Today, Explained - ConGRADulations, fellow kids

Episode Date: June 10, 2022

Ten months ago the faculty of Cramer Hill Elementary set out to get their kids back on track after a year of mostly remote learning. Today, Explained’s Miles Bryan attended eighth-grade graduation to see how they did. This episode was reported and produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Efim Shapiro, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lately, a lot of the talk about schools in the United States has been about school shootings because of what happened in Uvalde, Texas a few weeks ago. But it is June, which means something a lot more hopeful is happening at schools across the country. Let's greet our eighth grade graduates. Give them a hand. Today, Explained has spent the last school year checking in with an elementary school in Camden, New Jersey. Today, we go to graduation at Kramer Hill Elementary.

As you get older, it doesn't get easier in terms of things being less uncertain. Rather, uncertainty gets more and more frequent in your life. And what I want you guys to do is make sure that as you go to high school and the rest of your life, you look at uncertainty and take it as an opportunity to try your best. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM.

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track after a year plus of quote unquote remote learning. But now they're all back. They've been back for weeks. So it felt like a good time to ask how that experiment's going. So we sent Today Explained's Miles Bryan back to school. Yeah, I went to a Kramer Hill Elementary School. It's in Camden, New Jersey, just across the river from where I live in Philly. And a couple of fast facts. It's a K through eight school. So it has kids ages, you know, five to 13 to 14. The school has about 800 kids and more than 90% of them are Black and Latino. Most of their families are living under the poverty line.

So when you talk about kids that are at the biggest risk of learning loss during COVID, these kids are in that group. So ever since last August, I've been checking in on the school, and specifically on the 8th grade class. And the 8th grade class, perhaps the most important, because those are the kids who are going to be graduating. Yeah, I was interested in them because they had to make this huge transition, right, from middle school to high school, which is always really important

and often really hard for kids. But this group of kids, you know, hadn't been in the classroom consistently together since like the sixth grade. So they had this even bigger challenge than normal. And it wasn't just you who was concerned about those kids? No, their teachers were concerned, their principals concerned, basically anyone paying attention to education in America is concerned. Their concerns anyone paying attention to education in America is concerned. Their concerns were grouped into two big buckets. The first was learning loss, which is a term you've probably heard a bunch at this point. Yeah.

You know, the worry that kids weren't going to be able to learn new stuff or retain what they had already learned on Zoom school and after, you know, so many months of coming back into the classroom and going back online and all that disruption. It is my goal and mission. And the thing that keeps me up at night as a principal is by May of 2022, my eighth grade state test scores are equal to what they would have been or what they were on track to be two years ago. And the second bucket was behavioral issues. That kids basically weren't maturing in the way they were supposed to because they weren't together in the classroom anymore,

or at least together consistently. They don't know how to interact in person. Well, the school year is over now. How did it go with learning loss and behavioral stuff? It was a mixed bag. I asked Kramer Hill principal, Jesse Gismondi, about how they did on these issues a couple of weeks ago. She said when it came to learning loss,

the school has done surprisingly well. They've been surprisingly effective. And so we're about at pace as we were pre-pandemic, with, I would even say, maybe a 5% increase to where we were, which is awesome. Kramer Hill actually just won a National Blue Ribbon of Excellence Award for its academic performance. Nice! From the Pabst Corporation? I don't think so. A different group, but, you know, same commitment to excellence.

Kramer Hill has had strong academic performance, strong test scores at the end of the year. But that is definitely not the story at every school. You know, we're going to get into this in the second half of today's show. But, you know, the data has generally shown that learning loss during the pandemic has been pretty severe and that generally speaking, the longer school stayed virtual, the more kids fell behind. Yeah. But I want to tell you about that, the second bucket, the behavioral issues, because Creamer Hill has struggled more with that, or kids at the school have struggled more with that. Okay. Some of those issues come out in interpersonal relationships.

