter grade requirements for A–G courses completed in winter, spring, and summer 2020.

However, it will be challenging to help students stay on the A–G pathway. The waiver and temporary suspension of GPA requirements do not necessarily make it easier for students to take more A-G courses. PPIC research has shown that most students exit this pathway in the last two years of high school, and groups that are historically underrepresented in higher education are more likely to drop off at every stage. As districts develop distance learning plans and ways to provide flexibility to high school students, considerations of equity and access should be front and center.

Remote Learning for English Learners and Special Needs Students during COVID-19

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]For California’s most vulnerable students, including 1.2 million English Learners (EL) and over 700,000 students with special educational needs, remote learning in the wake of COVID-19 presents particular challenges. As districts across the state roll out distance learning plans to minimize disruption to K–12 students, educators must find alternate ways to meet all student needs.

English Learners and special education students typically require more in-person support, such as occupational and speech therapy, in their daily learning than students in general. Educators are struggling to devise and implement plans to address these requirements remotely. Access to internet and devices is one area of concern, but so is providing intensive learning experiences that can stand in for in-person services.

Most EL and special education students live in large urban areas with access to broadband, and school districts in these counties, such as in the Bay Area and coastal counties in Southern California, may be able to partner with philanthropy and technology providers to supplement households currently without broadband access. Rural areas, however, may not have the same supports.

In counties where broadband access is low—that is, over 18% of households with school-age children lack it—and where the share of EL or students with disabilities is high (over 26%), online learning is a hurdle. This includes Colusa, Yolo, Napa, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, Madera, Monterey, Kern, and Imperial, which together account for over 220,000 students who have special education needs or are English Learners.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row max_width=”80″ visibility=”visible-desktop”][vc_column][vc_column_text][infogram id=”1p1qw10yewvk2dfmxmvky16prlb6pw1mvrm?live”][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row max_width=”80″ visibility=”visible-tablet-landscape”][vc_column][vc_column_text]

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[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]There are an additional 50,000 such students in counties where we cannot estimate the share of families without broadband, but where concentrations of EL or students with special needs are disproportionately high. In these rural counties—which include San Benito, Mono, Tulare, Modoc, and Yuba—educators must determine how to compensate for lack of internet while offering intensive, though not in-person, instruction.

And it isn’t just students tested by the move to online instruction. In a typical school year, only 67% of teachers received professional development in using computers for instruction. Most received less than eight hours of training.

To fill the gap, more districts are providing training on how to teach students remotely. Courses cover online tools such as Zoom, Google Classroom, Canvas, and Seesaw; how to monitor and assess student learning; and how to manage and cater to student needs in an online environment. The California Department of Education also provided resources and idea banks to help districts accommodate students with varying learning needs, with guidance on options for delivering individualized education.

California continues to provide funding to districts to implement distance learning, through the governor’s executive orders and recent legislation. While distance learning cannot replace in-person instruction and services, educators are exploring alternatives, from reading assignments over the telephone to moving speech and occupational therapy online. Districts are also discussing extending the school year as they work to provide effective and equitable learning to the state’s most vulnerable students.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

How COVID-19 Closures May Disrupt Student Learning

All but one of California’s K–12 schools have closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, causing massive disruptions for the state’s 6.2 million students. This week, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that closures are expected to continue through the end of the school year, although the final decision rests with local officials.

School is technically still in session, but distance learning is unlikely to fully compensate for lost time. Assuming schools remain closed through the school year, how detrimental will this be to student learning?

First, learning time matters. In studies measuring how students performed based on differences in when they took exams, even a few days can have a large impact. We also know that missing school reduces academic performance and that chronic absenteeism is particularly damaging, tied to a variety of outcomes such as achievement, socio-emotional development, and dropout. However, the impact of missing school under normal, predictable conditions is less relevant to our current situation.

Disruption from weather-related closures may be a better gauge for how COVID-19 closures could impact students. Roughly 1.2 million K-12 students in California were affected by emergency closures last year, mainly due to wildfires and other weather-related events. According to data from Maryland, schools fare worse on state exams in years with more weather-related closures, despite these closures accounting for only a week of instruction on average.

However, when we consider the impact of individual student absences versus school-wide closures, the effects of closures are negligible. Educators may find it easier to compensate for school-wide closures by adjusting or delaying lesson plans. While this suggests a reason for optimism, mitigating entire months of lost instructional time will require more than reorganizing lesson plans.

Additional insights come from the long documented phenomenon known as “summer learning loss”: the typical student loses about one month’s worth of learning over the course of a summer. Importantly, summer losses tend to be larger for disadvantaged students who have access to fewer resources and learning opportunities while away from school.

This means that achievement gaps tend to grow during the summer, reversing gains achieved during the year. This is worrisome: if schools remain closed for the remainder of the school year, we may face an even larger “spring and summer” loss.

