In this episode, Phil Hill, Jeanette Wiseman, and Kevin Kelly look back at 2020, identifying lessons learned, and look forward to 2021. Are there positive developments to expect?

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Hosts:

• Phil Hill
• Jeanette Wiseman
• Kevin Kelly

Transcription:

Phil: Welcome to the last COVID Transitions podcast episode of the year. It’s been a very interesting year for us and I have enjoyed exploring the podcast area and working with you two. I’m Phil Hill and I’m here with Kevin Kelly and Jeanette Wiseman.

I guess the good news for listeners of the podcast, thanks to the pandemic, there is going to be more in 2021. Turns out this is not just a 2020 subject. The bad news is this is going to go at least until 2021, not the podcast, but the pandemic that we need to worry about. It’s great to talk to you two. Are you guys looking forward to the holidays?

Kevin and Jeanette: Yes.

Phil: Good.

With the year end, I wanted to do not quite one of the typical blog post year-in-review top 10. We’re not going to do that. I think it would be worthwhile that if we take a look back [00:01:00] at the year 2020, Covid and how it’s affected primarily higher education, but also K-12, and what we think we’re going to be looking for in 2021. What should we expect? This is somewhat of a retrospective look ahead podcast episode.

Let me get started with the question of as we look back at the full year, all the data we’ve reviewed about learning, about how to adapt, about enrollment, everything that we’ve covered and looked at. Let’s start with this. What strikes you as the biggest negative impact of COVID-19 on education, in general? We’ll start out negative because the pandemic is negative. Jeanette, if you just have to look back and say what’s the most negative thing, impact of Covid, what would you say it is?

Jeanette: I would say that the leaving behind [00:02:00] of students of need, either from an economic standpoint, from students of color, any child that had any kind of learning disability or challenge were not really served at all during the Covid transition to online, or not served as well I think.

Phil: One thing I would add to that is it seems to be a little bit different between K-12 and higher ed. In K-12, we’re getting much more of a learning loss type of view. That even if they’re in school underrepresented groups are having learning loss. Whereas in higher ed, it’s not quite as clear. It almost seems to be as much enrollment or I can’t participate in class at all. I don’t know if there’s a precise way to do it, but it seems like it varies depending on which level the students are on, how big the impact is.

Kevin: I would say that’s only [00:03:00] because the K-12 environment does formal testing and regular intervals. That’s something that you can gauge that learning loss pretty easily, whereas higher ed needs to wait for the end of term grades to come in. In the next couple of weeks we will actually be able to tell. The research that I’m doing with different community colleges and universities, we are collecting that data for the same issue that Jeanette raised, is the one that I would pick that equity issues that have been amplified by the pandemic are the the biggest takeaway for 2020.

With the oxymoron that you presented, a retrospective look ahead, Phil, we really need to think about how do we address those more comprehensively. We’ve already got the Cal State system talking about going face to face in fall. A lot of people’s energy is going to be starting to think about how do you make safe environments and stuff like that. We’re not done making [00:04:00] the online experience palatable and not just accessible, but usable for online students in the spring. I think we need to help institutions think about that now as opposed to already planning for fall of 2021. We need to deal with spring.

Phil: Yes.

I will take a variation because obviously this is one of the most consistent findings we see, is the disparate impact of the pandemic. I’ll do a slightly different one to capture it. It’s a big unknown. Enrollment issues for first time students and higher education, that is going to have a huge negative impact moving forward.

One thing that we’ve seen overall, if you aggregate all enrollment, it wasn’t catastrophic. The way a lot of people looked at it was down four percent for four year [00:05:00] schools, but then you start breaking down the data. Community colleges were much worse and they have a different student population. The thing that jumps out from the data that I don’t know that people predicted, and I don’t think we fully understand how all it’s going to affect us, is that loss of first year students.

I think you’ve seen it anywhere around 20 percent of freshmen just didn’t enter higher education this year. Particularly when you look at community college and disadvantaged students, there’s a lot of questions about whether they will ever get back into college. We’re not just talking about a gap year. I’ll add that one is highly negative, problematic impact of the pandemic.

Kevin: I would say the Venn diagram overlap with the equity challenges based on what you just said about it’s a much bigger issue for community colleges [00:06:00] than for four year private colleges where people have the money to pay, then, yeah, I would say that they’re directly related.

Phil: Yeah, that one’s easy to understand. What’s not as easy to understand is first year versus second year, for example, even within community colleges. Why do we have so much bigger of an enrollment drop for first year students than we did for second year students? That one I don’t think we fully understand.

Kevin: Well, if I were to guess, I would say that’s an increase of the barriers to entry. If you’re already in and you’ve invested a year into your academic goals, that will hopefully help you increase your social mobility and all that, then perhaps that’s what you need to carry you through the next phase of this marathon. If you’re looking at the starting tape and the starter’s pistol goes off but you don’t [00:07:00] feel ready for whatever reason, then maybe you just don’t run the race.

Jeanette: I read a couple of things, more student voices this week saying that. This makes sense for me, I think just a common sense perspective. Some students who had such a really horrible experience when there was an immediate emergency transition to online in the spring felt like they couldn’t learn online. Those graduating seniors have decided to not go back to an online environment for their first year of college because they did so poorly during that transition and felt like they couldn’t learn online, which might have some role play. I don’t know how large. You will see if they decide to go back, if it was just really a gap year for them. I think the fear is that for a lot of those students, trying to start again after taking a break is just that much more of a hurdle for them to overcome.

Phil: I would point [00:08:00] out before we turn this a little bit more positive, that there are additional issues in K-12. I think it’s much more clear cut that we did not handle this well as a society and primarily in the U.S. That’s where we have a lot of our data. 

In K-12, I think there’s a lot more damage to student learning and student morale and all the other factors than there is in higher education. It’s not trying to minimize higher education, but when I read the K through 12 news, it’s universally bad for me.

Kevin: I keep coming back to, we prepared the teachers to the extent we could, but we didn’t prepare the students. How do you prepare a kindergarten student to sit online all day? That’s crazy.

Phil: Yes, that is crazy.

Kevin: I taught preschool and I know how much energy those kids have. To have them sitting in view of a camera for however many hours, even if they’re engaged with their colleagues [00:09:00] and the little things going by on the screen, even even up to eighth grade where their hormones are kicking in and they just need to move around. I don’t know that we’ve done a good job, as you point out, preparing those students to be successful in an online learning situation.

