Harrisburg, Pennsylvania – As Brylon Price recalls, he struggled with just about everything in the first full academic year of the pandemic. With minimal guidance and frequent disturbances, he had a hard time staying on top of tasks and finishing his homework on time.
It was so difficult that his parents asked him to repeat sixth grade – a decision he credits with setting him on a better path.
“At first I didn’t really want to do it. But later in the year I thought it was better for me to do it,” said Brylon, now 13.
The number of students who have been quarantined for an academic year has risen across the country. Traditionally, experts have said that repeating the classroom can harm children’s social lives and academic futures. But many parents, empowered by the new pandemic-era laws, have called for hypotheses to help their children recover from distance learning disruptions, quarantine and school staff shortages.
Twenty-four of the 28 states that provided data for the last school year have seen an increase in the number of students being held back, according to an AP analysis. Three states – South Carolina, West Virginia and Delaware – saw their retention rate more than double.
Pennsylvania, where the Price family lives, has passed a pandemic-era law that allows parents to choose to return their children. The following year, the number of students retained in the state jumped by about 20,000 to more than 45,000.
Brylon’s mother does not regret taking advantage of the new law.
“The best decision we could have made is for him,” said Kristi Price, who lives in Bellefont, Central Pennsylvania.
While the family’s two daughters managed to keep up with school despite limited supervision, Brylon struggled. His mother said he went back to school by himself in the first full academic year of the pandemic, but that he was “soft.” Students were isolated and suspended, and teachers tried to keep up with students learning at home, online, and in blended models. That winter, Brylon suffered a spinal cord injury from wrestling that forced him to return to distance learning.
Back in sixth grade, Brylon had an individualized tutorial that helped him build more focus. Getting more individual attention from teachers also helped. Socially, he said, the transition was easy, as most of his friends were in lower grades or had attended different schools already.
Research into the world of education has been crucial to getting students to return grades.
The risk is that students who are retained have a two-fold increased risk of dropping out, said Arthur Reynolds, a professor at the University of Minnesota’s Human Capital Research Collaborative, citing studies of students in Chicago and Baltimore.
“Kids see it as punishment,” Reynolds said. “It reduces their academic motivation, it does not increase their educational progress.”
But retention advocates say none of the research has been done in a pandemic, when many kids struggled with Zoom lessons and some stopped logging in altogether.
“A lot of kids have struggled and they have a lot of problems,” said Florida Senator Lori Berman, a Democrat from Delray Beach. Berman has authored a law intended to make it easier for parents from kindergarten to fifth grade to ask for class reruns in the 2021-22 school year. “I don’t think there is any stigma that is stopping your child from regressing at this point.”
In general, parents can request that children be deferred, but the final decision is up to administrators, who make decisions based on factors including academic progress. California and New Jersey have also passed laws that have made it easier for parents to ask their children to repeat class, although the option was only available last year.
In a Kansas City suburb, Celeste Roberts decided last year to take another second grade course for her son, who she said was struggling even before the pandemic. When virtual learning was a failure, he spent the year learning at a slower pace with his grandmother, a retired teacher who bought goats to keep things interesting.
Roberts said repeating the year helped her son academically and his friends barely noticed.
Even with your peers, some of them were like, ‘Wait, shouldn’t you be in third grade? ‘ And she said, ‘Well, I didn’t go to school because of COVID.’ And they’re kind of like, ‘Okay, cool.’ As you know, they progress. It is nothing. So it was really cool socially. Even with parental circles. Everyone is like, “Wow. Do what your child needs to do.”
Alex Lamb, who has been researching class retention as part of her work with the Center for Education, Policy Analysis, Research and Evaluation at the University of Connecticut to help advise school districts, said Alex Lamb.
“None of those options are good,” she said. “One great option would be to let the students move forward, and then provide some of that research-backed, effective support that allows for the academic and social-emotional growth of the students and then the communities.”
In the Fox Chapel Area School District in Pennsylvania, two students were retained at the request of teachers, while eight families decided their students would repeat a class. Six others discussed the new legislation with the school and ultimately decided not to hinder their students.
“As a school district, we take the issue of retention very seriously,” said School Principal Mary Catherine Religak. She said the district has parents and a team of teachers, school counselors and school administrators to help determine what’s best for each child.
Price says keeping Brylon helped him get an Individualized Education Program, or IEP. The special education plan gave him more support as he navigated sixth grade again. When thinking about the difference between the first and second rounds of sixth grade, Brylon said he felt the extra support was helpful, noting that he likes to get one-on-one help from teachers on occasion.
“In online school, you didn’t really do that,” he said. “I got the work done and then just handed it over.”
He said he didn’t want to be given the answer, but was prompt enough to be able to figure it out on his own.
“I think because of the pandemic, we, as parents, were able to see how hard he was and were able to realize that he was just barely keeping his head above water, and that he needed more help in order to succeed in this,” Price said.
____
Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas. Schultz is a member of the Associated Press/Reporting for the American House News Initiative. Report for America is a non-profit national service program that puts journalists in local newsrooms to report confidential issues.
Copyright © 2022 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
.
[ad_2]
