By Hannah E. Jones
Two years after returning to the classroom, students across the nation are still dealing with the impacts of the pandemic and remote learning. Now, Georgia State University’s Georgia Policy Labs (GPL) team is looking to further analyze the impact of online learning on metro Atlanta’s youth.
Earlier this month, GPL received $1.85 million from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences to investigate the academic trends and general well-being of local K-12 students.
Over the last three years, the GPL team has been working with local school systems to measure the impact of remote instruction on students. With this new funding, GPL will continue to study learning outcomes following the pandemic, while also looking further at the full scope of a student’s life, including their social abilities, self-confidence and more.
As GPL Senior Director Maggie Reeves puts it, this new component will allow them to “understand more than [only] what happened in the classroom.”
“Did people have deaths in their lives? Did they have to move because they were evicted?” Reeves asked. “Did they have someone who could help them during the day or not? How were their social skills before, during and after the pandemic? These are things we still need to learn. I do think that academic achievement is tied into all of that.”
The team will then use their findings to recommend the best recovery strategies for students, aiming to mitigate the negative impacts that some students felt from online schooling.
To complete this study, the team is working with three local school systems — Fulton, DeKalb and Clayton. A survey is being sent out to students, parents, teachers and school leaders to get a comprehensive look at what online learning means for academic outcomes and well-being outside of school.
“Understanding and capturing [the impact of COVID] at this level of detail… allows us — when looking at recovery interventions — to figure out what’s working for who and why,” said Jennifer Darling-Aduana, assistant professor of Learning Technologies in the Department of Learning Sciences. She is also a co-principal investigator for the study. “We have this better understanding of what’s going on in the student’s minds, bodies and their sense of self. We can really better refine and target interventions moving forward in a way that we haven’t had access to before.”
They are also compiling data provided by school system partners that looks at trends in standardized test scores and will compare metro Atlanta students’ results to national ones.
For example, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average scores for 13-year-olds declined four points in reading and nine points in math compared to a 2019/20 assessment.
The team plans to use their findings that better inform their recommendations to local school systems regarding best practices for long-term student support. Along the way, GPL will publish studies with their findings. Reeves expects to publish upwards of 14 research papers.
“Collectively, these studies will hopefully band our communities together — whether you’re a student, parent, neighbor, superintendent or a politician,” Reeves said. “We’re hoping these studies help bring people together to focus on the students who need the most help and get them help that actually works.”
She continued: “It’s very easy for all of us to think of COVID being done because we’re not walking around with masks or doing as much remote learning but some of the lingering effects of the pandemic, not just what happened at school, are going to be long-standing. This is a long-term community project, and we’re really excited to contribute some pieces of helping students and their families with programs and policies that work.”
To follow along with the study and its findings, click here.
Hannah, very interested in this topic as I worked with remote learning (distance learning) in the early 90’s. It is not for every student or every teacher. However, we must check closely all methods of learning for the betterment of educational progress.. I look forward to following this study.