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The pandemic’s disruptions have only exacerbated many social, economic, and cultural fault lines, and so, learning recovery programs must focus on quality and equity at both the individual and systems level.

Student and adult sitting in a classroom.

(Photo courtesy of Lee Pesky Learning Center)

As our education systems move from scrambling to adapt to school closures and distance learning towards something approaching normality, many are asking questions about how to recover what was lost. How have children been impacted by this unprecedented gap in their learning? Will there be long-term effects? Will they suffer socially and emotionally from the “COVID slide”? And what can be done to make up for lost ground?

While these concerns are valid—and vast amounts of federal funding have been allocated to the effort—gaps in academic outcomes are nothing new for many of our children. Children of color, from underserved communities, and those who face learning challenges, have always been subject to a persistent gap in reading outcomes relative to white and more affluent peers, a systemic failure that contributes to our country’s dismal reading proficiency record: In 2019, only 40 percent of all American fourth-graders and eighth-graders were proficient in reading, but 45 percent of white students are proficient compared to just 18 percent of Black students and 23 percent of Hispanic students. And unless learning recovery programs focus on quality and equity at both the individual student and systems level, they run the risk of exacerbating these kinds of education opportunity gap, as well as adding to the disparity in access to quality schools and the resources that all children need to be successful.

Obstacles to learning can be genetic or biological in origin—as with neurologically based learning disabilities like dyslexia, dysgraphia, and ADHD—but they can also be environmental. Children, particularly students of color, who attend poor-quality schools in low-income areas; students who are English learners; students who have experienced trauma; or students who live at the intersection of one or more of these categories can confront significant learning challenges that will limit their potential if not addressed. Opportunity gaps often lead to disparate outcomes, which are too often dismissed as failures of achievement.

Education nonprofits can play a significant role in our nation’s efforts to meaningfully support underserved students, supporting teachers with reading instruction approaches proven to be more effective for most children in the classroom. Lee Pesky Learning Center (LPLC) in Boise, Idaho, offers an example of how a small nonprofit has been able to make a measurable and sustainable difference in reading outcomes, with an impact far beyond its footprint.

For example, when schools moved to online teaching in 2020, it was clear that young learners who were already struggling would be the most negatively impacted. For underserved Latinx students, many of whom are English learners, learning to read was already a challenge, and this would only be exacerbated by remote instruction. So in June 2020, we started our newest program, Pathways to Literacy, to address this critical need in our community, targeting first-grade students of the Latinx community at no cost to their families. To provide one-on-one tutoring in foundational reading skills to students, we recruited Spanish-speaking tutors who were able to communicate with students’ families to coordinate the program, and who—though they taught in English—could use Spanish as needed to support students’ vocabulary and comprehension development. We also provided families with early literacy materials in Spanish, giving families the opportunity to support their children’s literacy development in Spanish, as research shows that developing literacy in one’s native language makes literacy development in a second language (like English) an easier process.

The Pathways program is based on the principles of a broader initiative spearheaded by LPLC in 2008 to provide training and coaching to early elementary teachers, the Idaho Early Literacy Program (IELP). For more than 10 years, we have worked with preschool through third grade teachers across the state to improve early reading instruction and students’ reading outcomes. When schools first closed in March 2020, the training team at LPLC quickly pivoted from our in-person coaching model to focus on supporting teachers who suddenly had to figure out how to teach online: Our training team created and shared countless online teaching materials and tips accompanied by short videos that modeled practices.