COVIDs Continuing Impact on Reading Scores

[Anonymous]

Huge increase in EdTech use since covid. Lack of child care/preschool during pandemic meant kids supervised by screens. Smartphones and tablets becoming more and more addictive.

[Anonymous]

Also remember that early intervention was virtual for a good while during the pandemic. When therapists don't see kids in person they miss stuff. Definitely missed stuff with my kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of children, even children of highly educated, high SES parents, are coming to school without foundational skills—age appropriate self-regulation, fine motor skills that support writing, the ability to engage in productive struggle. It seems like parents are living higher stress lives and less able to engage with their children. We’re also seeing a LOT more anxiety in kids, which is affecting attention and memory in the classroom.

It may have to do with shifting social norms and trauma from the pandemic, but it has nothing to do with schools having been closed.

This is not the pandemic. This is the bad preschools who parented to do play based learning and the kids don’t learn the foundations there. Kids need academic based at least at age four.

Disagree. There is good data on play-based learning. My kids went to an entirely play-based preschool and they both ended up in FCPS AAP in 3rd grade and are both at the top of their classes in HS taking very rigorous course loads.

There are some good programs but most aren’t. We left one for an academic and the majority of kids were reading or prereading, doing basic math and more before K. Many of us supplemented the homework at home.

The curriculum at schools suck. Many don’t teach the basics like grammar, vocabulary and math facts like we got.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lots of speech delays and attention issues in my kindergarten students the last few years. Definite deficits in non verbal communication too. I’ve had to do lessons on how to play with the blocks and other toys I have in my classroom. It’s sad that kids don’t know how to play because their parents hand over the devices to them.

I had a conference this week where the mom handed her 5 yr old his own phone and he swiped around for 15 minutes not spending more than a minute or two looking at any one video or game. Yep, that is their attention span these days.

Doubtful. Kids have delays all the time even before Covid. Even if parents do everything right they can still have delays. I’d hand my kid a device in that situation. From 2-5 they had daily speech therapy, sometimes twice a day. After that three times a week after school. School and teachers did nothing to help. Stop posting and ask for an evaluation and speech therapy for those kids. Devices can be helpful if used in the right way.

I’ve never had to refer 50% of my class for speech screenings before last year. This year is around 40%. Nobody is talking to the kids at home. Nobody talk to them even at pick up/drop off. Their parents are on the phone. Some parents hand their phone or another phone to the kid at pick up. Sometimes we have huge meltdowns in the morning when parents take their phones away from the kids when kids enter school. It’s insane.

[Anonymous]

I think this is a shift in parenting problem. Day cares were open during a lot of the pandemic. There may have been some COVID distractions, but I think for a lot of kids, the day to day was the same.

What I have seen is parents struggling to interact with their kids. When we had post COVID asynchronous school days, parents struggled to come up with a few things to do to complete "school" for the day. For example, with our young elementary school student at the time, we read some picture books together, played a card game that involved math, and wrote some post cards to families. Nothing big. Talking with other parents showed me how much they struggle with these things. I would say we are in a generally college + educated, UMC area. I don't think they ask their kids about their day or to explain a story.

[Anonymous]

It is the handheld computers we have constant access to along with the shift away from reading books. Is there data about parents reading aloud to kids? This has been known to be valuable in child development.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think this is a shift in parenting problem. Day cares were open during a lot of the pandemic. There may have been some COVID distractions, but I think for a lot of kids, the day to day was the same.

What I have seen is parents struggling to interact with their kids. When we had post COVID asynchronous school days, parents struggled to come up with a few things to do to complete "school" for the day. For example, with our young elementary school student at the time, we read some picture books together, played a card game that involved math, and wrote some post cards to families. Nothing big. Talking with other parents showed me how much they struggle with these things. I would say we are in a generally college + educated, UMC area. I don't think they ask their kids about their day or to explain a story.

