Tyrone Howard, professor of education at UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies, said it was rare and encouraging to see gains happen across so many subgroups of students in California, but agreed that districts have more to do to make up for pandemic losses.
“The overwhelming majority of those kids are still not proficient,” Howard said. “I just hope we don’t let the air get taken out of the room by saying that we’ve seen gains. We need to put those gains in context of how many students are still not really where we want to see them.”
This year’s gains come as state and federal funding from the pandemic dries up. Districts are facing a tough decision over what programs and targeted interventions they are able to keep. That, paired with the ongoing decline in enrollment and chronic absenteeism, will make for an uphill battle in the years ahead, Howard said.
“The question becomes, will we then see a stagnation of this growth? Will we see a regression of it? Because a lot of resources that were used to get us to this point are no longer there,” he said.
He called wraparound services and community school investments vital to addressing academic performance, which suffers when basic needs such as food and housing aren’t met.