Phil: Well, I don’t want to turn this, what’s unfortunately become political as opposed to public health and decisions. I think there’s other conclusions. It’s not just how do you prepare them online. It raises the question about who should be online. Clearly to me at least, and many of the places I’ve read, the strongest argument for saying we need to get people back in the classroom physically is K through 6. It’s not just how do we do it online? There’s a huge question there.

Let’s try to keep things away from the politics too much and let’s put [00:10:00] away angry Kevin, even though we don’t have angry Kevin today. We really want to go for positive Kevin ad positive Jeanette. Every change has a positive and negative impacts.

As we look back still on the retrospective part, what is going to be that we’ll look back and we’ll say, oh, this is the biggest positive impact of the Covid pandemic and how education has responded to it. We’ll start with you. Happy Kevin, what’s the biggest positive impact? 

Kevin: I would say it’s the focus on pedagogy, the fact that so many faculty members engaged, whether it was willingly or unwillingly in improving their craft, addressing the needs of students.

The three part cycle that I bring up a lot that’s becoming aware of something, taking action and then assessing whether or not it worked properly. I think that [00:11:00] more and more people engaged in that process than ever. You characterize it as we’ve reached the mainstream in that crossing the chasm image on the MindWires website. I would say to me the most positive takeaway is that we’ve engaged people in a process that they either avoided, no pun intended, like the plague or they avoided because they just didn’t have time.

Either way, I think that’s something that can carry over to 2021.

Phil: There’s got to be a blog out there somewhere with “avoid it like the plague” title.

Jeanette, from your perspective, what do you think is going to be the biggest positive?

Jeanette: I have to agree. I mean, I think that faculty and teachers need to be celebrated in ways that I don’t know if they really are. That they moved so quickly to try to teach online to reach their students. The heroics that [00:12:00] I have seen from administrators, from faculty, from the I.T. groups to try to make sure that everyone is learning still and they’re reaching them. Social workers, everyone, I feel like there is such a community that’s been built around education now and to try to further education just kind of sometimes in impossible situations. I feel like that’s the most positive thing I’ve seen come out of this.

Phil: I would have to emphasize that point, something we’ve written about. We’re not just talking about a reaction over the past six to eight months. In particular, who would have predicted that you could shift the entire U.S. education system online in a matter of roughly three to four weeks with so few disasters?

I mean, the long term learning, the enrollment, you were dealing with that, but just the the flexibility [00:13:00] of people to be able to handle that was remarkable.

Kevin and Jeanette: Agreed. Absolutely.

Phil: One thing I would add to major positive impact, and it’s the same issue, but it’s slightly different take, is I think that we have stripped education down much more to the essentials and the essentials of teaching and learning.

Of course, it doesn’t mean I’m arguing for unbundling of education. I’m not trying to get into that trendy thing. It’s not just that more faculty got into pedagogical issues. It’s not just how well they did as a community. I would add to it the fact that we’re so much more focused on teaching and learning as a core mission is a net positive.

I know it makes it difficult with research and scholarly work, but quite honestly, this was a balance between [00:14:00] the three that needed to be adjusted. I think that we have much more focus now on teaching and learning. I think that will have a long range positive impact that might not be positive for people working on research or scholarship, but I think it’s positive overall.

Kevin: Or for some students who are claiming that instructors, because they’re not familiar with online teaching, are increasing the workload beyond what is reasonable, because it’s kind of a knee jerk reaction to, OK, we’re going to be online, that I’m going to make sure you’re earning your grade.

Phil: Yeah.

All right. Now we’ll do the oxymoron application of the retrospective look forward, which Kevin already started. Clearly, we’re still in the pandemic. I mean, we’re spiking higher now, in number of cases, not a number of deaths in the U.S., than we had before, areas of Europe, Korea, so across the world, we’re in a serious phase.

It’s obvious, [00:15:00] even with the remarkable development of vaccines in this time period, that’s not going to have a huge impact on the spring. At least for the next academic term, we’ll still be in a pandemic driven education. We’re reacting to the pandemic and we’re definitely not in a new normal. If we take that is the supposition, which I think it’s pretty easy to do, what are we looking for in the spring as sort of indicators on how well we’re adjusting and improving education? This one I’ll go back to starting with Jeanette. What are you looking for to learn in the spring or most want to understand?

Jeanette: I don’t know what I want to learn about. I think the thing that I’m most concerned about right now, this isn’t really learning, but just the long term effects of the learning gaps that we’re seeing with students with equity issues. That’s [00:16:00] what I’m focused on. I think right now I worry about what’s going to happen to a generation. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to know that by the spring. I think that we can look at enrollment numbers for higher ed, I think especially maybe commitments to freshmen entering college to see what’s potentially bound to happen. I just don’t know if we’re going to know enough. I think it’s going to take years for us to see what the impacts are.

Kevin: Well, I would say that you’re right on there. For myself, I’m interested in seeing what we can learn from these fall results and see if we can apply them in the same rapid transformation methodologies that we used in the spring of last year. Taking those results, making the adjustments, [00:17:00] I’d like to see more on student engagement so that students feel like they’re part of some sort of community of learners as opposed to everybody’s learning alone, just together.

Then I would like to see if we can’t keep the professional development for both the faculty and the students. I guess it wouldn’t be professional for the students, but that cycle hasn’t ended just because we’re doing this for the second full semester in a row.

Phil: If you’d asked me this two months ago, I would say the biggest issue for spring would definitely be retention. Are going to persist from fall into the spring in particular, or students saying, no, I’ve seen it, I’m going to wait it out. I think the more we look at data, it’s a big issue, but it’s not the overwhelming issue.  [00:18:00]

I’ll do two. I’m cheating. One is will we be dealing more effectively with the learning gaps and the disparate impact on student groups, like are we learning we can’t just do synchronous video and then just leave a lot of students who don’t have access leave them behind? Are we going to enrich that capability and specifically deal with students who don’t have the same ability to log in? Or are we going to give greater opportunities for mixed or hybrid or face to face where it’s appropriate?

The second thing I would look for, and it gets to the surveys, will students see a difference and an improvement in the spring from the fall that indicates, yes, faculty, course designers, schools, the support, the whole system is improving how well we’re educating people [00:19:00] moving forward. Some sort of signal from students that things are improving. Those are sort of the two things that I would like to understand moving forward.

