DPI preparing report on pandemic's impact on learning

The Department of Public Instruction previewed the report for the State Board of Education on Wednesday, during a presentation truncated by a fire alarm.

The department will release the report in March, followed by a more in-depth technical, final report in December.

Both are required by legislation from the North Carolina General Assembly last year.

Lawmakers gave DPI $1 million to contract with a third party to do the research. DPI is using SAS Institute, which works with the department already on education evaluation data.

It will be the first report in North Carolina examining the pandemic’s impact on learning and one of the first nationally, said Jeni Corn, DPI’s director of research and evaluation in the Office of Learning Recovery.

“I think it will be our first real picture about the impact the pandemic has had on our students,” Corn said.

North Carolina school districts have received $5.8 billion in federal COVID-19 stimulus funds to address needs caused by the pandemic. At least $720 million of that, lasting through 2024, must go toward helping students get closer to where they were expected to be before the pandemic disrupted their learning. Most stimulus funding has so far gone toward protective equipment, computer and Internet devices, bonuses amid staffing shortages and summer learning programs.

A report last month on summer programs show the programs helped more than 100,000 North Carolina students make some measurable progress in reading and math. That was only out of about 700,000 students who were invited to the summer learning programs, which most students typically decline to attend.

For DPI’s upcoming report, researchers will estimate individual students’ academic trajectories before the pandemic and measure that against how those individuals performed on state exams.

The state already does this to an extent as a part of its educator evaluation system. That estimates the impact teachers may have had on each student based on how each student actually performs on exams.

This new report will also account for historical trends when measuring the impact of the pandemic. They’ll measure estimated shortfalls in learning in months lost.

Researchers will use 5th grade through 8th grade math, reading and science test results. It will also use Math 1, Math 3, English II and biology test results at the high school level.

They’ll examine any disproportionate impacts for certain students groups — such as students with disabilities or remote learning students — and weigh contextual factors — such as whether the school is low-performing already and how many people in the community have Internet at home.

The department will collect feedback from state and local leaders about making interpretations of the data.

The public report will not have school-level summaries, but districts and schools will be able to access school-level summaries in their closed evaluation portal.