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Lawmakers are looking to help Ohio kids who lost academic ground during the pandemic
By: Jo Ingles | Statehouse News Bureau
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COLUMUBS, Ohio (Statehouse News Bureau) — Ohio’s education leaders say they know some kids lost ground when most of the state’s schools went to remote learning in the early days of the pandemic.
And since then, a lot of effort has gone into making sure schools can keep kids in the classroom. Some schools have installed new ventilation systems while others have rearranged learning spaces to make them more COVID safe.
Now, the attention is going into how to help K-12 children recoup some of the learning they’ve missed during the pandemic.
Senate Education Committee chair Andrew Brenner (R-Delaware) says federal dollars have been given to schools to help them with programming for remedial learning for kids who lost ground during remote and interrupted learning.
And he says lawmakers are coming up with a plan to get college students studying for education jobs to help tutor kids.
“So, we can pay these students to come in maybe an hour a day for five days a week or however often we can get them in there to sit down with small groups of students to help tutor them to get them caught back up,” Brenner says.
Brenner says chronic absenteeism has been a problem in some districts, adding 74% of students in an urban Ohio district missed 18 days or more of unexcused absences during the pandemic.
The Ohio Department of Education says students scored about eight points lower in-state language arts tests last year and 15 points lower in math.
Brenner says the Youngstown City Schools scored 2.9% in fifth-grade math assessments but that district didn’t have the worst score. He says East Cleveland schools scored a 1.9% in math on that fifth-grade test.