Kevin: If we’re going to ask the students how they’re doing and how they feel about things and we have to be able to address them or at least try. The fact that we still have students and some teachers driving to Starbucks and McDonalds so they can use the Internet, download everything they need and go back home to study, that’s not equitable.

Phil: I know, and so the thing I want to do and I’m not quite sure how to verify what the numbers are, what’s the best source, is have we learned that lesson? Will things get materially better from fall to spring? That exact subject, probably the easiest way to measure that is going to be surveys. Have we learned in the fall and are going to make an improvement in the spring? That’s what I think is going to be very important.

Any final [00:20:00] thoughts for the year or any encouragement or what you think should happen? What would you like to see happen is a quick closing thought to this year and to this episode. Kevin, what would you like to leave us with?

Kevin: I’d like to see the concept that Jeanette raised, you did to some extent as well.

I just got off a call with instructors in Grenada who are teaching medicine and veterinary medicine, and they’re coming up with creative ways of having students participate in surgical activities without being in a surgery theater. How do they stop the procedure, ask students questions, and then continue going like ways to make sure that those difficult to teach online topics are still moving forward and students are getting the proficiencies they need.

Underneath all that is we need those teachers to tell their stories about how they’re adapting and we need the students to tell their stories as well.

Phil: Great. J [00:21:00]eanette?

Jeanette: I think I would like to see a commitment and an investment made to help support teachers and faculty and administrators as they try to continue to reach students. The learning gaps that we’re likely to see are going to be addressed by more outreach, addressing equity issues, resources, teachers being really rewarded for the amazing work that they’ve done. That’s what I would like to see.

Phil: That’d be wonderful.

What I’d like to leave is an encouragement. It goes back to the technology adoption curve that we’ve talked about, is definitely the spring was a remarkable reaction and just keeping people’s heads above water and keeping the system going. The fall we really got into the first time people truly taught in a certain way and a huge number of faculty and schools. Just the adoption of EdTech as a primary way [00:22:00] to deliver online or hybrid education.

My big encouragement is that’s been a massive shift. Now we have actual experience under our belt. Now is the time to make improvements. It’s no longer just a matter of I’ve never taught this way and I’m not sure what to do or I don’t think it could work. Now, we’re a matter of almost everybody can say, I have taught this way. I want to make it better and I know how to contribute to making it better.

There are certainly an opportunity for improvement and a lot of it in the power of educators to make changes. I think that will be good in the long run despite the pandemic.

It’s been a wonderful year working with you two again. I’ve really enjoyed doing this podcast, as we’ve learned how to do podcast, and look forward to working with you in the spring.

Kevin: Sounds good.

Phil: OK, [00:23:00] thanks.

Jeanette: Bye bye.

In this episode, Phil Hill, Jeanette Wiseman, and Kevin Kelly discuss recent studies looking at student learning in K-12 during the pandemic.

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Hosts:

• Phil Hill
• Jeanette Wiseman
• Kevin Kelly

Links:

• Reasons for Skepticism in K-12 Student Learning Report

Transcription:

Phil: Welcome to COVID Transitions, the podcast where we discuss the transition that higher education and even K-12 is going through due to the pandemic this year. I’m Phil Hill and again, I’m here with Kevin Kelly and Jeanette Wiseman. It’s great to talk to you guys yet again. Another somewhat difficult subject as we look at K-12 learning loss.

How are you guys doing? Jeanette?

Jeanette: Doing OK. You know, hanging in there.

Phil: You got the kids partially quiet for the podcast.

Jeanette: We’ll see.

Phil: Kevin, you’re all set up now that we got the repairman gone?

Kevin: He has done his work. He’s done it well. I’m ready to go.

Phil: Ok, great. Well, the topic we wanted to cover today is that we’re starting to see a lot of data roll in, particularly the K-12 level, looking at learning itself. How much are students not learning compared to what they would [00:01:00] have been expected to learn in a normal circumstance? Some people call this a learning loss or COVID slide. It’s basically saying how are students performing from a learning perspective compared to, say, last year or what we would have expected to do?

Initially we talked about doing this podcast because The Washington Post reported on data from the Fairfax County public schools, talking how across the board for middle school and high school, the number of F’s that students were getting for the first quarter were going up significantly. Then we also had some initial data from Illuminate, which they provide some assessment and data platforms as a vendor. They were looking at some of the data and what is the learning loss relative to the annual monthly growth they would have expected. Both of these [00:02:00] reported pretty significant learning losses, and that’s how we wanted to cover the podcast.

Since that time, we’ve had new data come in. In particular NWEA, which is another assessment company, they put out a report looking at 4.4 million students. Unfortunately, there is a pretty big caveat in what they presented. What was reported is the fact of yes, we’re seeing significant learning losses for math, particularly in the middle grades, and that we certainly have differences with different ethnic groups or English language learners. It also got reported that reading really hasn’t suffered significantly. I found that was a pretty flawed analysis that you can’t ignore or just tack on the caveat, but really called into question how serious is the learning loss?

We’ll put these in the show notes, by the way.  [00:03:00]We also have a new report from Renaissance Learning Software Vendor that includes some assessment where they’re looking at learning, and they have a pretty comprehensive report. They’re showing significant losses as well. Then McKinsey, the management consulting firm, put out a report that largely relies on NWEA data.

The point is we’re getting a lot of new data looking at the learning loss. It certainly seems to be real, although there’s a question, particularly in reading about how to interpret the data or how significant the data is. That’s what we wanted to cover today, to sort of look at what are we finding out from these early studies. Then later in the podcast episode, we’ll discuss what are the implications for higher education.

Start with you, Kevin. You’ve done some of this research. I guess part of the question is why are we getting this for the K-12 field before higher education? [00:04:00] What are your initial impressions?

Kevin: Well, I think part of it is that higher education looks at retention and success after the term is over, whereas NWEA, Renaissance and other groups that conduct these assessments do them in the middle of the term so they’re able to get data and analyze it earlier than higher ed can.

