K-12 districts and schools must repair what we call the “learning loss” suffered by students as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. And we still must find our way to the “new normal” of how learning will now work. But couldn’t both these challenges have a common solution?

The month of March marks the three-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic. But in K-12 education, we are still struggling to address two COVID-related challenges.

Courtesy of Education Week and iStock / Getty Images Plus

The first challenge is what we have come to call learning loss. Learning loss is the problem created when the attainment of skills by our students wasn’t on its usual pace during the pandemic. And this “loss” was even more pronounced for the kids who could least afford it, those from disadvantaged families, many of whom were already struggling in school.

Now, we feel we must fix what we view as a one-time problem, that our students are behind the traditional pace for their learning, and they need to do a one-time catching up.

The second challenge is to adjust to the disruption of the K-12 system caused by the pandemic, and to migrate to what we have called a “new normal” of how K-12 learning will now work.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted our traditional ways of doing business in K-12 learning. But some of the disruption came in the form of beneficial transformation. At long last we were able to move to one-to-one device coverage for our students. And we introduced new technology for virtual learning (e.g., “Zoom”) and the related skills and technology. Students, teachers, and parents all gained the needed technology and skills in how to participate in virtual sessions.

Except now we are struggling with where we are at and how to get to where we want to go, that new normal. There’s some sentiment to go back to where we were in the good-old pre-2020 days of how we used to learn. And that’s not all bad—there were a lot of things we did very well in our old way of doing business.

Except we now have a wonderful opportunity to implement methods of learning that are much better than the old ones we had. Most of these new methods are enabled by technology.

But how do we address the problem of learning loss? And how do we progress to a new normal that provides our kids with better learning?

Here’s a helpful idea—the solution to both these problems might be the same.

Do we have it in our power to provide new accelerated ways of learning? If so, wouldn’t we want our learning loss kids to continue to learn in these new ways even after they catch up? And wouldn’t we want to extend these improved methods to everyone?

If the answer is yes, this simplifies the problem. The solution is to quickly move everyone and everything to the improved new normal, which should do double duty as our learning loss solution.

In a recent Education Week article, Denise Forte of The Education Trust and Thomas J. Kane of Harvard University advise that, “Districts, Now Is Not the Time To ‘Get Back to Normal.” [i] (I snitched the graphic above from Denise and Tom’s article.)

Denise and Tom suggest that as our districts address pandemic learning loss, they should invest in three key areas:

• Tutoring
• Summer learning
• Core instruction

The challenge of tutoring is a great example of why we might want to fold in current learning loss solutions into our long-term progression to the new normal. A recent Associated Press article on “Many Kids Need Tutoring Help, Only a Small Fraction Get It” reported that districts are struggling to supply tutoring at anywhere near the volume that would be beneficial. So as we figure out how to best provide this tutoring in various ways, we might as well be thinking long term. [ii]

Forte’s and Kane’s suggested investments in core instruction include, “Replacing a weak reading curriculum…with one that reflects the best research on the importance of systematic phonics instruction.” And, “Professional development for current and incoming teachers on the science of reading.”

As part of replacing the reading and possibly also math curriculum, I would add what in my opinion is the single biggest thing we can do to improve learning in K-12. This is moving to a personalized learning (a.k.a. individualized learning) approach, which we would partly enable through the use of personalized learning software.

Personalized learning would address a larger issue that led to the pandemic “learning loss.” Our current system for teaching reading and math assumes all our kids march forward together in the graded structure as they acquire reading and math skills—and they never fall off the pace. Yet some kids, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, have trouble keeping up, and once they fall behind they are doomed.

A personalized learning approach allows each student to march forward at their own pace. This enables those who march a bit more slowly from being left at the wayside. And, it also enables the faster kids to zoom ahead instead of being doomed to stare out the window.

A personalized learning approach also addresses another important ingredient of a new normal, which is a shift to mastery learning, using a standards-based approach. A mastery approach works off a list of skills our kids need to attain, and systematically checks off their mastery of them. Of course, in the process it also draws attention to skills a student may not be mastering, so they can attain special help in this area.

The personalized learning software is in a great position to also help with the mastery approach. As it helps student learn their skills it also checks off the skills they have mastered and the standards they have met. It then either moves the students on to new skills or slows down the pace and provides extra help until the skill is attained. It may also alert the teacher to what’s going on in case extra help such as tutoring is required.

This all sounds great—so why haven’t we been using personalized learning for the last 200 years? The big reason is that once kids get onto different wavelengths it quickly becomes almost impossible for a human being teacher working with paper materials to provide each student with individualized lessons. But if we can automate the learning, the teacher is now free to spend their valuable time directing traffic and providing individual and small group help.

Forte and Kane also reference a recent report from The Education Trust on “Promising Practices: A School District Guide to Advocating for Equity in the American Rescue Plan Spending.” The report identifies five components the authors believe are the most important for district spending plans:

• Accelerating student learning, including targeted intensive tutoring and expanded learning time
• Student, family, and community engagement
• Safe and equitable learning environments
• Teacher recruitment and retention
• Data equity and reporting transparency [iii]

Let’s consider how technology can support improved core instruction, tutoring, and other components of a new normal—many of which are also the things we need to address learning loss.

So yes, we should take the needed steps to repair learning loss. This will enable all our students to learn faster and more effectively.

But again, if these measures work well, why not implement them in a way in which we can start using them now and continue using them, well, forever? Or until we devise ways of learning that are even better.

This will work best if our district and school leaders work with our classroom teachers to quickly develop a vision for how this will work, and then develop and begin to implement a plan for this transformation.

This will all be tougher to do when the federal ESSER funds run out. But we must find ways to keep moving into that much-better new normal. The alternative is to revert back to those good old days that were not that good for our kids.

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[i]     Forte, D., and Kane, T., “Districts, Now Is Not the Time To ‘Get Back to Normal’,” Education Week, February 1, 2023.

[ii]       Wall, P., and Pak-Harvey, A., “Many Kids Need Tutoring Help. Only a Small Fraction Get It.,” Associated Press, 2023.

[iii]     “Promising Practices: A School District Guide to Advocating for Equity in the American Rescue Plan Spending,” The Education Trust, 2022