Coronavirus and You - Page 637

On October 26 2022 20:09 BlackJack wrote:
National testing called “The nations report card” that routinely tests 4th and 8th graders shows massive declines in education during the pandemic. Something like only 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 are proficient in math and reading if I remember correctly. It also widened the gaps between white students and black and Latino students with white students being more likely to have access to personal laptops, good internet connections, quiet environments etc.

We are also seeing many medical pediatric groups sound the alarm on a pediatric mental health crisis that has unfolded in the country. Depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts have gone up so much during the pandemic among children that there aren’t enough psychiatric hospitals to handle it. Children are often having to spend several nights sleeping in an Emergency Room while they wait for a bed at a psych hospital to become available.

All around absolutely tragic. Children were asked to sacrifice the most during the pandemic despite to fact that we knew from day 1 that the disease affected children the least.

On October 26 2022 23:20 BlackJack wrote:


Keep the schools open. This study suggests children in Sweden didn’t have the same drop that students in the USA had

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883035522000891

In 2020-2021, real-world data on learning during the pandemic from countries where students have experienced school closures have started to get published (for a systematic review including studies published up until April 31, 2021, see Hammerstein et al., 2021). The studies included in Hammerstein et al. (2021) are from different countries (all from the global north including Australia, except for one study from China) investigating the effect of 7-8 week school closures, and report mixed findings regarding loss in reading attainment in primary grades, with effect sizes ranging from -0.37 SD (Switzerland: Tomasik, Helbling, & Moser, 2021) to +0.04 SD (Australia: Gore et al., 2021): i.e. ranging from the worst-case projections to no negative effect at all). The magnitude of effect on reading due to school closures are dependent on what other measures are in place, such as good access to and knowledge of digital and online solutions, economic support for families during the pandemic, etc. and it is therefore not straightforward to compare results between countries. A few studies have confirmed that school closures did have a particularly negative effect on disadvantaged students (Engzell, Frey, & Verhagen, 2021; Maldonado & De Witte, 2021), low-achieving students (Clark et al., 2021), and younger students (Tomasik et al., 2021).

Sweden made the choice to keep pre-schools, primary schools, and lower secondary schools open very early in the pandemic, and even when upper secondary schools and universities closed and went online, schools for the younger students have been kept in-person throughout the whole COVID-19 pandemic. This choice was in stark contrast to most other comparable countries, including the close Nordic neighbours. Open schools did not necessarily mean that the pandemic did not affect the learning of the youngest students in Sweden, however. The Swedish pandemic strategy included strict recommendations to stay home if the slightest symptoms of illness were present. Increased teacher and student absence and the resulting difficulty with continuity in teaching and learning, as well as the anxiety and stress from experiencing a pandemic might still have affected teaching as well as student learning negatively (Sjögren et al., 2021). One group of students that might have been disproportionally affected are those who need more intense and specialized support in school, such as those with weaker reading abilities or slow reading development. Another group is students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. A lower socioeconomic status and/or being a first-generation immigrant from a low- or middle-income country are associated with a higher risk of getting infected with and dying from COVID-19 in Sweden (Drefahl et al., 2020). Drefahl et al. (2020) point out that explanations might include both residential and occupational risk factors, e.g., multigenerational households and no option to work remotely. Thus, Swedish children from lower-socioeconomic backgrounds had a higher risk of being infected with COVID-19 themselves, and also an increased risk of other pandemic-related stress factors, such as sickness and death in the family, more crowding and potential conflicts at home, and less protective social contacts outside the family (Sjögren et al., 2021).

If, and how, the pandemic has affected student learning in Sweden is unknown, however. In many countries, educational data have not been collected and shared during the pandemic. In Sweden national tests in reading and mathematics in grade 3 were cancelled in spring 2020, and in spring 2021, schools did not have to report the results to Statistics Sweden (SCB), to ease the administrative burden on schools. Thus, no official national data on student progress in reading during the pandemic compared to previous years exist.