Notably, these effects would be on top of any effects from having fewer instructional days. Distance learning may help mitigate losses, but the state’s most disadvantaged students may fall even further behind because of inequities in access to computer equipment and internet connectivity.

Continued support for distance learning programs will be crucial as closures continue, as will efforts to give students better access to better online learning. Google’s plan to provide free Wi-Fi and laptops to thousands of students is a step in the right direction.

Policymakers could also consider options to recover lost time over the summer or in the following year, as evidence shows programs that offer more learning time—during the school year or the summer—can benefit students. While this strategy would be difficult and costly to achieve, the severity of the COVID-19 disruption to student learning may justify extraordinary options.

Feeding Children When Schools Are Closed for COVID-19

By state law, all public schools in California must provide at least one nutritionally adequate meal to students—however, many students eat more than one meal a day at school. Nearly four million students received meals from California’s public schools in the 2018–19 school year: close to 300 million breakfasts and well over 500 million lunches. With schools closed to reduce exposure to the new coronavirus, many students now lack ready access to these meals.

By federal law, low-income students (about $48,000 for a family of four in 2020) are eligible for free or low-cost school meals. Higher income students paid on average $0.98 for breakfast and $2.11 for lunch in 2017–18, according to the California Department of Education.

The vast majority of low-income students eat some or all breakfasts, lunches, or both at school. Free and reduced-price meals lower food insecurity, and according to the California Poverty Measure (CPM), meaningfully reduce poverty among families with public school students. Without school meals, the share of students living in deep poverty would be 17% higher; increases for students in less severe poverty would be 2% to 8%.

With school closures in place for several weeks, school districts have already designated sites where families can pick up meals for children. In higher poverty areas, all children can access meals regardless of enrollment in the local school or eligibility for meal programs because authorities have temporarily relaxed federal regulations.

During closures, Governor Newsom assured that schools will continue to receive state funds to operate and requested efforts focus on certain areas, including providing school meals. However, access remains a concern. For example, Los Angeles Unified School District lists 64 “grab-and-go” sites for its roughly 1,000 schools. San Diego Unified School District has 13 sites for 181 schools, as of March 16. Elk Grove, with 67 schools, has 34 sites for drive-through and grab-and-go meal services along with a mobile service for families with limited transportation.

With pandemic EBT (P-EBT), ATM-like cards pre-loaded with funds for groceries, the federal government is also helping low-income students replace missed school meals. The cards will cover the expected number of days that schools will be closed. For students whose families already receive monthly CalFresh benefits on EBT cards, funds can readily be added. For low-income students who do not already receive CalFresh (34% statewide), families must complete some paperwork—mainly electronically—to obtain an EBT card.

Because the reach of CalFresh varies across the state, barriers to getting P-EBT funds to students will also vary. Fortunately, the state already matches student data with their CalFresh, CalWORKs, and Medi-Cal data to automatically determine students eligible for free and reduced-price school meals. If the state can use all existing sources of family income to provide P-EBT to students, they will reach more low-income students.

Ready access to meals influences student health, learning, and economic wellbeing. Robust access to free and reduced-price meals can decrease the stress low-income families are facing as efforts to limit the spread of COVID-19 dampen economic activity.

Will Students without Home Internet Fall Behind During Coronavirus Shutdowns?

K–12 schools across California are preparing for closures due to the coronavirus outbreak, to protect students from unnecessary exposure and to sanitize facilities. As schools consider moving classes online to mitigate the disruption to student learning, broadband access at home presents a formidable challenge.

The good news is that K–12 schools have the means to deliver classes online. PPIC research has found that the overwhelming majority (90%) of California schools met the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) minimum threshold for digital learning in 2018, and 59% of schools met the FCC’s long-term targets.

However, internet access is a bigger problem for students in their homes. In 2017, close to 1 million (15.6%) school-aged children (ages 6–17) had no internet connection at home, while over 1.6 million (27.5%) did not have broadband access. About 9.5 percent of households with school-aged children reach the internet only via a cellular data plan, which can be slower and more expensive. For these same households, the devices available are limited as well, with 12.7 percent reporting no laptop, desktop, tablet, or other portable wireless computer at home.

Underrepresented students are most at risk of falling further behind during school closures. About a third of Latino or African American students and students whose parents do not have a college degree lack a broadband subscription at home. Nearly half of low-income households with school-aged children have no broadband at home. Affordability remains a key barrier, as half of low-income households did not subscribe to broadband because of the cost.

In rural areas, access may depend on whether an area offers services. Forty-one percent of rural households with school-aged children do not subscribe to broadband at home, which is much higher than the state average (25%). For households with no internet access, 33.2 percent indicated internet was not available where they lived compared to 1.3 percent of respondents in metropolitan areas.

Households may not have internet or broadband for many reasons, including financial, technological, and topographical barriers.

As the state and local authorities consider alternatives to in-person instruction, policymakers will need to consider how internet access will affect all students in the days and weeks ahead.