Closing Learning Gaps: Strategies from Positive Outlier Schools Across New York State

by Aaron Leo & Kristen C. Wilcox

In NYKids’ most recent study, our team investigated how educators responded to the pandemic in six schools across New York State. These schools were identified as positive outliers based on their relatively better educator responses to the pandemic. The full report – available here – explores such topics as family engagement, academic and social-emotional learning, and leadership for adaptation in the context of the pandemic.

In this blog, we focus specifically on the ways educators in positive outlier schools approached academic learning gaps. Our findings are particularly important given reports which suggest learning gaps may have been exacerbated during the pandemic, particularly for the most vulnerable youth and those living in under-resourced and marginalized communities.

As our report demonstrates, educators experienced a variety of teaching and learning challenges through the pandemic, however, the pandemic also provided opportunity to employ innovative strategies.

Identifying and Addressing Learning Gaps

Having second graders who missed three months of first grade . . . was a huge impact on their academics. So when they came to us in second grade, I remember my co-teacher and I gave our first math test and we were like, “Whoa!” (- positive outlier school educator)

As the above quote exemplified, many school-aged youth experienced an unprecedented disruption to their education during the COVID-19 pandemic with academic learning gaps being just one result.

Educators in NYKids positive outlier school study developed a variety of strategies to identify learning gaps and mitigate the most negative impacts of remote learning on youth’s academic learning. They included:

• Using Diagnostic Tools and Personalized Needs Assessments
• Providing Differentiated Instruction for All
• Engaging in Anticipatory Learning Gap Collaboration
• Innovating New Pathways Back into Academic Learning

Diagnostic Tools and Personalized Needs Assessments

Like in other positive outlier schools in our study, at Shaker Road Elementary School, grade-level teams utilized an online diagnostic tool and conversations with kids to facilitate grouping students returning to in-person instruction by academic performance and need. As one teacher put it, “I was able to meet their needs, to talk to them [students]… and to sit down and conference with them.”

Differentiated Instruction for All

As student concerns were identified, educators from each of the six schools described the intervention strategies they used to meet the needs of students. Such strategies, as many explained, were especially important for students who may not have been identified as requiring additional services prior to the pandemic. For instance, educators at Lake George Elementary School utilized differentiated instruction for all students rather than just those identified as having special needs. “We treated everybody like they all needed the differentiation,” explained one teacher. Another teacher explained what this process looked like in practice:

The whole class was getting modifications rather than just the Special Ed students… and there was no distinction between who had an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) and who didn’t because they all needed all that help.

Anticipatory Learning Gap Collaboration

Shaker Road Elementary School teachers described how they worked together with colleagues from other grade levels to share insights on learning gaps that might need to be addressed in the current school year with an eye toward the future. A teacher explained how these collaborations allowed her to anticipate gaps and plan instruction accordingly:

One of the areas . . . where they did not get the content that they needed to in third grade was fractions. So, we [fourth-grade teachers] knew that this year we were going to need to do a little bit of pre-teaching and to … cover what they missed in third grade.

Pathways Back into Academic Learning

At Chatham Middle School, educators worked to ensure students who may have missed content during school closures would not fall further behind. For instance, a new Algebra II preparation class and a “bridge” program was added to programming to help students experiencing anxiety and other mental health issues begin to re-engage in their academics as they prepared for high school. At other schools, summer enrichment programs such as the “Summer Scholars” (Tamarac Secondary School) and “Jumpstart Program” (Lake George Elementary School) were developed or enhanced to address any learning gaps that emerged during the pandemic and build a strong foundation for more advanced coursework.

Silver Linings: Pandemic Lessons on Closing Academic Learning Gaps

While pandemic challenges created conditions for academic learning gaps to develop or widen, educators in positive outlier schools showed evidence of developing and implementing new strategies they otherwise would not have. In some cases, their adaptations were valuable additions that teachers plan to continue to use well into the future. As one positive outlier teacher explained:

In a normal year, we’re driven by curriculum. We don’t have a lot of say in what we teach and how we teach it. So it was almost a fun opportunity to try some things that maybe normally we wouldn’t have the opportunity to do. I think we also learned to simplify in a way that a lot of the things that we were doing maybe aren’t really necessary. We let some things go, and some of those things did not come back when we went back to normal teaching because we realized in the end it wasn’t really necessary. We tried some new things and some of those new things we realized work really well. So we kept them.

Please visit our website for the full report on the experiences and adaptations from the six positive outlier schools which participated in the research study. Individual case studies of each school are also available here.

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