Ohio’s education leaders and lawmakers are trying to come up with ways to help K-12 children recoup some of the learning they’ve missed during the pandemic.
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) said 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.
He said 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 said.
Brenner said 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 said students scored about eight points lower in-state language arts tests last year and 15 points lower in math.
The Youngstown City Schools scored 2.9% in fifth-grade math assessments and East Cleveland schools scored a 1.9% in math on that fifth-grade test, Brenner said.
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