Editor's note: This is part of a series of stories at BizTimes.com taking a deep dive into how industries and areas of life have changed in the five years since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States.
Five years after schools shut down to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, learning loss is still evident among students in southeastern Wisconsin.
COVID disrupted education, essentially stunting the typical trajectory of learning that students experience. The National Assessment of Educational Progress exam results for 2024 reflected that across the nation, there is still a long way to go half a decade after the onset of the pandemic. In all tested grade levels and subjects, national scores continue to fall below pre-pandemic levels.
In southeastern Wisconsin, the extent of learning loss recovery so far varies by school, grade level and subject areas. While federal COVID relief funding to schools has expired — of which Wisconsin received $2.4 billion — many students are still behind. Students of color and students who are considered economically disadvantaged fell the furthest behind. Working to bring students back to grade level without that relief funding will be difficult, local school leaders say.
“The hardest thing is having the funding gone and having the same expectations, or even more,” said Janell Decker, chief academic officer at Racine Unified School District. “Because now we’re seeing that what was thought was going to be recovery time is actually extended, and now that’s extended with even less money, resources and such. It’s going to be a challenge.”
An overview of learning loss in the region
Researchers at Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research and Stanford University’s Educational Opportunity Project found that on average, Wisconsin students are tracking below 2019 achievement levels: they are a third of a grade level behind in math and half a grade level behind in reading.
“In other words, the loss in math achievement in Wisconsin is equivalent to 38% of the progress students typically make annually between grades 4 through grade 8,” the researchers said in a February news release. The research is compiled in a report called the Education Recovery Scorecard.
The researchers found Wisconsin ranks 16th in math recovery and 30th in reading recovery.
Learning loss recovery is uneven across southeastern Wisconsin schools. For example, students in the School District of Waukesha have nearly returned to 2019 achievement levels in reading and math, but other school districts in the region have average student achievement trailing full grade levels behind in math and reading. The School District of Waukesha did not respond to interview requests for this story.
Southeastern Wisconsin’s three largest school districts — Milwaukee Public Schools, Kenosha Unified School District and Racine Unified School District — are still grappling with learning loss recovery.
MPS students in grades 3-8 are approximately three-quarters of a grade level below 2019 achievement levels in both math and in reading. According to the Education Recovery Scorecard data, average MPS student achievement is about 3.5 grade levels behind the 2019 national achievement levels in math and reading.
At RUSD, students in grades 3-8 are nearly a grade level below 2019 achievement levels in math and about a quarter of a grade level below 2019 levels in reading. RUSD students are about three grade levels below the 2019 national achievement level in math and 2.65 grade levels below the 2019 national achievement level in reading.
Learning loss has slowed at RUSD since 2022, according to the Education Recovery Scorecard data. While students have recovered about 6% of a grade level in reading since 2022 (compared to 2019 achievement levels), average math achievement fell 2% of a grade level in math during that same period.
[caption id="attachment_609563" align="alignleft" width="300"]
Janell Decker, chief academic officer at Racine Unified School District. Submitted photo.[/caption]
Decker said student achievement growth in her district is outpacing that of some ‘Big 5’ school districts, which include RUSD, MPS, KUSD, Madison Metropolitan School District and Green Bay Area Public School District. RUSD is the fifth largest public school district in the state and serves about 16,000 students.
Decker, who has worked for RUSD for 17 years, said the district still has a way to go to raise student achievement levels up to pre-pandemic levels.
“We are getting there,” Decker said. “We did have a lot further to go, though. The barriers that we had in place, things such as lack of internet, lack of devices, things that took us a little bit more time to get into, and then all the barriers of job loss and not having anyone at home to support, things like that. It really, really took a toll on us as one of the larger school districts.”
[caption id="attachment_609566" align="alignleft" width="300"]
Kristopher Keckler, chief information officer at Kenosha Unified School District. Submitted photo.[/caption]
KUSD students in grades 3-8 are nearly three-quarters of a grade level below 2019 levels in math and a full grade level below 2019 levels in reading. Since 2022, student achievement in math has recovered about 8% of a grade level but student achievement in reading has continued to decline, according to the Education Recovery Scorecard data. KUSD is the third largest public school district in Wisconsin, serving more than 18,700 students.
“We have not fully recovered and still have challenges,” said Kristopher Keckler, chief information officer at KUSD.
In 2019, achievement levels for 3-8th grade students at KUSD were on par with the national average in reading and less than a quarter of a grade level behind in math.
“Pre-COVID, we knew that our reading and math scores were still at the lower end, and were already struggling with it, so the pandemic certainly didn’t help,” Keckler said.
