Members of the Columbia Lions Club, on Thursday, heard from Columbia School District Superintendent Jason Harris regarding the impact of the COVID pandemic and how it has impacted learning within the district.
Harris discussed one of the programs that was implemented after he came to the district five years ago was the goal to be a one-on-one district with providing computers for each student.
With the pandemic and shutdown of schools, Harris said, they realized just how important it was for the students to have computers.
“We instituted that, not knowing that in March 2020, all of our lives would turn upside down, especially those in the school system,” Harris said.
As a result of having that program, he said, they were able to continue with educating the students, even though everything had shut down. Then, even though they thought they had everything pretty much figured out, August came along and there was suddenly a new variant of the COVID virus.
“We’ve all had a really difficult time,” Harris said.
Columbia Schools were open every day last year for students to have in-person instruction, which Harris said was very fortunate, because there were many other schools in the state that could not.
Harris provided data on the CSD's performance over the last two years in comparison to the overall state. In math, Columbia sustained a learning loss of 8.8%, compared to the state average of 12.2%. English and language arts, CSD had a 3.7% loss, compared the state level of 6.8%, and the science courses were measured at closely the same rate.
The biggest drop in learning loss, Harris said, was evident in students who were performing at above-average levels. Although they never fell below the grade-level criteria, those students lost some of the momentum in exceeding in the realm of above grade-level learning.
There were exceptions, Harris noted, including the performance of students at Jefferson Middle School, where the sixth grade English/language arts scores rose by 8.4% and math increased by 5.8%. The eighth-grade science scores also jumped by 3.4%.
The levels of learning loss involving math were hard across the country, according to Harris. While Mississippi reported a 12.2% learning loss, he said some school districts in the nation experienced as high as a 20% rate of learning loss.
“When most kids are at home, they're not spending their time at the table doing math. Video games do not require math,” Harris said, citing a reason why there has been such a nationwide drop in that area.
Surprisingly, the district has reported a higher level of learning loss in students in the primary and elementary grades, while high school students presented a bigger issue with attendance.
Harris said that, emerging from the pandemic, about 70% of the students were at grade-level, which gives the district a lot of momentum. He noted that, in his position as superintendent, he gets a lot of the “fame and blame,” however, he knows who really deserves the credit.
“I cannot stand here and say enough about how awesome our teachers are in Columbia’s School District,” Harris said.
