The pandemic has caused deep, “horrifying” learning losses for Dallas children, and underscored the disparities among Black students, according to new DISD results.
Half of all Dallas ISD students experienced learning loss in math during disruptions caused by COVID-19, and nearly a third slipped in reading, according to the district’s analysis of start-of-year assessments given to students in September and October.
DISD’s Board of Trustees will receive a more detailed briefing Thursday on the test results.
A glimpse of that data was presented last week to a committee discussing Superintendent Michael Hinojosa’s performance goals. And its forecast was concerning.
“We obviously have to contend with horrifying losses of learning,” trustee Dan Micciche said last week.
The assessments -- called the Measure of Academic Progress, or MAP test -- highlighted significant gaps between how DISD students performed on the last standardized test administered by the state in spring 2019 and what students heading in to those same grades knew to start the 2020-21 school year.
The results highlighted the vast disparities between Black and Latino students and the rest of the district. In math, for example, the percentages of Black students reaching the “meets grade level” projections ranged from 7.5% (in fourth grade) to 17.9% (in eighth grade) compared with a range of 41.8% to 61.2% for white students in the district.
The results were “a stark reminder that we have a long way to go to ensure equitable access for learning opportunities in the district,” said Derek Little, deputy chief of academics.
In math, in nearly every elementary and middle school grade level where the state’s tests are given, students heading into school this fall were far less likely to show a good understanding of the subject material to be ready for the next grade, sometimes by as much as 30 percentage points.
For example, 54% of DISD fifth graders reached the “meets grade level” threshold in math on the 2019 State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) tests. But only 24% of this year’s fifth-graders would hit that mark on STAAR, officials projected, based on results from the MAP test.
One of the reasons to account for such a slide, administrators said, was that students were unlikely to use math concepts when out of school.
Reading scores were lower in four of six elementary and middle school grade levels, but to a lesser degree. The biggest gaps came in fifth grade, where incoming students were 21 percentage points behind their peers in 2019.
DISD needs to work as quickly as it can to help students make up the academic losses, but it won’t be easy, Little said.
“The thought around the district was that [learning loss] would be bad,” Little said. “But I think we are facing the reality that our students came back from school closures in a very different place than they were in last March.”
During last week’s committee meeting, Little drew parallels between those affected by the pandemic and students who were displaced by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Even though many of those students returned to a typical classroom environment in short order -- moving from New Orleans to Houston or Dallas -- some were set back one or two grade levels because of the traumatic disruption.
While school has resumed this fall, what it means to be in a classroom -- with social distancing measures and hybrid schedules -- and the context of learning -- a mix of online instruction and in-person classes -- are much different than 10 months ago, Little said. Combine those challenges with the lagging attendance and engagement for some students, and that means catching kids up quickly will be an especially difficult task, Little told trustees.
Little acknowledged that there were some challenges when comparing two different tests over two different time horizons.
The MAP test is relatively new for the district. It was given last year for the first time in DISD -- at the middle of the school year -- but to a smaller group of students and without the importance that the tests now carry, Little said.
“We just don’t have all the three data points dating back to last spring, so we’re making our best guesses given what we do have,” Little said.
The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
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