When we look at some of the question marks that you’ve raised, I think Renaissance did a better job comparing fall 2019 to fall 2020. The same students, even though as a pool of five million, it was considered a small pool, but it was a better comparison, didn’t leave people out. Some of the things that we need to look at, though, are the same things we need to look at in higher ed, where the averages that we’re getting in these reports don’t show what specific demographics are experiencing. I liked how The McKinsey [00:05:00] report pulled out specific demographics for black, Hispanic and lower socioeconomic scale students and the impact that they’re experiencing is greater than for others.

Phil: Yeah, and probably should be a little bit more clear. The caveat that I’m talking about is in the NWEA, they do these assessments already. The previous year they had 5.2 million students taking the test. This year they had 4.4 million. Predominantly the people not taking the test this year come from schools that serve much more of a lower socioeconomic background, the exact students who are most at risk. That’s the caveat they were referring to.

If you look at the studies, what we’re seeing is, yes, those are the students, and I would add in English language learners, that are suffering the most. It’s beyond just a caveat. [00:06:00] It actually questions the analysis. I agree with you, Kevin, I think the Renaissance did a much better treatment of the overall subject. I think even Illuminate did as well.

Jeanette, how does this compare to what you’ve seen, including your own personal experience?

Jeanette: Oh, gosh. Well, I try to be sort of a glass half full type of gal.

These reports and those studies are just really depressing and bleak to me, I think primarily because we’re seeing the commitment and the investment that needs to be made in education 10 years ago didn’t happen. The gaps were there. The chance for such a drop, and especially Hispanic, black and lower income students is going to be great unless there’s a big commitment moving forward both in investment and quality of instruction, no matter if they’re online or in class.

I see it with [00:07:00] my own kids. I know that we come from a place where education obviously is really important. My kids are getting the support. They need it. I don’t think they’re getting it from school. I have the luxury of being able to hire outside tutors to help them in those areas. I’m also at home. I’m not a parent that has to leave the house for work. I’m here to support them as well.

These numbers are showing that unless as a collective community, see how important these slides are into our overall economy and growth for the United States as a whole and globally, because this is happening on a global scale, then we could be in big trouble in five or ten years from now.

That’s frightening to me.

Phil: Some of these studies are pointing out this is not just a temporary blip. This is expected to have a long term impact.

Jeanette: Right. [00:08:00] I think that’s the thing that is just really scary.

The number of dropouts we could potentially see in high school. I think there’s another thing that’s exasperating all of this. My daughter, my two daughters are in high school. One’s a freshman, one’s a senior. They haven’t been in school since March. There has not been one in-person class in Albuquerque, and that means they’ve missed out. Although my freshman daughter made the volleyball team, she went to two practices and they had to cut those down. There’s been no extracurriculars, there’s no orchestra, presentations or competitions. There’s nothing that they normally have. It’s been a tough road.

I know for most parents, just on the mental side of things, as well as trying to keep spirits up for these K-12 students and as it is for everybody during this time. The impacts that it could be having, especially [00:09:00] for some of these students that aren’t getting the additional support and have other pressures, I just feel like the equity issues that we’re going to see for maybe a lifetime could be really dramatic.

Very much a glass half empty kind of view. It’s scaring me a little bit, to be honest.

Phil: Let me take a stab at the common themes that we’re seeing and then just get you guys to react to it.

Even though there are different ways of doing assessments, all the way from looking at grades to actually formalize assessments from different companies is that we’re definitely seeing learning loss. It’s worse for math than it is for reading, although I would argue both exist. Math seems to be suffering more than reading, which is a little bit interesting because it seems like there’s more of an opportunity for some of the courseware and automated tool usage with remote. The [00:10:00] data are showing that it’s actually worse for math, it tends to be worse in the middle grades in terms of grades four through eight or nine than the learning loss that’s happening at one through three or in high school. We’ve already mentioned that the learning loss has a greater impact among disadvantaged student groups, whether it’s black or Hispanic, lower income, English as a second language. Those are the groups that tend to be suffering more than others. It’s not quite clear if the gap is getting worse. However, if you look at Renaissance learning, they actually have showed that, yes, while it’s not getting worse in terms of people who were performing academically worse before the pandemic. Socioeconomic, that gap might be growing. In terms of who was already doing well or not, there’s sort of common learning losses.

Those are some of the themes I guess I would [00:11:00] see. What would you guys correct or add in to sort of common descriptions?

Kevin: I would add in another at risk group as students with disabilities because there’s still not universally designed approach to this emergency remote moving towards online educational experience. Then there was an article in Educational Researcher, one of the authors, I think was an NWEA person, but they looked at projections based on absenteeism, literature, and summer learning patterns to see if they could determine potential pitfalls.

They thought that losing ground during school closures wouldn’t be universal. The top third of students may actually make some gains in fields like reading. It makes me again, think back to when you average everything out. It looks like things aren’t changing that much, but when you look at it by subgroup, then [00:12:00] you find those bigger discrepancies.

Then to the point that Jeanette was making earlier about the long term effects downstream, the McKinsey report had a couple of things that stood out to me. One, the loss of learning leads to loss of earning. They had an exhibit that showed that the economy right now would be significantly larger if it had closed achievement gaps in education ten years ago. Those are the types of things that we have to see what is going to be the impact of this pandemic, not just in the next year. McKinsey said the effects are not likely to be temporary shocks easily erased in the next academic year. We have to look at this as something we should be keeping an eye on for the next three to five years or maybe more.

Jeanette: This is me being an optimist again. I think some of those achievement gaps could be closed, but the investment needs to be made in education in terms of [00:13:00] even professional development with the wonderful teachers right now making sure that they’re doing it. That hasn’t been there. That’s why a lot of those achievement gaps weren’t closed 10 years ago. I feel like it needs to be made again. That’s the way that we can close it. I think it’s unsane if we’re going to be doing that, especially because overall revenues and budgets are down everywhere and people just don’t have the funding to make some changes that were needed prior to COVID.

Phil: That’s a good point. Let me take it up a level, meta level, but also somewhat depressing. If you look at it this way, there’s been a persistent talk that emergency remote teaching is not the same thing as well-designed online learning and that it’s unfair to make conclusions about online learning based on a lot of what’s happening today. Take that as a given. However, I think that what we can say in a common theme is if you look [00:14:00] at K through 12, what we’re doing this year is not working.

What we’re doing, particularly in terms of not being face to face, is not working in terms of learning, and it’s disproportionately affecting students who can’t afford to to lose anymore. Let me just state that and see if any comments on that, if you agree with that perspective.