Measuring learning loss and recovery
Between a data gap in standardized test scores — since many students didn’t take the tests during COVID — and new cut scores on the Forward Exam, data components to track learning loss have not been consistent over the past five years.
The Forward Exam is a statewide standardized assessment that many K-12 students in Wisconsin take each year. The math and English Language Arts portions of the test are typically administered to students in grades 3-8. Students in grades 4 and 8 additionally complete the science and social studies portions of the test. The Forward Exam’s social studies test is also administered to 10th grade students.
Based on the Forward Exam results, some schools and subgroups of students within RUSD are reaching pre-pandemic achievement levels, Decker said. But there’s uncertainty because of the test’s cut score changes. Keckler similarly said a jump in scores among KUSD’s third grade students on the Forward Exam may be partially attributed to the test’s new cut scores.
In June, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction announced that it would begin using new terminology for the academic performance levels on standardized test scores. The terms “advanced,” “proficient,” “basic” and “below basic” have been renamed to “advanced,” “meeting,” “approaching” and “developing.”
With the terminology changes came new cut scores for these academic performance levels for both the Forward Exam and the ACT, a national test widely used to determine college and career readiness. The Forward Exam results for math and ELA are now reported on a four-digit score scale. These portions of the test were previously on a three-digit score scale. The change in scaling makes the most recent results incomparable to previous years. When DPI released the Forward Exam results for the 2023-‘24 school year in October, scores were generally higher across the board.
“We can’t necessarily be for sure, because the stakes kind of changed,” Decker said. “But we do know from ACT scores and our state report card system, which kind of ranks how well we are doing, and things like attendance, graduation rate, performance on standardized tests. We’ve been going up for the past two years. We’re showing really good progress in all areas, but we’re not settled.”
As an alternative to the Forward Exam, some schools are looking to other assessments when trying to make more consistent year-to-year comparisons. This includes the NWEA MAP Growth assessment, which KUSD administers to students in grades 1-8.
Milwaukee College Prep, an MPS-authorized network of public charter schools serving about 2,000 students, administers the MAP assessment to its K5-8th grade students. MCP students complete the MAP assessment in the fall, winter and spring.
[caption id="attachment_609572" align="alignleft" width="300"]
Al Keith, CEO of Milwaukee College Prep. Submitted photo.[/caption]
“The big piece of this, where we’re looking at the pandemic learning loss, is looking at our assessment data,” said Al Keith, CEO of MCP. “We utilize a number of different things here, some of it changes depending on what grade band they’re in or what grade level they’re in. But large and short, we’re looking at literacy as a huge, huge, huge focus and priority here.”
In recent years, MCP students have generally not been meeting the national standards for growth on the MAP assessment, Keith said. But this year, seven grade levels now meet national growth standards for ELA, and all grade levels meet those standards in math.
For many of MCP’s current third, fourth and fifth grade students, the pandemic shaped the early days of their school experience. That band of grade levels fell “considerably below” expectations on the MAP assessment last year but have since recovered substantially, Keith said. This year’s third graders, for example, have grown to exceed national growth norms on the test.
“It’s nothing short of remarkable, and I can’t say enough about the work that the team here puts in to make sure our kids are being successful,” Keith said.
To help gauge recovery among its students, MCP has also been looking at behavior and culture metrics such as attendance, suspensions and disciplinary referrals.
“They’ve been taken out of the school setting during that COVID time for so long,” Keith said. “For a great chunk of our scholars, those were the very first years of school that they had, and so just understanding how school works, what school expectations are, has been a challenge for a lot of scholars, not just here at MCP, in the City of Milwaukee, but across the country.”
Marquette University High School, a private school in Milwaukee serving over 900 students, has seen the effects of COVID learning loss through lower test scores — particularly in math — on its entrance exam. As part of the admissions process for MUHS, eighth grade students complete the Scholastic Testing Service’s High School Placement Test. High schools nationwide use the test for student placement.
[caption id="attachment_609567" align="alignleft" width="300"]
Jeff Monday, principal of Marquette University High School. Submitted photo.[/caption]
“We recognized that there was going to be a lot that was needed in terms of bringing students back to the level of performance that we would expect for them in their high school years,” MUHS principal Jeff Monday said.
In 2019, the average composite percentile of students applying to MUHS was 56. The average dropped three percentage points in 2020, with over 100 fewer students taking the test. Last year, the percentile score of students applying to MUHS fell further to 51. While the entrance scores have remained lower than they were before the pandemic, the math scores have improved, Monday said.
Despite lower scores on the placement test, MUHS students’ grade point averages have returned to pre-pandemic levels, and ACT scores have also improved. Last semester also saw the lowest percent of students below a 2.3 GPA that the school has ever seen, Monday said.
