Being graded in a pandemic: Could school disruptions have a lasting impact?

Aaralynn Schneider, a sophomore at Harvard High School, was a good student back before COVID-19 meant school was behind a computer screen instead of in person.

“I maintained good grades when we were in person, basically all A’s and B’s. Now I go from B’s to D’s. It’s always at the lower end of the scale. ... I just struggle,” she said.

She’s not alone.

The Northwest Herald has heard from many area students and parents, who say remote and hybrid learning has caused a concerning decline in grades and performance levels over the past year and not for a lack of trying on the part of school staff.

Others have said they’ve been successful in taking adaptive measures to learning in a pandemic, but either way, the idea that the educational impact of COVID-19 could extend beyond the duration of the pandemic is on the minds of many students, parents and educators alike.

“I’ve personally been less engaged because I’m a hands-on learner, so being online and having bigger class sizes is kinda rough,” said Schneider, who expressed appreciation for the teachers who have provided extra support. “I haven’t been able to ask as many questions as I normally would in person.”

Local educators agreed the decreased level of engagement has been the biggest challenge in supporting students over the past year. As the months stretch on, Huntley High School teacher and instructional coach Jack Towne said this has become more and more difficult.

When remote learning began last spring, the Illinois State Board of Education issued guidance directing schools to mark students as incomplete rather than failing and recommended assignment grades be counted only if they would improve a student’s grade.

These recommendations made on March 27 were designed to ensure that ending the 2019-20 school year remotely would not have too much of an impact on grades.

Later, as it became clear that the pandemic would stretch on through the 2020-21 school year, schools went back to counting grades and some students like Schneider have seen a decline on their report cards.

Transitioning back from the state’s initial guidance in the spring does not mean going back to business as usual though, local educators and school district leaders said. As with most everything else, curriculum and grades look a bit different this year, Towne said.

“When I look at what I’m teaching now versus what I’m teaching last year, I’m taking the absolute most important things and that’s what I’m teaching them,” he said. “We’re giving them the most important stuff and we’re cutting things that we can cut, ... so I don’t think that I can compare an A this year to an A last year.”

For this reason, grades don’t look very different than previous years at Huntley High School aside from a dip in the early fall, he said. The school will likely need to continue this more minimalist approach to hitting key learning goals into next year as well so that students remain on track, Towne said.

The percent of Huntley High School students who received at least one failing grade went from 5% last year to a peak of 8% in October and November and then fell back down to 5% shortly thereafter, said Principal Marcus Belin, who said the school is using specific metrics to track abnormalities in students’ grades this year.

The school also had teachers fill out “disengagement forms” to identify students who were not participating effectively in class and responded to that data with calls and check-ins with students and parents, making home visits as needed, he said.

In Crystal Lake-based Community High School District 155, the number of students who received one or more failing grades rose by 3% this fall semester over the same period last year, Superintendent Steve Olson said.

1 new email / you’ve failed try again / I am trying my best, I really am / I can’t take another exam / When will this world go back to normal?

—  An excerpt from a poem written by Ainsley Wehby, a senior at Crystal Lake South High School

District 155 is paying attention to metrics like these alongside changes in enrollment numbers and changes in the number of courses each student is taking, he said. For example, overall enrollment in the district dropped by 150 students this year as some parents opt to educate their children at home or in private schools.

Placing an emphasis on educational goals or “learning targets” over grades has always been the norm in many local elementary schools, Jefferson Elementary School Principal Judy Floeter said.

At Harvard’s Jefferson Elementary, it seems remote learning has exacerbated the challenges experienced by students who were already struggling pre-pandemic, she said. Towne and Belin agreed with this sentiment, saying that students who struggled to stay engaged before seem to find it even harder to do so through a computer screen.

Stories like Schneider’s, however, show that this is not always the case. Crystal Lake resident Mary Klatt has a fourth grader who also is struggling.

“He was the child that I thought would cruise through school and not have any real issues,” Klatt said. “He looked forward to going everyday and picked up on everything very quickly.”

“He hates school now, and I can’t blame him,” she said.

Michael Ammer, the owner of Mathnasium locations in Crystal Lake, Algonquin, South Elgin and Buffalo Grove, said over the past month, inquiries into their math tutoring services have definitely gone up.

