What Are Our Learning Gains?

WHAT ARE OUR LEARNING GAINS? By Professor Steve Mark Advisor to Horizons

Throughout the pandemic, especially in the early months, we heard a lot about “learning loss,” which, as the Great Schools Partnership explains, refers to “any specific or general loss of knowledge and skills or to reversals in academic progress, most commonly due to extended gaps or discontinuities in a student’s education.” What had students missed out on as a result of the emergency pivot to online and hybrid education, the adjustments we have had to make over the last couple of years to keep everyone safe? I had noticed that, while many students had surely struggled at times, they had also learned a great deal they might not have otherwise. As literacy education professor Rachael Gabriel has written, “Learning is never lost, though it may not always be ’found’ on pre-written tests of pre-specified knowledge or preexisting measures of pre-coronavirus notions of achievement.” I wanted the staff to have a chance to share what learning they had found, what they had gained. This section, then, focuses on skills they’ve developed or improved as a result of pandemic learning and these skills are helping them to be stronger, more effective students today.