Richmond Times-Dispatch: Levar Stoney: To combat learning loss, local and state leaders must rise to the challenge

Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney

At some point, all 50 states closed schools to slow the spread of COVID-19. In Richmond, the public school system remained closed to in-person learning for the 2020-21 school year; it was one of the last divisions in Virginia to return to in-person learning when the doors opened during the 2021-22 academic year.

As someone who was excited to learn every day and viewed school as a place of refuge and protection when I was a kid, I cannot imagine how difficult this must have been on our students academically, socially and emotionally.

The academic impact of pandemic school closures has been well-documented, and it’s stark. As reported by The 74, National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, outcomes revealed that COVID negated decades of investment in public education. According to the Education Recovery Scorecard’s analysis of NAEP data, students at Richmond Public Schools lost 1.65 years of math and 1.45 years of reading instruction from 2019 to 2022. Moreover, the Education Recovery Scorecard estimates that the losses would lead to mean lost income (over a lifetime of earnings) of $42,744 per K-12 student in RPS. And while all students lost ground since 2019, the pandemic exacerbated the gap between lower- and higher-performing students — with our students experiencing poverty suffering the most.

If not addressed expeditiously, learning loss has the potential to be the most inequitable consequence of the pandemic.

We do not have a choice. We must act. And luckily for our school districts, the solutions are clear. Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research identified four critical interventions to appropriately respond to learning loss: tutoring, double math, summer school and an extended school year.

In 2021, Superintendent Jason Kamras proposed leveraging federal relief dollars to implement an innovative approach to year-round school that would have added 40 instructional days for the lowest-performing 5,000 students while providing compensation for teachers working extra days. The new calendar was to be implemented in the 2022-23 school year.

After reviewing the research and hearing from Richmond families, I championed this proposal. Unfortunately, I was one of few voices advocating for its adoption and it eventually failed to get approval from the Richmond School Board. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was right to chastise politicians when he wrote in The Wall Street Journal that “the collective shrug from both parties is a disgrace.” Other elected leaders in Richmond and Virginia stayed silent — even our Republican governor, who campaigned on commitments to education reform but offered no support to districts like Richmond, where it was needed the most.

Superintendent Kamras, as he has done since he took the helm of RPS in 2018, maintained focus. As documented in Pro Publica, Kamras revised his approach and proposed a pilot program to add 20 days at a few schools in the city. After securing the support of a handful of principals and teachers, Kamras took the proposal to the School Board. On Monday, July 24, Cardinal Elementary School and Fairfield Court Elementary School reopened to students four weeks before the rest of the district’s first day.

This school year, 1,000 RPS students will benefit from an additional 20 days of critical instruction and resources — one of the only school districts in the commonwealth to do so. This is a step in the right direction. But RPS cannot settle. RPS must take the next step and include more schools in this initiative until every single child who needs it can benefit from an extended school year.

Furthermore, it is time the commonwealth of Virginia steps up to assist Richmond, and other school districts, in this endeavor. This will take an “all hands on deck” approach from the local, state and federal governments. We cannot and should not only rely on local funds to address necessary interventions to address learning loss.

Unfortunately, even post-pandemic, and with a looming fiscal cliff, Virginia’s funding formula retains Great Recession-era cost-cutting measures. Earlier this month, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission presented its report on the cost of education in Virginia. JLARC found that Virginia school divisions receive less K-12 funding per student than the national average, the regional average and the average of Virginia’s five bordering states. Virginia divisions receive, on average, 14% less per student than those in other states. Meanwhile, Virginia school divisions are spending $6.6 billion more than the state’s funding formula declares necessary to provide a quality education.

This is unacceptable. The commonwealth has underfunded our public schools for decades, and our children bear the consequences of that inaction — especially when compounded with learning loss.

Education is the great equalizer, which is why now, more than ever before, politicians, policymakers and community leaders must put everything else aside and focus on our kids. We must use every resource at our disposal and leave no opportunity on the table to help our kids succeed. We do not have any other choice. It’s our responsibility to act now, before it’s too late.

Read the original op-ed here.