20 PERSONALIZED LEARNING AFTER COVID-19: EFFECTS ON STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT Erin Trantham, EdD Journal of K-12 Educational Research 2024, VOL. 7, ISSUE 1 www.dbu.edu/doctoral/edd Introduction With the closures of schools in Spring of 2020 and the slow reopening of schools and the addition of virtual learning of the 2020–2021 school year, students have lost time learning in the classrooms. It will take some time before the true academic impact on student learning is fully understood, but experts in the field of education are beginning to predict and study how the disruption to schooling will impact students. Inequalities in access to internet, devices, and parent support are a few of the added stressors to some of the students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, which could put them further behind their non-disadvantaged peers causing larger gaps in their learning due to COVID slide. Literature Review The Stanford Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) published a briefing in October 2020 with their determination of how the closing of schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic will impact student achievement. CREDO utilized the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessments as a measure for student achievement. Since the end of the year MAP assessments were not administered, CREDO made an estimate based on previous years’ scores to determine a reasonable achievement score for the end of the 2020 school year. CREDO converts standard deviations into days of learning lost in order to make the results more tangible to all readers. The results of the collaborative investigation of both NWEA and CREDO found that most students experienced learning loss. The results showed that at minimum students lost a third of a year in reading and at maximum a full school year in reading growth (CREDO, 2020). The math results were much more startling with a minimum of threequarters of learning lost and a maximum of around 1.3 years (CREDO, 2020). CREDO (2020) encourages schools to rethink their approach to teaching and learning, stating that the conventional models of classroom-based instruction—a one-to-many, fixed-pace approach—will not meet the academic needs of students. Figure 1 shows the difference in performance in MAP Growth scores prior to the pandemic and after the pandemic. Kuhfeld et al. (2020) explored how the impact of pandemic school closures would compare to other prolonged periods without schooling, such as summer breaks, inclement weather and natural disasters, and absenteeism. Figure 1 MAP Growth Percentile Rank Differences Between Same Grade Students 2019 v. 2021
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