Kevin: I would say it’s not working because they haven’t really thought through the online experience. I was contacted based on one of my blog posts by someone here in California who was trying to convince the board to allow parents to have their students have Synchronoss online options if they didn’t want to risk having their child in school, if there are people at high risk categories at home that they don’t want to get COVID. The board basically said it’s either face to face in the school, or you [00:15:00] can do this teach yourself online program that basically as this meets the same learning outcomes, but there’s no teacher interaction, you just complete assignments, which requires heavy investment of time from parents or someone in the home.

That, to me, is not a well-designed instructional experience for every circumstance, trying to create some flexibility for people who work and other things. I would say you’re right that we need to be thinking about whether or not teaching and learning is moving toward a well-designed online experience. I don’t think we’ve gotten there yet. That partly speaks back to the investment that Jeanette’s been bringing up all along.

Phil: I guess part of what I’m pushing is saying, yes, that’s all true, but we first need to look at the students we have today and say we need to recognize there’s a serious [00:16:00] downside to what we’re doing today through K-12. We’re seeing some of the impact of it. It’s not just a matter of what could happen. It’s a matter of acknowledging what is happening.

Jeanette: I think the government officials have been in tough positions of trying to make really smart and critical public health decisions. I think in the spring, at least, I felt like they were somewhat of an emergency situation. Right now, though, I’ve had friends that are teaching elementary school and the ones that are in the lower grades. Those kids are just struggling.

I look at my kids, middle school and high school, and they’re able to be somewhat self directed. They’re fairly motivated to get things done. These kids that are especially K through third grade, there’s an entire learning curve of how to use the computer. [00:17:00] They still don’t even know how to read. If they’re in a house where there’s either parents that English isn’t their first language and there’s not that support there or parents that are trying to work, or maybe they’re there with older siblings, that learning is not happening and they see it. There’s only so much they can do as teachers to try to reach those younger students. I think it’s a huge issue. 

I think what you’re trying to say, Phil, is maybe these public officials need to start recognizing just the overall impact on the mental health of these students, the equity issues that are coming up that they’re not going to be able to overcome through technology or online learning, and that there’s got to be a balance between these public health decisions and what needs to be happening in the schools. It’s a hard balance.

Phil: I mean, if you want to stated eloquently like you just did. Yes, that’s [00:18:00] exactly what I meant.

Let’s turn this to higher education. What are the impacts or implications for higher education from what we’re seeing with some of this early data in the K-12 space? I guess I’ll just throw out there. I think there are two that at least seem obvious to me.

One is these are the higher education students of the future or potential students. We’re talking about long lasting learning impact on what they’re learning, particularly in math. Then there’s also the thing of we just don’t quite have as much data in higher education, but what are we expecting to see and what today’s college students are learning or not learning through this pandemic? I think that this is very tightly tied to higher education. I’d be curious to hear what you guys think, these implications, how is this going to hit higher education?

Kevin: Or how is it already hitting? [00:19:00]

Phil: Yes.

Kevin: We know from the TopHat survey that went out in October, almost 70 percent of the students said they did not feel they learned as well online. Whether or not we have the results of their learning, we know that they don’t feel they learn well. That’s backed up by the article in Inside Higher Ed this Monday stating that fall students are seeking the same pass fail options that they had in spring, even though colleges seem less willing to do that this time around.

BestColleges.com had an article back in October talking about digital divide, talking about things like housing and security as a factor. Now that students are the campuses are closed, they may not have anywhere to go if they don’t have a stable home situation that they’ve left. That article in particular brings up that same issue that Jeanette’s been bringing up. The lack [00:20:00] of investment in distance education for some colleges and universities, pre COVID is causing a challenge now. It’s something that Phil has brought up in some of our previous COVID Transition podcasts, where he says those that have taken the time and spent the money to work on these things beforehand are going to be the ones that are way farther ahead now. I think we’re just seeing that amplified as we go through the fall semester.

Phil: Jeanette, what are you thinking the implications are going to be?

Jeanette: Well, if you look at the McKinsey report that came out, they’re estimating close to a million new high school dropouts because of COVID. I’m actually exaggerating because I think when you go back, it’s 648 thousand.

Phil: Oh, you rounded up.

Jeanette: I mean, that’s a lot. That’s just what they’re estimating. I mean, I think that would be great if it ended up being a lower number. Right there, that is going to be an impact [00:21:00] in community colleges, maybe students that had considered going to some kind of post high school education, they’re not going to necessarily go that way. How is that going to impact local communities that were relying on that revenue. Not only the revenue, but also that educated workforce to help their economies in the coming years? Right there, I think that’s a huge impact that’s going to happen.

I think also just in terms of learning loss. For years we’ve heard that faculty have been saying that many of their freshman college students come into college, not prepared to be a college student, that they don’t have the skill set, whatever, in math or English and writing and all of those things. I just don’t see how those college freshmen going in who have experienced this learning loss because of COVID starting their freshman year in the same place that maybe three or four years ago where there [00:22:00] are already those complaints. It seems like that’s going to be a lot of work for faculty to get people back up to speed. Those are two areas that I think they’re likely to happen.

Kevin: To piggyback on one point that Jeanette made about the the dropout rate and the potential impact for students entering higher ed, we already saw that in a previous episode. We talked about the decrease in enrollment, especially in the community college level. What was it? Twenty three percent drop in first year student enrollment.

Phil: I think subsequent data knock that down to 19 percent.

Kevin: Ok, still one in five. Yeah, that’s where people are leaving the educational process. Whether or not they’re inspired to or encouraged by outsiders to come back is going to be the trigger. Or if they decide that they’re going to have to just enter the workforce and see what happens.

Phil: Yep. Well, I’ll steal something from Kevin who found this National Bureau of Economic Research working paper. In this working paper, they [00:23:00] looked at seven economics courses taught at four R-1 institutions in the U.S., research universities. I’ll just quote from the abstract. “We find that students perform substantially worse on average in spring 2020. Looking at the spring term,” that was sort of cut in half when compared to spring or fall 2019, “we find no evidence that the effect was driven by specific demographic groups. However, our results suggest that teaching methods that encourage active engagement, such as the use of small group activities and projects, played an important role in mitigating this negative effect.”

