With a new school year starting, let’s give our kids what they deserve – a laser focus on core subjects that grow their knowledge and prepare them for the future. Core education is understood to be the foundation of any functioning country. This notion dates back to the inception of our nation.
One of our Founding Fathers, John Adams, thought schools were "the only means of preserving our constitution from its natural enemies, the spirit of sophistry, the spirit of party, the spirit of intrigue, profligacy, and corruption, and the pestilence of foreign influence."
Students in New Jersey - one of the hardest hit states by the COVID-19 pandemic - were severely affected by elongated school closures. According to the New Jersey Department of Education's analysis, declines in English Language Arts, math and science proficiency fell below 2015 levels, wiping away more than 7 years of progress. When comparing New Jersey's learning loss, the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed New Jersey's fourth and eighth graders experienced scores falling below the national average. The crisis hammered our education system, but funding targeted, data-driven programs will allow us to correct the loss.
It is a well-established fact that personalized attention and targeted instruction can significantly impact a student's learning development. High-impact tutoring (H.I.T.) has emerged as a promising remedy for learning loss due to school lockdowns.
H.I.T. is a specialized intervention where students receive one-on-one or small-group instruction from skilled tutors during school. The tutoring sessions are frequent, with three or more sessions per week. With smaller sizes and a targeted intervention based on the student's needs, researchers at Stanford University's Annenberg Institute National Student Support Accelerator found that after the first year of a four-year longitudinal study, 68 percent of students who participated in 1:1 high-impact tutoring met or exceeded end-of-year early literacy benchmarks – compared to 32 percent of students in the control group. The study launched in 2021 in 40 classrooms across Broward County Public Schools and was the most extensive randomized control study of the impact of 1:1 tutoring on beginning reading skills. Researchers at Harvard University and a 2020 NEBR study also found that H.I.T. effectively increased learning rates for elementary and high school kids.
Through H.I.T. programs, struggling students can receive individualized instruction and personalized emotional support. This support would improve students' sense of self-efficacy, creating the catalyst for a functioning adult with a love of learning. More importantly, it would show students how to overcome adversity by teaching them the ability to bounce back from setbacks and challenges. Students who overcome COVID and the negative externalities that resulted from the traumatic effect will be able to overcome any challenge life hits them with.
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