The Iowa Department of Education recently released spring assessment data, which is done routinely to chart student progress among different grade levels, and the newest information provides a window into the impact closures last spring had on learning across the state.

Director of K-12 Instruction at the Pella Community School District Lowell Ernst says the challenge for educators across the nation has not only been recovering learning lost during those two months, but continuing growth from grade level to grade level.

“What we’ve noticed in reviewing data and taking a look at things, is that our kids at the developmental level–that kindergarten through 3rd grade level, probably had the biggest challenges. They’ve done a nice job of recovering–we just got our Iowa tests back, and as we look at those, it appears that we had some learning loss in that 3rd grade level and up through there, but we also see that it was not as much as expected. We see kids that are on track and for the most part, we are moving down the road that we hoped to be at this point, and when we get to the grade levels above that, we see really good news.”

Ernst believes offering online options helped stem many of the losses otherwise incurred by students who did not engage in those learning opportunities.

“I think our teachers did a great job of adapting their skills and adapting the delivery methods that they came through with and students did a good job of staying engaged,” he says. “That’s probably the part that teachers will tell you is those kids that engaged in the online learning when we needed to do it last spring did well, and they kept up. The kids that didn’t engage in those things are the ones we still see suffering.”

Ernst says because the Pella Community School District maintained in-person classes for the duration of last year, they were able to reach students struggling to catch up, and they hope to continue progress into this year. Classes in Pella begin on Monday.