The quality of classroom teaching plunged during the pandemic, contributing to the standstill in academic recovery for students across the country, according to a report released last week.
The study, by the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a nonpartisan research and policy organization, said participating school districts found it "almost impossible" to implement their recovery plans, citing staffing shortages and obstacles to teacher training. Both took a toll on instructional practices.
"Everybody knows that learning fell back during the pandemic, but what this study is showing is that, at least in these districts, teaching also has fallen back," said Robin Lake, director of the education center, based at Arizona State University's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College.
The report, part of a three-year study of how five medium or large districts -- one of them a public charter school network -- addressed lost learning time during the pandemic, is based on lengthy interviews with about 30 district leaders in spring 2023.
Lake said the findings are not intended to blame teachers, but to help explain dismal recent test scores.
In June, test scores for 13-year-olds in math -- on the well-regarded National Assessment of Educational Progress -- showed the single largest drop (nine points) in 50 years. Reading scores dropped by four points, to the lowest level recorded since 2004.
More recently, scores on NWEA assessments for 6.7 million students in third grade through eighth grade also showed a stubborn gap in achievement levels between students in 2022-23 and their pre-pandemic peers.
The 2022-23 school year opened the first window in three years into the day-to-day happenings of classrooms, the report said. What administrators discovered was "unexpected and alarming."
"Teachers and their teaching practices had suffered significantly" following years of disrupted work conditions, student behavior challenges and high needs, the 15-page paper said.
While the report looks at only five school systems, Lake said its findings fall in line with a nationally representative survey that is part of a larger project, called the American School District Panel, that it created several years ago with the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit think tank.
Their report details recovery shortfalls.
One school leader that invested heavily in tutoring relied on vendors that supplied tutors of uneven quality. Another said tutoring cost $500,000 and had little success. "That's a lot of money. And nothing to show for it?" the leader was quoted as saying.
Some school systems used federal relief money for bonuses that would help retain teachers, amid a national shortage. But the strategy often failed, the report said: "Teachers continued to leave ... often in the middle of the year."
In the classroom, initial plans in some districts called for an "accelerated" learning approach -- combining grade-level instruction with individual student support to fill in learning gaps. But the model required "more training than systems were willing to provide or teachers were willing to adopt," the report said.
District administrators said teachers fell back on practices that did not work, including placing students in groups without direct instruction, unnecessarily relying on screens, and using below-grade-level content, according to the analysis.
One district leader who had just visited a string of schools said there was a lot of "just getting through the day," the report said.
The difficulties schools faced included a shortage of substitute teachers that left educators unable to pursue training opportunities. Districts also struggled to find high-quality providers of teacher training.
Meanwhile, teachers were grappling with elevated levels of poor student behavior and, in one district, greater community violence that led to more absenteeism among students and staff, which "hampered morale" and "derailed learning."
School district leaders reported "a change in teachers' capacity to take on more work -- they knew their teachers were 'exhausted,'" the report said.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement that "teachers have been giving their all to help kids recover and thrive, even as the pervasive effects of the pandemic mean the ground is shifting beneath them ... . What we must do now is focus like a laser on deploying proven strategies and solutions."
Participating districts were kept anonymous to encourage candor. They are located in urban and suburban areas and predominantly serve students of color.