These kids spent years interacting with each other, primarily online, and they've really struggled to adjust back to IRL. In real life, yeah. So let's say at night or something, somebody posts something on Instagram, and then they come in the next day. And guess what? They're in school together. They're not in their houses behind a camera with their camera off. And then one kid will come up to another kid and say, did you say that about me online last night? Another kid will just not know what to... Yeah, like I did, right? And I think that kids really missed out on two years of a journey through interpersonal communication and how to sort of have a conversation with another kid in a way that isn't just

like totally strange. It's funny to hear Principal Gizmondi call out Instagram beefs because there are shootings in my neighborhood in DC. And sometimes when I ask a cop who I see on my way home or something, hey, what's going on? What happened here? Was this like a drug thing? Was this like a gang thing? They'll be like, mostly this is Instagram beef. So this is like a real problem. Yeah, I think that's real. And that's something I've heard in reporting on crime for this show before as well. And there's a huge difference between what Gizmondi just described and, you know, you heard from these police officers about a fight that led to a shooting. But I think they both get at this fundamental issue, which is young people have not been able to develop socially and figure out how to deescalate confrontation

in person, you know, after spending so much time online. Right. And there's another behavior issue in school that I wanted to tell you about, which is endurance. When you're at home, whether you're working in corporate America or you're a student, there is an opportunity on Zoom to be in your bed or wear pajama pants or just like it doesn't. I wouldn't know anything about that. I know.

No judgment here. There is a different level of energy that makes you put on a whole outfit, journey to the school building, and that stamina of like by seventh period, which was a long time kids are really spent. And we're finding that they weren't like using resources or they'd get to an end of a problem. They would just be like, well, I don't know. I can relate. I mean, we see these things in the workplace and we're all adults getting paid to be here. These are kids who are hormonal, going through puberty, going through all sorts of changes,

plus the pandemic, plus returning to school, plus all the social anxiety. Did you talk to any of these kids about how they were feeling? Yeah, I did. I ran what Gizmondi was saying by a couple of kids, including JL Barreto. Barreto is a star. She's got great grades. She makes her teachers happy. When I'm around my friends and stuff, I'm the chill one. I'm the one that keeps everyone chill. But she told me the thing that you have to understand is that after all those months of learning from home and then being in and out of the classroom due to COVID outbreaks, the old normal is gone and it's not coming back.

Since COVID, everything feels different. So like having to sit in class, I'm like, this is weird because I'm used to sitting at home in my bed watching my teacher with a computer. So now it's very weird to see them in person walking around, putting stuff on the board. It's like home is normal now and school is weird. Yeah. And I was thinking about what JL said in relation to masks. Kramer Hill made masks optional back in March. But when I was there a couple of weeks ago, I noticed a lot of kids were still wearing them. Now, obviously, that has a lot to do with trying to avoid catching COVID. But I also think masks are sort of the default look now for at least

some of these eighth graders. I don't want people looking at my face that much. Some people, like, so my teeth are very white and pearly. And people are always like, oh, my God, your teeth are so nice. I like compliments, but for you to, like, 24-7 to be like, oh, my God, I love your teeth. Or, oh, my God, your cheeks are so cute. That's Chantal Tavares. And I also have that problem, for what it's worth. When you see me with a mask on in the Zoom meeting, I'm just trying to spare you. When you started this interview, you said we were going to talk about graduation.

Did you attend graduation? Did you go to the ceremony? Oh, you know I did. It was on a Wednesday morning earlier this month, actually June 1st. I showed up a little bit early and went straight to the classroom of Mr. Justin Newell. I remember him. He's like the Nintendo Wii guy, right? Yes. He's the eighth grade teacher that I spent the most time with. He famously compared himself to his Nintendo Wii Mii character. My Wii Mii looked exactly like me. That morning in his classroom, his kids were talking and laughing.

There were boys in button-ups and fake Ray-Bans. Lots of the girls were in fancy dresses and heels. How are you feeling about everything? I'm very excited, but also kind of nervous. What are you nervous about? Um, probably falling, because I'm just clumsy. The energy was high. Everyone was vibing.