In this case, don’t want to extrapolate it too much, it’s early working paper. It’s in economics research university. At least in that context, it’s interesting that their initial findings are [00:24:00] in higher education, not correlating as much to the demographic groupings, but it also points to the well-designed aspect. The results suggesting that teaching methods, active engagement, small group activities and projects really mitigated the learning loss in higher education. It would be interesting to sort of see a broader view here. That certainly, I think, points out the same things we’ve been talking about. We are seeing significant learning impacts and we will continue to have to deal with them. However, an important element of that is that you get less of an impact and it’s mitigated. We’re even seeing some gains here and there based on people who have really well designed their courses, particularly around active engagement.

To end on a positive note, I certainly hope this type of research that we see more of it because at least [00:25:00] we have a chance to make some improvements based on how we do the teaching. I don’t know if that’s too positive, but that’s one way I look at that data.

Kevin: I think it’s positive in that the potential is there, but it means that you have to continue to move mountains. I think I’ve referenced in previous podcast, Cal State L.A. served over a thousand instructors with their workshops this past summer. That’s getting people ready. It’s not giving them life experience and online teaching for years and years and knowing how to facilitate things. They know how to set them up.

That’s going to take another semester or two for these instructors to really adopt these principles and strategies and stop recreating a face to face class where it’s talking head on Zoom and then go take a quiz on the learning management system. We need these types of engagement and do it and do it well, requires some trial and error periods. The students are suffering through that right now.

Phil: To [00:26:00] tie it with what Jeanette said, we know one of, if not the main area, that where we need this investment, it’s in professional development for faculty and support. We know what we need to do more of, but it’s going to take some investment during a very difficult time. We do know some of the key things that will mitigate the pain we’re going through.

It’s important to understand the aspect of what’s happening. I think this is important data coming out of K-12. It’s good to take a look at it, but we should definitely follow up and start looking for end of term learning reports from higher education, because I think that will be important to understand as well. Even if your only focus on higher ed, this K-12 data has some implications that you need to be aware of.

It’s great talking to you. To [00:27:00] the eloquent Jeanette, who really did a great job. I really do mean that. Kevin, thanks for finding a lot of this research as well.

Kevin: You bet.

Phil: I hope you enjoy your weekend and next week. Thanks again. Bye.

In this episode, Phil Hill, Jeanette Wiseman, and Kevin Kelly discuss National Student Clearinghouse data on Fall 2020 higher education enrollment. It’s not pretty.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Hosts:

• Phil Hill
• Jeanette Wiseman
• Kevin Kelly

Links:

• The Complexities of Online Education and Fall 2020 Enrollment Data (PhilOnEdTech)
• America Will Sacrifice Anything for the College Experience (The Atlantic)

Transcription:

Phil: Welcome to COVID Transitions, where we discuss higher education as we deal with the pandemic and look what it’s doing with our enrollment and operations. In particular, now that we’re deep into the fall, we want to purposely go beyond just saying what’s going to happen and start looking at real results of the fall and also start looking ahead to what this means for the spring term and beyond. I’m here, as usual, with Kevin Kelly and Jeanette Wiseman. It’s great to talk to both of you.

Kevin: Hello.

Jeanette: Good morning.

Phil: To set up the discussion, I had written a blog post. It was looking at the National Student Clearinghouse data. Essentially, they put out a second look at the enrollment in the fall 2020 for U.S. higher education. On one hand, it’s slightly worse than the first estimate.

Now that we have more data in, the total undergraduate enrollment looks to be down four percent compared to a year ago, [00:01:00] which is not the greatest. That headline sort of hides some very troubling data that we wanted to discuss today and some significance that we need to think about. In particular, I’ll call out two just to get started.

The big one is that first time student enrollment is down 16 percent across the board, and for community colleges, it’s down 23 percent. At the same time, community college enrollment overall is down nine point four percent compared to a year prior. They were already worse than before, but now it looks to be much worse. In particular, first time student change has got to have some major repercussions going forward. We’ll get started with that, but there are definitely other observations we want to add in.

Let’s just start with this. How concerned should higher education institutions [00:02:00] be, particularly around the first time student drop and the community college enrollment drops? Kevin, how concerned are you?

Kevin: Well, I think that the person you quoted from Inside Higher Ed, the community college dean, gets it right. He talks it’s more about affordability, underlying income and wealth than it is about the tuition. I think the lower the tuition, especially the City College of San Francisco is seeing that even free tuition, is still not really enough because those people who are possibly needing to work or having challenges or other priorities they need to focus on. It’s a function of things more than tuition. I think he gets it right.

Phil: Just to add to this from a data perspective, because at the same time that the low cost community college has gone down even more, the for-profit enrollments have gone up and [00:03:00] private non-profit. Basically some of the more expensive options have actually increased somewhat. Jeanette, same question for you. Are you surprised? Are you concerned? How do you look at this drop?

Jeanette: I was a little bit surprised because I thought that people would choose to do a community college. You quoted Stephanie Moore, how she decided that her son was going to go to a local community college and then move over into a traditional four year for his sophomore year. I was thinking people would choose that option, be closer to home and do that. I thought that there was going to be an increase in numbers for at least the community colleges and the local state schools. That was a little bit of a surprise. I think your quote about what Kevin just said, that it’s an overall reflection of wealth and where a lot of the people who traditionally go to those schools are right now. That’s incredibly concerning.

I think that across the [00:04:00] board you’re seeing just what this pandemic has done for people in terms of income and wealth. People that are really struggling not only in higher education, but you’re seeing the haves and have nots in the K-12 space, in terms of the type of education they’re being offered right now. You can go everywhere to health care and things, where the higher ed space has just seen a reflection of what’s happening overall because of the pandemic.

Phil: I would even argue, and I’ve thought about this since I wrote the post, I don’t think that the data necessarily avoids the conclusion that we were thinking about people going to lower cost options. At least anecdotally, you mentioned that Stephanie Moore has done this. I read an article that was looking at Ivy Tech in Indiana and they did extensive quoting of a couple of students who were doing exactly what you described. Hey, as long as I’m going online and things are changing, I’m going to shift to the community colleges [00:05:00] and go there. To a certain degree, I do think that’s happening, which might actually say the drop is even worse than what the numbers suggest. It’s sort of offsetting it. It’s just the matter of yes, I do think there are students going to lower cost options, but the overall economic impact is so much more to overwhelms it.

