We must rise to the demands of this recovery chapter

This post is adapted from an email originally shared on August 26, 2022. If you would like to receive future emails, you can sign up here.

The 2022–23 school year is several weeks underway in parts of the country and about to begin in others. After three years of instability and uncertainty, the feelings of familiarity and a fresh start this back-to-school season are particularly welcome.

When COVID first closed schools, we shared a framework of the chapters of pandemic recovery:

At times these past few years, it’s been hard to tell what chapter we were in with blurry experiences that could have been crisis, reentry or, God forbid, the new normal.

As we begin this school year, it feels like we are squarely in recovery. Some combination of community immunity and fatigue have put most COVID protocols in the rear view mirror. Supporting the needs of students most impacted by the disruption is the clear focus.

This recovery chapter will be critically important to the future of a generation and the future of education.

I will lift again the class of 2032, our current/rising 3rd graders, to illustrate the importance and opportunity of the next few years. This cohort was in kindergarten during the shutdown; 1st grade was, in many places, an experience of remote and hybrid learning; 2nd grade was bumpy, with quarantines and teacher absences. Children learn more in these first few years of school than at any other time — interruptions during these years could have lasting consequences. We can already see significant cause for concern and gaping inequity in early reading results, especially for students of color, students in poverty, multilingual learners, and students with disabilities.

The students in the class of 2032 are extraordinary and capable children. Their experiences in these early years will uniquely position them to lead in ways we will need in the future. Decades from now, I predict they will be described as their own ‘greatest generation.’ However, right now, many children in this cohort have gaps in foundational learning. Not yet knowing how to blend key letter sounds or compose and decompose numbers could get in the way of future learning and impact opportunity across their lives. Addressing these foundational learning needs is essential; however, if we overdial attention on these gaps at the expense of providing access to grade-level learning, we will create new challenges for the very students we are seeking to support.

Our country has a poor track record of helping students build missing foundational skills while continuing to advance on grade-level learning. 3rd-grade reading scores predict future outcomes with heartbreaking consistency — despite how much we know about our ability to learn new things at any age. The pressure is on in exactly the place we already needed improvement.

Thankfully, we can do hard things.

If we focus on supporting the class of 2032 and marshal energy to meet bold goals for their recovery, we can avert the terrifying consequences this cohort is facing while also strengthening the capacity of our education system to serve students into the future. We could set the goal of ensuring the class of 2032 is fully caught up by the end of the 5th grade AND that the students in this cohort most impacted by COVID disruptions see higher rates of growth than the overall population. Students are fully capable of achieving these goals, even if this growth rate is unprecedented. We are fully capable of achieving these goals.

While there is a great deal we do not yet know about how to do so, we do know where we need to start:

• 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade teachers will need to support foundational learning effectively while supporting access to grade-level learning; for leaders, this requires providing teachers with effective professional learning, grounded in high-quality materials.
• Teams will need to be diligent in identifying and attending to the progress of each and every student with a sense of accountability — while ensuring that orientation does not impact expectations of students’ capability or the way students see their own potential.
• Interactions at every level will need to honor the importance of relationships, anchor to high expectations, and model vulnerability and learning.

“Students rise to the level of expectation” is a maxim at the core of our profession. If we expect it of ourselves, we too can rise to meet the demands of this recovery chapter.