“The people looking for information tripled in January, and February is starting out just as strong,” Ammer said. “There’s a lot more going on since the schools kicked back in.”

Ammer’s theory is that with kids going back to school in person, teachers are starting to see how far they’ve fallen behind after months of remote learning. He said while teachers are doing a good job with adapting to online instruction, remote learning could mask problems kids are having because “it’s much easier to get away with things when you’re not live and in person.”

“They were doing the best they could online. It’s just a difficult situation,” Ammer said. “We’ve been seeing out here that the kids are really struggling and are really far behind.”

How students and parents are adapting

When Amy Haskin saw the impact that remote learning was having on the mental health of her son and daughter, both Crystal Lake South High School seniors, she supported them in graduating early after the fall semester.

Their grades weren’t impacted by remote learning, but their motivation and educational growth certainly was, she said.

“They didn’t learn anything new or pivotal in their life,” Haskin said, adding that she does not fault their teachers in any way. “They were very involved students. They were the last kids that I thought would have graduated early. But after going through this whole process, I’m thankful they were able to.”

Jumaria Perkins, a Harvard resident, said she decided to remove her 5-year-old daughter from the district’s pre-kindergarten remote learning program because she felt it wasn’t challenging her daughter enough and only left her feeling frustrated and bored.

Instead, Perkins now is paying for two home-schooling services for her daughter called Brain Pop and Prodigy, she said.

Elizabeth Cline decided to pull her first grader out of District 300′s Lakewood Elementary School after only four days of the “chaos” of remote learning at the beginning of the fall semester, she said.

The family now is paying $700 a month to send him to an in-person private school where he is doing better, but she said they cannot afford to do the same for their younger son.

Klatt said she, too, is paying extra to educate her fourth-grade son this year.

“We are now paying $300 extra per month to get him math help at Mathnasium because he wasn’t picking things up from the screen as easily and he’s so far behind he needs more help than I can do for him,” she said.

How schools and school districts are changing with the times

“It is a little bit more difficult to identify the kids that are struggling,” Towne said. “But what is more difficult is getting them that assistance. That is where the challenge is.”

For the about 46% of Huntley High School students who opted to remain fully remote, the very platform they find difficult to engage with – Zoom – is the only vehicle available to teachers to provide them with extra help, creating a bit of a conundrum, Towne said.

In these scenarios, the school tries to engage parents as much as possible and offers tutoring sessions in the evenings and on Wednesday mornings, Belin said.

He said he is hoping that, as the overall situation of the pandemic improves and as sports and social clubs can resume, students will begin to feel more motivated.

Looking to the future, local school districts have said they will allow for extra review time when students transition between grades over the next few years as a way to make sure the educational disruptions of COVID-19 do not throw students off track in a more enduring way.

Jefferson Elementary School, which houses fourth and fifth graders, will continue to rely on communication between grades to ensure that teachers are sensitive to any students who may have ended the year a bit behind, Floeter said.

Woodstock School District 200 announced a new learning gap plan Tuesday to continue supporting students of all grade levels.

The plan focuses on building skills for students who may be falling behind and making a number of interventions available to students in a targeted, individualized way, according to a presentation of the plan at Tuesday’s school board meeting.

This includes offering a free summer school program for middle school students and a summer program for students transitioning into high school. They will use CARES Act dollars to pay for additional staff to run math and literacy intervention programs and will offer social-emotional support programs at all grade levels, according to the presentation.

“I would say every student is different and that’s my goal – if any student is struggling, we have interventions at play and we can work with them to try to make sure we get their needs,” Superintendent Michael Moan said.

District 155 is allowing students who failed courses in the fall semester to meet with teachers during their free periods to complete missing assignments and receive a passing grade. More than 50 students took advantage of this opportunity, and the district hopes to continue offering this moving forward.

Olson said that COVID-19 has undoubtedly already changed the future of education in our county and our country and the role of educators is to continue supporting students through whatever that may look like.

“I always go back to one word: grace,” Olson said. “Any degree of grace given what we’re all going through and recognizing that we have a standard of excellence here that we want to adhere to, but we also have a standard of humanity that we want to adhere to.”