+1 - I am in a red state where my 3 kids all went to camp, school and daycare, unmasked, outside of the March-May 2020 closures, and even here, the reading scores have slumped. Obviously life was not totally normal here, either, but enough already with the Covid blaming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of children, even children of highly educated, high SES parents, are coming to school without foundational skills—age appropriate self-regulation, fine motor skills that support writing, the ability to engage in productive struggle. It seems like parents are living higher stress lives and less able to engage with their children. We’re also seeing a LOT more anxiety in kids, which is affecting attention and memory in the classroom.

It may have to do with shifting social norms and trauma from the pandemic, but it has nothing to do with schools having been closed.

This is not the pandemic. This is the bad preschools who parented to do play based learning and the kids don’t learn the foundations there. Kids need academic based at least at age four.

That is a crazy take - kids need healthy play at that age. The academic-oriented preschools are a new phenomenon. Things that used to be taught in 1st grade are now trickling down to being taught in pre-K, at the expense of appropriate development.

[Anonymous]

Educational research is so flawed! Correlation is not causation and it drives me nuts that there isn’t more research done on the myriad of societal changes that occurred over the past 10 years that could have contributed to declining reading scores with subsequent studies attempting to control and isolate the reasons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think this is related to Covid at all. People need to learn how to read on paper and not on e-tablets.

Me too. I also think parents could have filled in the gaps at home. Some kids actually dud much better with reading and math because they had time at home to study with parents and other resources.

This. My kids were in 2nd and 4th during the shutdown and then 3rd and 5th during the following year when we homeschooled instead of doing virtual school. They got so far ahead. I would say they were above average students to start, but not geniuses. With daily direct instruction and consistent work, they flourished.

Kids are falling farther and farther behind because they aren’t doing much at school. It’s wasted time and apps. They aren’t reading books in school, and are not reading them at home either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Educational research is so flawed! Correlation is not causation and it drives me nuts that there isn’t more research done on the myriad of societal changes that occurred over the past 10 years that could have contributed to declining reading scores with subsequent studies attempting to control and isolate the reasons.

Yeah, it isn’t Covid. It’s the lack of reading and instruction, both inside and outside of school. Most kids are not reading high quality literature in their past time. They certainly aren’t at school.

[Anonymous]

There aren’t many bookstores around and libraries in many urban areas are filled with homeless people. Kids don’t see their parents reading books. No one is reading to them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Educational research is so flawed! Correlation is not causation and it drives me nuts that there isn’t more research done on the myriad of societal changes that occurred over the past 10 years that could have contributed to declining reading scores with subsequent studies attempting to control and isolate the reasons.

Yeah, it isn’t Covid. It’s the lack of reading and instruction, both inside and outside of school. Most kids are not reading high quality literature in their past time. They certainly aren’t at school.

I agree. I can see how COVID can still affect social skills, speech, emotional maturity, but I would attribute impacted reading scores to instruction, screen use at school, and graphic novels

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lots of speech delays and attention issues in my kindergarten students the last few years. Definite deficits in non verbal communication too. I’ve had to do lessons on how to play with the blocks and other toys I have in my classroom. It’s sad that kids don’t know how to play because their parents hand over the devices to them.

I had a conference this week where the mom handed her 5 yr old his own phone and he swiped around for 15 minutes not spending more than a minute or two looking at any one video or game. Yep, that is their attention span these days.

Doubtful. Kids have delays all the time even before Covid. Even if parents do everything right they can still have delays. I’d hand my kid a device in that situation. From 2-5 they had daily speech therapy, sometimes twice a day. After that three times a week after school. School and teachers did nothing to help. Stop posting and ask for an evaluation and speech therapy for those kids. Devices can be helpful if used in the right way.

I’ve never had to refer 50% of my class for speech screenings before last year. This year is around 40%. Nobody is talking to the kids at home. Nobody talk to them even at pick up/drop off. Their parents are on the phone. Some parents hand their phone or another phone to the kid at pick up. Sometimes we have huge meltdowns in the morning when parents take their phones away from the kids when kids enter school. It’s insane.

You don’t understand speech issues. It has nothing to do with someone talking to them at home. It also could be hearing issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There aren’t many bookstores around and libraries in many urban areas are filled with homeless people. Kids don’t see their parents reading books. No one is reading to them.

They don’t read at school.