In June, Texas was the first state to publish a full set of student test scores for the 2020–21 school year. Across the board, the Lone Star State’s plummeting scores were dramatic, and when they were released I expected Texas would not be alone for long. In particular, I warned that the larger losses among Texas’ remote students were “the most striking symptom of remote learning’s failure [to play] out on an enormous scale.”

Over the summer and fall, state after state has released raw numbers that showed patterns similar to those in Texas, but mostly, these reports were topline results and lacking on sophisticated analysis. This week, a new report out of Ohio provided some of the first large-scale sophisticated analyses of student performance over the past year. The authors of the report, Dr. Kogan and Dr. Lavertu, took a more exacting approach, and both corroborated my early conjecture, and in some ways challenged it.

So, what did the study
find?

Simply put: The pandemic
substantially harmed student achievement. Forgone academic progress in English
language arts was large, and even larger for math. In fact, pandemic-related
declines in student achievement were roughly equivalent to students missing “between one-third and one-half of a year’s
worth of learning in English language arts” and a whopping “one half to one full year’s worth of learning in
math.” Districts with more fully-remote
instruction saw greater test scores declines, up to three times larger in
mostly remote districts compared to those that had mostly in-person instruction.

Moreover, on this week’s episode of The Report Card podcast, I pushed Dr. Kogan and Dr. Lavertu on whether their analyses credibly capture a causal link between remote learning and foregone learning. That “C” word, causality, is one trained academics use sparingly, but both authors were confident that remote learning caused a lack of typical progress, and the more students received of it, the less progress they made.

One finding in Ohio’s
scores that challenged my early conjecture was remote learning’s relatively
weaker connection with math scores compared to reading. Math declines in Ohio
were larger than those in reading, but the connection to remote learning was
“more muted.” Champions of remote learning can see that as a glass half full,
if they squint, but a more somber conclusion is that student math glasses were
empty last year, no matter what districts offered.

As I said of the Texas results, I
think the patterns in Ohio will be reflected across the nation. Kogan and Lavertu thought so too. Long-term school closures
and remote learning have proven disastrous and it ought to be clear that remote
instruction should not be the default method of instruction.

So far this year, districts seem to
understand this, and remote learning is a tiny fraction of what it was last
year at this time. With rising COVID-19 cases keeping the possibility of more
remote instruction open, I asked Kogan and Lavertu what they thought might be
the difference making this year a time to rebound, or to fall further behind.

In their response, both authors agreed
that our ability to increase student performance or, at the very least, keep
kids from falling further behind, depends on whether we can keep in-person
instruction as the norm this school year.

They are right. Simply put, the most
potent problem for student progress during this pandemic has been widespread
remote learning, and the solution has to start with stopping it at scale. The
good news on that front is that the vast majority of schools have begun doing
just that this year. However, there is a long road beyond that first step.

How quickly students can catch up will depend on continued vigilance in schools to mitigate the threat of contagion, minimizing interruptions from quarantines, and creating as orderly a school year as possible. That may seem a tall order for pandemic-fatigued parents and students, and even more so for teachers and school leaders. An unflinching look at how much ground needs to be made up is an important first step in that effort, and right now, as I see it, we are all Ohio.

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