It was super nice. Just for the radio audience who can't see, just tell me about what we're seeing. I've never quite gotten used to it. We just gather here, giving them their shirts. We're kind of just hanging out until it's time to go put the show on. I don't know if I'd ever feel prepared to set them off to be free like butterflies. But I just I definitely don't feel that way now. I feel like there's still some left on the field, if you know what I mean. I think what Newell was saying there was that even more than a normal year,

he felt like there was more to do for these kids. You know, there was more to teach them. There was more experiences to go through with them. And so letting them go at the end of this year was particularly bittersweet. Principal Gizmondi was there that day, too. them go at the end of this year was particularly bittersweet. Principal Gizmondi was there that day too. And she was cheering the kids on, making sure they stayed in line a little bit longer. You guys, honestly, no one needs, we can cancel graduation right now.

Pro tip, do not swear in front of your principal, even on graduation day. I don't care what day of the school year it is. There's absolutely no reason to be cursing in the classroom right now. Especially when you made it here by winging a prayer. The whole thing felt super normal in the best possible way. Like for a morning, everybody was able to forget about the chaos and challenges of the last couple of years and just enjoy themselves. Not to mention the chaos and the tragedy of the last few weeks.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know how much that was on the kids' minds, but for the adults, Uvalde, the mass shooting at that elementary school, was clearly present in their minds. That had happened just eight days before graduation. And I actually pulled Gizmondi aside and asked her how she was feeling in light of that. that like a tragedy somewhere else has taken the possibility of these moments from from those students and all we can do is cherish them even more here and it sounds corny and it sounds you know very surface level but it's just so true it's like we cannot not have a graduation we cannot not have a prom we can't not not have these moments because truly in the landscape of school shootings and the violence that plagues schools, you just never and recover, and then also have to deal with this constant nagging feeling that their school could be next. But it sounds like it didn't get in the way of ceremonies. No, it didn't actually.

So around 10 a.m., the kids filed out of that classroom we were just in and out onto the lawn. Let's greet our eighth grade graduates. Give them a hand, please. It was this perfect spring day and there must have been like 300 family members out there cheering their kids on. Congratulations! You guys look fantastic! All right! The kids came out onto the lawn and they all sat down in these rows of white chairs and looked up at the podium. And once they sat down, their teachers took turns giving out awards. They gave out a ton of super specific awards to different kids.

Now, I could have put class mom. I could have put runs the show. Chantal with the good teeth got one from Mr. Newell. I made an award called the Future Leader Award. And this one, I don't think anybody's really going to disagree with this. We go to Ms. Chantal Tavares. And then Gizmondi got up and gave a sort of end of the year speech. As you get older, it doesn't get easier in terms of things being less uncertain. Rather, uncertainty gets more and more frequent in your life. And what I want you guys to do is make sure that as you go

to high school and the rest of your lives, you look at uncertainty and you take it as an opportunity to try your best. Because that's exactly what you guys did this year and ended up in a very successful year i'm not headed into high school at the end of the summer but i thought there was some pretty good advice there for anyone yeah finally the dj fired up stand by me and mr newell came back on stage to start handing out diplomas i I'm going to keep you awake. Don't worry about it, buddy. I don't want you going to sleep. Don't tempt me with a time, Jose. So for the class, the eighth grade class of 2022, here we go. Miss Haley Allen.

Kevin. It sounds so wholesome. And I guess, despite everything, the theme here is that life kind of goes on at Kramer Hill Elementary? Yeah, yeah. You know, it was really nice to feel like at the end of this year, this year that we've been following these kids and their teachers and administrators,

things worked out. You know, the year was relatively successful. It was a really beautiful moment out there on that lawn, under the cloudless blue sky, watching those kids pick up their diplomas. Mr. Anthony, still repping the Sixers. Boom! I appreciate that, eh?

In a minute, we're going to take a look at how the rest of the country's schools are doing. It's Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family and Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an Aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an AuraFrame for himself. So setup was super simple.

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And I think we got a chance to see that, that when schools closed, gaps widened. Ramesh Varun, Today Explained, we have spent a lot of time looking at how the pandemic played out at Kramer Hill. But to close this series out, we wanted to get a better sense of the bigger picture. So we hit up Tom Kane. He's a casual Celtics fan and faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard. He and his colleagues recently published the most comprehensive look at learning loss during the pandemic to date. Our research covered 10,000 schools, 2.1 million students in 49 out of 50 states plus D.C. Let's talk about what you found.