Kevin: If you think about the fact that the numbers of people going to college has increased as they’ve tried to make it more accessible to people from lower socio-economic income levels. What we’re seeing is a kind of a downshift of everybody, where the people who can afford to take on debt are doing so, because this is a time that they can get a graduate degree and MBA while they’re staying at home with their family and give them something to do. The next tier of people are saying, well, in order to save money, because I don’t want to leave my undergraduate [00:06:00] degree with a lot of debt, I’m going to do as much as I can, general education or part of my major, at a community college, and then jump into the four year when things settle down. Then we get to the group who says, hey, there are 11 million people still unemployed, we’re seeing this play out in the choice to just not reenroll in the fall because of those factors.

Phil: Kevin, you mentioned something I hadn’t thought about before, which was if you look at graduate enrollment across the board, enrollment went up this term. Public four years that went up four percent, the private nonprofit four years went up just like zero point two percent, but for profit graduate enrollment went up nine point three percent and overall two point seven. The point is graduate enrollment went up across the board. That gets to your point that those who can afford to take on debt and [00:07:00] get their degree are doing it. That really, even more so, shows the divide that’s growing. 

Jeanette: In the past when there is recessions or economic downturns, it seems like education was a safe place to go. It was sort of a safe industry, if you will, that people were still going to attend school. Maybe they decided to change careers or shift a little bit and they reinvest in themselves.

Phil: Beyond this aspect, I want to pick up on the important point about beginning first time students dropping off and not being a part of the class. Overall, the number was at sixteen point one percent of undergraduate, what they define as beginning student enrollment, went down this year. Some of the numbers are far larger. The community college, it’s down twenty two point seven percent pretty much across all age groups. If you look at public four year, it’s down [00:08:00] thirteen point seven percent for beginning students and private non-profits, down eleven point eight percent, but for profits, up three point seven percent.

This seems significant that you’ve got these beginning students, far fewer of them who are entering. That raises the question, are they going to be entering higher education later on? Is this a blip or is this going to be a longer term trend, at least for this cohort of students, if you will, or potential students? Kevin, how do you view it? How concerning is this drop in beginning students?

Kevin: I think it is concerning. The Student Senate from the California Community Colleges had a survey this past spring that students who responded they were experiencing higher levels of stress, were also experiencing loss of income and having to drop courses due to financial reasons. When we look at the people who are making the choice, can I afford to [00:09:00] jump into an academic endeavor when I’m also juggling possibly employment, possibly taking care of family members, either children or seniors or both, because we’re staying at home and clustering in family units. That just adds all these pressures where the first thing to shake out is going to be the education.

Add to that we have a smaller number of people who are college age going to college right now because the population’s smaller of that group of students. We just have a mix of factors that play into whether or not people are able to jump in. Now, whether or not that means they won’t be able to jump in later or that they may pursue something different, like a micro credential or a certificate rather than a full degree. That’s something that probably time [00:10:00] will tell.

Phil: Jeanette, what are your thoughts on this situation and how long lasting it might be?

Jeanette: I agree with Kevin on a lot of those points. I do think that there could be students that decided to sit this semester out for whatever reason, or perhaps the entire year, because they didn’t like the online experience. They really had it in their mind that they were going to have the full college experience, being on campus, wanting to be in the dorms, whatever, and that wasn’t open for them. They decided to take the year. It could be, though, like we’ve discussed, that was more of a financial burden, that they just weren’t able to attend college. I think that’s the more concerning one. Are these students not going to go back? Are they going to have other ways that they need to try to get that education, to get that better job to live the American dream of having a degree somehow and [00:11:00] have bettered themselves? I think what’s concerning is what’s going to happen to those students.

Phil: One of the arguments I made, and it’s probably the main argument I made in the blog post, got to the fact that there’s a demand for in-person learning, particularly for community college students, not all of them, but for a significant number of them. It was actually quoted in the article where the president CEO of the American Association of Community Community Colleges was saying, we are hearing from several sources that community college students are looking for in-person learning. The disruption of in-person learning to remote was absolutely necessary, but the enrollment figures show us that it’s not a good long term solution for many students.

I think people get tripped up on that saying, wait, there are plenty of people in community colleges with strong online programs, but the majority aren’t. I think that’s the group that’s really getting impact, the ones who [00:12:00] aren’t able to do a remote program, they don’t have reliable, quiet, predictable, or safe Internet access, or they need the social interaction with peers on campus. That group of people appears to be looking at college saying this doesn’t work for me, I can’t do this, or economically, doesn’t matter how good a quality it is, I can’t do it. I need to have a job right now or I need to have multiple jobs. I think there is a strong demand, particularly in community college, for in-person learning that we can’t overlook. We need to understand that.

Kevin: It would be interesting to see if the numbers line up from the different sets of data. The fact that we have about 23 percent drop in first time students at the community college level, and in the student surveys that we looked at all through the spring and summer, it was almost a quarter of students don’t have reliable access to a computer. Almost [00:13:00] a quarter, don’t have reliable access to the Internet, a stable connection at least. We’re seeing a lot of students driving to Starbucks or McDonald’s and sitting outside for the wireless and working out of their car for hours at a time, which is really hard to do. Almost a quarter said they don’t have a quiet place to study. I’m guessing that the Venn diagram is probably a strong overlap in those circles.

Also, there’s that social component that you’re talking about, not only from the president of the AACC, but the student that you quoted from San Francisco State, where I teach, lamented that she wasn’t able to have those in-person connections. Those connections are really important, especially if you think about, I quote Vincent Tinto, the concept that there are two strong streams that help a student persist in the academic enterprise. One is academic integration, do they feel they’re [00:14:00] able to complete their coursework and their degree long term. Also social integration. That social integration is more than just having parties. It has to do with classmates with whom you can study. They become future network connections in the workforce.

We’re social creatures, so a lot of campuses aren’t doing a good job of creating a virtual community of practice or of learning for those students. There was a great article in The Atlantic that described how students are seeking an experience, and how Americans, in general, are seeing it as a tradition to have a personal growth experience on a campus. It’s really hard to replicate online.

