Regular readers know that I have three areas of interest that frequently occupy my attention: the impact of the pandemic on education, the ever evolving role of AI and technology on teaching and learning, and the strong current of anti-intellectualism in our society.  Well, this summer has been a busy one for all three of these topics; so it’s time for some updates.  We’ll start with the pandemic.

Early on, when COVID was actively disrupting all of our lives, I made some sober predictions about the cost of this disease to our children, and it saddens me to report that it turns out that things are even worse than I had prognosticated.  Teachers are now reporting that many of our littlest ones are arriving at school barely able to speak, that they are unable to remain still for brief periods, and that some do not even to know how to play with others.  Rudimentary pre-school skills such as how to hold a pencil or identify simple shapes (think circle, triangle, etc.) are missing, and caregivers of all kinds are reporting symptoms of anxiety and depression in children as young as four or five.

However, the situation appears even grimmer in our older children.  The gap in national test scores between recent and pre-pandemic scores has actually grown wider than anticipated, and “the gaps are so large that the average eighth-grade would need about nine months of additional schooling to catch up to pre-covid levels in math and about the same extra time to catch up in reading.”  The realities of human development simply do not allow for nine extra months, and so we are confronting an entire cohort of children who will be put at some degree of permanent disadvantage moving forward.  At least the little ones “only” need “2.2 more months of school to make up the reading gaps and 1.3 months for math.”

On the AI and technology front, the status of things is a little less “doom & gloom,” with interesting research about why paper remains better than screens.  The data about the advantages of handwriting versus typing when notetaking has been known for some time, but it turns out that even the simple act of reading something that is on paper versus reading the exact same thing on a screen produces better brain engagement and comprehension.  Scientists around the world have been analyzing the brains of early elementary age children with EEG and fMRI, and it turns out that “when children read on paper, there was more power in the high-frequency brainwaves” associated with higher-order cognitive function.  Why the brain acts differently between paper and screens remains a mystery, but that it does is now documented by multiple studies.

Of course, the creep factor of AI remains, with a company in China now offering to make avatars of dead loved-ones so that you can continue to “communicate” with the deceased.  But that’s a different issue for another day.  For now, “pencil & paper” are clearly winning, and those of us working with children simply need to pay attention accordingly.

Finally, it demoralizes me to have to report that the ACT has now made the science section of their exam optional and have even reduced their core exam by 44 questions, with shorter reading passages.  While I am not a fan of standardized tests, with their well-documented biases and other problematic features, I am also not a fan of dumbing things down even further in our general society than we already have.  The ACT rationalizes their decision by arguing that with this new flexibility—students can now sign up for four different varients of the exam (two of which do still include science)—that students can focus on their strengths and showcase their abilities in the best possible light while avoiding the fatigue of the longer, original exam.  But I am confident that the proverbial “bottom line” (pun intended) is simply that fewer students were signing up for the test, and that this was the organization’s way of trying to keep the dollars flowing—all at the expense of actually demanding that our children actually know something.

Well, that’s it for now.  For those of us in the classroom, important reminders of the challenges facing us as we adapt to the children in front of us (not the ones we might wish were in front of us), and for those not in the classroom, important reminders of matters impacting the society in which we all live.

Until next time.

References

Archie, A. (July 19, 2024) The Science Section of the ACT Exam Will Now Be Optional.  NPR.  https://www.npr.org/2024/07/19/nx-s1-5045587/act-exam-test-science-optional.

Barshay, J. (June 24, 2024) This Is Your Brain.  This is Your Brain on Screens.  The Hechinger Report.  https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-neuroscience-paper-v-screens-reading/.

Feng, E. (July 11, 2024) Chinese Companies Offer to “Resurrect” Dead Loved Ones.  It Raises Questions.  NPR Morning Edition.  https://www.npr.org/2024/06/17/nx-s1-5001751/chinese-companies-offer-to-resurrect-dead-loved-ones-it-raises-questions.

Meckler, L. & Lumpkin, L. (July 23, 2024)  Four Years After COVID, Many Students Still Losing Ground.  The Washington Post.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/07/23/covid-test-scores-learning-loss-absenteeism/.

Miller, C.C. & Mervosh, S. (July 1, 2024) The Youngest Pandemic Children Are Now in School, and Struggling.  The New York Times.  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/01/upshot/pandemic-children-school-performance.html.