“It’s a result of the classroom teachers really responding well to students academic needs in the classrooms, and it’s a result of the good work that’s taking place in responding to students that have academic needs and providing interventions to those students in increasing their skills so that they’re now performing at a higher level,” Monday said. “We think that the learning service faculty have had an impact as well as the classroom teachers across the school.”
Retaining academic support
MUHS used some of the $1.6 million federal COVID relief funding it received through the Emergency Assistance to Non-Public Schools program to hire learning service personnel and academic support staff.
“We had so much success with the program that when the funds expired, as a school, we committed ourselves to retaining positions in learning services, really to respond to students’ individual learning needs and do all that we can to improve student skills and overall proficiencies,” Monday said.
MUHS fundraised to create an endowment in order to help maintain its learning services department after the COVID relief funds expired. The learning services positions have also been included in the school’s annual budget. This has required some cuts on administrative costs and other budget restructuring so that the positions could be kept, Monday said.
Other schools — including those of RUSD, KUSD and MCP — similarly hired additional staff with federal COVID relief dollars.
RUSD received approximately $81.4 million from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund. The district had until September 2024 to spend those ESSER funds. The district prioritized use of this funding to support early literacy, and as a result, the district’s reading scores in some grade levels have generally experienced greater recovery than math scores, Decker said. Going forward, the district has prioritized middle school math attainment.
“We had a ways to go for math too, and our focus of our funding and our additional staff was really put into literacy and not necessarily math,” Decker said. “But we are seeing gains in math. Particularly, I believe sixth grade math is seeing some nice progress, so we’re happy with that.”
Not all of the COVID relief funding could be used to support academics. RUSD had to direct funding towards hiring social workers, counselors and mental health support, as well as security, Decker said.
The district hired additional staff that supported curriculum adoptions aiming to provide more hands-on learning experiences for students, but the district can no longer support all of those extra hands, Decker said.
“It’s hard for us to maintain that now that that funding is gone, and especially because the state hasn’t been keeping up with inflation in terms of their funding to the districts,” Decker said. “Those extra hands that can work individually with kids or even in small groups with kids to slow down or to speed up content, we aren’t going to have that capacity as much as we did prior. But that was one thing that we had to try to build some of the skills that we saw were lost.”
Aside from expired COVID relief funding, RUSD currently faces a projected $24 million budget deficit that has led to staff cuts and other reductions. The district has a $190 million operational referendum on the April 1 ballot to help prevent more cuts.
KUSD, which received $72 million in COVID relief funding, proposed a similar operational referendum in February. The referendum failed to pass. It would have helped to ensure the district could hold onto some of the staff, such as interventionists, KUSD hired as support during the pandemic, Keckler said. As a result of the failed referendum, KUSD plans to increase class sizes for the 2025-26 school year. That would essentially increase the workload for staff.
In transitioning away from the expired relief funds last year, KUSD made it a priority to keep some of the academic support positions for the current school year, but “at the expense of something else,” Keckler said.
At a time when many KUSD students are not achieving grade level expectations, moving forward without the relief funding that had previously been directed toward learning loss will be difficult, Keckler said. The district had also directed funds to address the achievement gap for students of color and students who are considered economically disadvantaged.
“To say that we saw a little bit of improvement with math and really not so much with reading after we threw tens of millions of dollars at this thing, and now that resource is gone, doesn’t paint an outlook that we’re going to be able to make this turn unless we make some other major changes,” Keckler said. “And we can’t do it alone. Parents have to be part of this equation.”
‘Maybe another five years’
When considering test score trends and funding challenges, the timeline of COVID learning loss recovery remains uncertain for schools in the region.
“I would say it’s going to take even more time, maybe another five years even, to get back to a consistent upward trajectory that we can all feel comfortable and confident in saying that it’ll stick,” Decker said.
Following the failed referendum, learning loss recovery at KUSD looks to not have “a rosy future,” said Keckler, who has spent nearly 27 years with the district.
“Kenosha will still put its best efforts that it can towards educating the student population,” Keckler said. “If the approach is that you have an awesome, great quality teacher that has a wealth of resources at their disposal — whether it be other personnel support in the building, or teaching strategies or in student information systems — they are the greatest asset that we can have to deal with that.”
At MCP, full academic recovery could take up to four more years, but “it’s hard to say,” Keith said.
“Every scholar is going to have a different experience here at school, and they’ve also had a different experience through the pandemic,” Keith said. “We are fully committed to doing everything we can to make sure those kiddos are getting what they need to recover.”
