A new report from Stanford University that tracks student learning is giving us a closer look at just how much students are struggling after the pandemic.
The Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford tracked learning patterns in 16 states to see how recovery efforts will impact students' academic careers.
The research found that even if schools offer an additional three years of education, only about 75 percent of students would hit 12th-grade benchmarks. That means one quarter would remain undereducated.
The research also suggests programs that schools have implemented to address COVID learning loss, like tutoring and summer school, aren't making a big difference.
Math educator Stacey Roshan analyzed the Stanford research and says adding on tutoring at the end of the school day or summer school is likely to burn out students. She says the trick is offering more support during class time.
"If you're adding on all these extras, that's going to load them more, but if we can kind of intervene within the school day or even within the class period and give them some extra support so they can use their class time really well, that's really different," Roshan said.
Roshan says once students came back to school in person, she noticed a lack of basic study skills. She says students weren't able to gauge what they know, what they don't know, and when to ask questions.
She believes teachers can be influential in COVID learning loss recovery if they focus on connecting with each student and follow up with them.
Roshan says she's also witnessed significant improvements in her students by creating video lesson plans.
"The way that I traditionally use video is for students to watch for homework before they come into class and then in class because they've kind of gotten those essential skills right through the video, they come to class and then we can start with discussion," Roshan said. "So we can start with whole group discussion, or I can start students in small groups. I can even put them in groups based on how they understood the video and how I know how they understood the video is when they watch the video, I actually embed some learning checks into the video."
Roshan says she's happy to share what she's learned with other educators. To record and edit her videos, she uses Camtasia. She uses Wacom One tablet to digitally ink, and she uses Edpuzzle to embed learning checks. She shares more resources with teachers through her website.