What were your takeaways? So we found that in parts of the country where schools did not shut down, students lost ground. So remember, everybody went remote in spring of 2020, and we see that, that achievement slowed down even in places that went back to in-person pretty quickly in 2021. However, in places where schools remained remote for more than half of 2021, there were much larger losses, especially for students attending high-poverty schools. In schools that remained in person throughout 2021, students lost about seven to ten weeks of instruction. But there was no widening of gaps between black and white students, between high-poverty and poverty and low poverty schools. Everybody lost about the same amount.

In schools that were remote for more than half of 2021, achievement gaps widened pretty dramatically between high poverty and low poverty schools, between blacks and whites, between whites and Hispanics. Students in high poverty schools in those districts lost the equivalent of 22 weeks of instruction, so more than half a year. How exactly do you measure that? Is it test scores? What is it, grades? So we're measuring this with students' achievement growth on math and reading tests. So when we say students lost ground, I'm not literally saying people forgot how to do algebra or forgot how to read. It was that they didn't grow as much in algebra or math, and they didn't grow as much in reading

as we would expect them to grow. And when we talk about where schools stayed open and where schools closed, are we essentially talking about, I don't want to be reductive here, but red states versus blue states? There was a partisan component to the school shutdown decision. So states like Florida and Texas were much less likely to close schools during the pandemic than states like Maryland, Illinois, New Jersey. So what do schools do now to make up for what's been lost? Well, I know everybody is eager to get back to normal, but I hope people recognize that normal is not going to be enough. That many districts are thinking about things like high-dosage tutoring, double-dose math.

So... Double-dose math. It sounds like a kid's worst nightmare. So giving students an extra period of math instruction or reading instruction if it's in the early grades. These poor kids. Right. Well, people aren't doing the math on just how much of this additional help students are going to need. So, based on our calculations, students in a high-poverty school that was remote for half the year of 2021, virtually every student in those schools would need a tutor in order

to catch up, to make up for the lost ground. So, tutoring works, but I don't think people realize the scale of effort that would be required. The logistically, which is politically the least popular option, would be extending the school year over the next couple of years and then paying teachers time and a half and school bus drivers and other school staff. Make it worth people's while to teach the additional time. School districts have the dollars through this federal aid that they've received over

the last couple of years. And we just need to be thinking about what's the scale of effort that's going to be required to help students catch up. I imagine there's a finite amount of time to address the learning loss that these kids experienced in the pandemic. When exactly does this need to happen or how long do schools have to fix this? Over the course of the pandemic, schools have received about $190 billion in federal aid. And much of that money is currently unspent. But the school districts have until the end of 2024 to spend those dollars. We should be talking now about

things like extending the school year. My fear, though, is people are underestimating the scale of the effort that's going to be required. I mean, you're talking about some improbable solutions, right? Extending school years, paying teachers more, getting everyone a tutor. It all sounds smart, but we don't always choose the smartest path. What happens if we don't address these gaps, if we just keep passing kids along because we don't want to hold them back? We see what's the relationship between students' achievement scores and earnings later in life. And based on those relationships, like a 22-week loss in instruction for students in a high-poverty school would translate into about a 5% lower earnings over the rest of their career. Now, that may not sound like a ton, but actually, if you add that up across the entire economy, if these losses became permanent, it would result in about a $2 trillion loss in present value of future earnings for our students. Whether we agreed with the school closure decisions or not, the fact is those were public health measures that were taken on our behalf.

And adults have an obligation now to pay the bill for that and not expect our students now to pay that bill. Because they will pay the bill in terms of lower earnings and higher high school dropout rates and lower college going rates if we don't do anything about it. Tom Kane, he's a gentleman of Harvard, Harvard Center for Education Policy Research. To be specific, our show day was reported and produced by Miles Bryan. His teeth are fine. Miles had help from Matthew Collette, Afim Shapiro,

and Laura Bullard. It's today explained. Happy summertime, kids. My weemie looked exactly like me.