Editorial for preventing school failure special edition - COVID-19 and learning loss: what the literature and practice tell us

This issue of Preventing School Failure is devoted to COVID-19 and the effect it had on instruction for school-aged children, including children in need of special instruction and support and those at-risk of falling behind for a variety of reasons. Preventing School Failure has always focused on the needs of children and youth with learning challenges and behavior problems. The pandemic produced a series of complications to which policy makers and educators had to quickly respond to deliver instructional programs to the students. Some emerging data suggest that a significant percentage of students may not have grown as much as they might have absent a pandemic. These data indicate a noteworthy percentage of students’ academic test scores substantially declined during the pandemic. As a result, some researchers have noted a significant number of students are now academically ‘at-risk’. Thus, ‘failure to achieve’ may be a concern for a large number of students, not just students who have special needs. It is imperative, therefore, that educators explore effective educational programs and models. A great deal has been written, in recent months, about the educational and social stoppages, institutional disruptions, and strategic responses related to COVID-19. Associated with the challenges since the pandemic started has been the predictable finger pointing and calls for well-intentioned efforts to spend more money to assist schools. However, a review of the professional literature offers some cautions in selecting and advancing strategic responses, in that data are often conflicting or insufficient to draw empirical conclusions related to what transpired from this pandemic and which treatments realized efficacy both medically and educationally. It is understood that the pandemic was unexpectedly thrust on the world’s educational systems. In a short period of time, schools around the globe were expected to alter their systems of delivery in education. In some cases, this necessitated major changes in program delivery with very little time to make the required changes and ensure quality of delivery. In many cases, schools were shuttered and programs were delivered remotely by hard working teachers who may not have had the training, skills, and resources to plan and implement a remote delivery program suitable for school-aged children. This requirement for instantaneous ‘overnight’ change was simply overwhelming for many teachers and educational systems. The focus of this special issue of Preventing School Failure, however, is not on the causes or the seemingly dire outcomes of the pandemic, rather attention is given to the lessons that were learned, the practices that were successful in educating students during this extremely difficult time, and the views that children had of their education. This special issue of the journal takes a broad view of the effects of governmental policy concerning COVID-19. From a review of the literature, it is clear there are multiple methods for measuring infection rates that make it difficult to determine exactly the number of people who were infected worldwide. Likewise, there are conflicting metrics and data used to assess educational programming and interventions used by schools. Moreover, largely left out of this analysis were the programs and challenges facing at-risk students who manifested behavioral and learning problems. There have been, however, some small-scale studies and anecdotal reports of an increase in the number of behavioral and learning problems related to children and youth who are served in programs for students with exceptional needs. Sufficient data, however, do not yet exist related to the analyses of the myriad ways that the pandemic has affected, and continues to affect, the lives of children—especially those who have exceptional educational or behavioral needs. Some data suggest that school-aged children, in general, have higher rates of anxiety, learning loss, and behavior problems than were manifested prior to the pandemic. Is this also true for children with special needs?—We simply do not know. An assumption might be that these increased rates of behavioral and learning problems in the general school-aged population might be a more serious impediment than for students enrolled in special education programs. However, to date, definitive data regarding increased behavioral or learning problems in children of exceptional needs remain absent. Chief among the concerns related to the pandemic is the issue of ‘learning loss’. Again, there are differing data, interpretations of data, and definitions of what constitutes learning loss. Some studies suggest that all, or the majority of students, suffered some learning loss which manifested itself in a reduction of knowledge of grade-level material or skill development that was below anticipated academic growth. Other studies suggest that the loss might be negligible or may be reflective of the disparate effects of COVID-19 and governmental responses to the virus. So, which is correct? The simple fact is that a complete answer concerning any of these questions has yet to be established. Data suggest that there are ongoing disparities with the measurement or reporting of students’ academic growth. A