Jeanette: Yeah, I thought was a great article. It was by Ian Bogost, I think. It was more about how the college experience sort of seeps everything into that town, to just the [00:15:00] overall presence of what it is to be an American and how important it is. Like you said, it’s not just the partying, but that’s part of it. Right? It’s the studying, it’s being on the quad, it’s all of that. That’s what people are craving, and they can’t have right now, at least not safely. It’s a rite of passage for so many people because it continues on. You’re alumni, you’re still attached to that college. It’s part of a lot of American identity to be going to school and going to college. We can’t have that, at least it’s been really hard to replicate online.

Phil: Now, the trap we have to avoid, however, is thinking that all students are alike. There’s certainly a large number of students who remote may have worked in the spring, but it’s clearly not working for the fall and likely will not get much better, if any better moving beyond. At the same time, online education, it [00:16:00] has been growing slowly, but now it’s growing quickly and the numbers back this up.

If you look at primarily online institutions, which are essentially defined by more than 90 percent of enrollments at a school are for exclusively online programs, that went up across the board into fall, twenty six point eight percent increase at the undergraduate level, seven point two percent increase at the graduate level. For all age groups and all sectors that serve undergraduate and graduate education, they all went up for these POI’s. Part of what that shows, to me, is that there is a strong demand for online education.

At the same time, there’s strong demand for in person. If you’re going to have to go online, a lot of students are saying I might as well go to a school who already knows how to do online, a school that has already invested in online [00:17:00] education and all the support structures. These pre-existing POI’s, and that includes for profit and the Western Governors of Southern New Hampshire’s, but it also includes Penn State World Campus. Those enrollments are all going up. Arizona State is going up. Not everything is dropping. POI’s are actually increasing across the board.

Jeanette: That seems logical to me, right? I mean, if you’re a smart consumer and you know you’re going to be spending money on education, and especially if you were at a school that went online and it was not a very good experience, you’re going to start looking for someone that really knows what they’re doing and is going to give you the flexibility and the education you’re looking for if you’re going to be online anyway. To me, that seems like common sense.

Phil: Yeah, but there’s data behind this common sense now, so it reinforces it.

Jeanette: Yes, exactly.

Kevin: There’s data behind [00:18:00] the next step in the chain. Right? That’s getting people in the door. The group that I work with in Oakland, Peralta Community College District, their statistics from the spring craziness, the courses that started this semester online had higher persistence and success rates than the courses that began on ground and were shifted to remote. It’s the first time in their last six years of data collection that the online courses had higher levels than the face to face classes. They didn’t see the same disruptive factor of the move to online because the students were in a course that was designed to be online and they had even higher levels than the previous semester of online courses. In addition to getting in the door, people are succeeding in those environments because they’re built that way.

The converse is also true. I don’t remember if it was St. John Fisher College in New York or one of those smaller schools, but [00:19:00] they had like 3300 students go back to campus and a thousand of them left within a month to do the remote version of the courses because they weren’t satisfied with the in-person experience the way it had been set up for the fall. I think there’s a lot of factors at play in how the on ground campuses, those that have chosen to stay open, are conducting things as well.

Phil: There’s sort of an argument of whatever you’re going to do, you better make a decision early and do it right. If you’re going to do on ground or on campus programs, you better decide it early and you better have put in the precaution so that you can handle it and minimize risk, and that you’re actually serving the students who really need on campus education. If you’re going to do online and this is unfortunate for a lot of people, it’s like, well, you should have decided that years ago. Now it’s going to pay off by [00:20:00] having options that can work for students. 

Peralta’s benefiting from these online course persistence that’s actually, above the on campus version or the transition that’s there. You sort of need to pick what you’re doing, but then really commit and support it properly. That’s part of my interpretation of the data thus far.

Kevin: I’ll be putting together a blog post soon, looking at the announcements that campuses are making over the last six weeks. It’s interesting that very few of them are choosing to do anything different. If they went virtual in the fall, they’re pretty much going virtual again in the spring. If they were on campus, then they’re maybe making some tweaks to their core schedule. Not having a spring break seems to be pretty popular, and the students are pretty upset about it. They’re like, why do we have these five reading days? That’s a waste of my time. They’re not really paying attention to the wellness factors and all that, but more to come on that.

Phil: We should point out that the numbers that we’re primarily [00:21:00] talking about from the National Student Clearinghouse, that is basically beginning fall enrollment. It doesn’t capture the case of, hey, we started online, went to remote and a large number of students dropped out in the middle of the term. That type of enrollment change is not reflected yet. That’s something else to watch for with data.

We’re in some very challenging times, but that’s part of the reason that we want to look at this data and try to figure out what lessons learned we can apply. Really we, Kevin, Jeanette and I, are trying to focus much more on what does this mean for the spring? What does this mean for the next term? I think there are elements where we can be optimistic, but we’re not done finding situations that we need to worry about either.

Any final thoughts from both of you on what we know thus [00:22:00] far and what we’re looking for?

Kevin: I think we know that we don’t know enough. I think, again, that the tweaks the campuses that are choosing to stay open in the spring, they’re not making many pedagogical tweaks, they’re making cosmetic tweaks in my mind. I’m really interested to see, again, if we’re going to see an upswing in the quality of online courses for those campuses that have chosen to stay virtual because those instructors are getting more experience with online teaching and those campuses that are trying their best to provide some sort of hybrid experience, limited number of face to face courses. Are they doing them in a better way than they did this fall? Hopefully we’re learning from what we’re doing and not just maintaining a status quo, because that’s what we feel compelled to do for financial reasons.

Phil: Jeanette, any final thoughts? Try to end this on a cheerier note than we’ve been so far. That’s the challenge.

Jeanette: I will try. Piggybacking [00:23:00] off of what Kevin said, I think that schools are likely going to need to look at how to do hybrid or at least Hyflex. I think the one thing that going online has really shown is that students are going to likely want to have that flexibility moving forward. It may be when things back to normal. It’s going to be interesting to see how schools adjust to this and to see if they can continue on in offering really high quality education. I think that’s what it all comes down to in all of this, and if they can do that moving forward. I think most schools are up to the challenge. There’s my positive.

Phil: Just close out and finish on it, I do think the schools that make it through, because not all of them are going to make it through, I don’t think we’re going to have the bloodbath of 30 percent of schools shutting down, but I think that this experience will make schools more resilient in [00:24:00] the future. To varying degrees, there will be winners and losers. I’m also hoping that we’ll have a long term benefit by institutional resilience moving forward.

It’s great talking to you, too. Enjoy your weekend.

Kevin: You, too.