Unsurprising to teachers nationwide, recently released NAEP scores (National Assessment of Educational Progress) show students nationwide have lost significant ground in learning for the first time in decades as well as more devastating learning losses among students of color and those from low-income households. More importantly, Covid-19 also claimed the lives of more than one million Americans. Even in a profession overrun and overburdened by an obsession with test scores, learning-loss concerns highlight not only justified and long overdue concerns for students of color and low-income households, the conversation also reveals yet again that some commentators and experts might well be more concerned with test scores than human lives. Perhaps when discussing learning loss and future implications, we should study the whole picture instead of losing sight of the trees amongst the forest.
If numbers are so important, why do we know so little about those lost to the ravages of a highly contagious and deadly respiratory virus? Who were those Americans? How many were parents, grandparents, and guardians of our students? How many were actually below the age of 18? Were any specific professions, industries, or workforces affected more than others? How many other lives have been forever altered by their passing or whose own health has been forever altered? In a country overtaken with a profit-margin obsession with data, where are those numbers and could we not learn anything insightful for the benefit of our present and future?
As far as test scores and learning loss, perhaps we should consider widening our focus. Studying numbers without context is like a team trying to improve after a loss by only studying the final score. The devastating yet not unrecoverable learning loss over the last two and a half years should finally prove beyond dispute that online learning does not hold a candle to the impact and influence of a quality teacher in the classroom. More than any narrative regarding learning loss after Covid-19, the need for students to continually, repeatedly, and consistently have access to quality educators should now be proven far beyond any reasonable doubt. While a nationwide teacher shortage continues to worsen due to Covid-19 and divisive, pot-stirring politicians, we must now prioritize retaining and recruiting teachers if we hope to reverse learning-loss and greatly transform education for all students.
Thus far the rhetoric surrounding the teacher shortage and proposed solutions are dominated by ideas to recruit new rather than retain the experienced. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that the best way to recruit new prospects to any profession must include taking care of those who already serve.
If we wish to develop, transform, and raise a gold standard of public education and simultaneously recruit a higher standard of public educators in these United States, then we must first begin by reexamining and resetting the expectations and responsibilities already piled on educators. Administrators, parents, policymakers, and elected leaders should remember that there remains only 24 hours in a day. If our country and its leaders can so easily expect and demand so much of a profession without demonstrating any practical comprehension of its harsh realities, perhaps those same leaders might learn from those of us who learn about the struggles, challenges, and failures of our country in the hallways of our schools, in our classrooms, and most significantly, on the faces of our students. If legal reforms should be entrusted to lawyers, healthcare reforms to doctors and nurses, then we must start legitimately listening to the concerns and challenges of teachers from teachers and empowering teachers to initiate the changes that will bring about the practical, meaningful, and relevant transformation needed to improve our schools to help all our students succeed far beyond our classrooms.
The Conservative-Liberal Independent 