The dangerous gimmick called learning loss

In education, the recent concept of “learning loss” in reference to the effects of the pandemic (a marketing strategy for testing companies if ever there was one, and a gift to pearl clutchers) is only possible in a world in which we can only see the past, only see an old way of doing things. In that past students start kindergarten at the age of five, attend an additional twelve years of scripted coursework, and then walk across the graduation stage supposedly ready to start their lives. That system has most certainly been disrupted.

What we have long understood about that system is how deeply inflexible it is given its entrenchment in a dizzying array of state and federal policies, how poorly suited it is for serving the needs of a more and more diverse student population, and how behind it is given the needs of an eighteen year old when they head out into the ever changing modern world. One thing the pandemic made possible was the removal of the scales of ignorance from the world’s eyes as to these shortcomings—but only if we are willing to see a different system going forward.

The fact that the concept of learning loss has taken on a life of its own suggests that we aren’t even close to learning any sort of lesson. Learning loss is only possible from the perspective of an old, antiquated system that parses learning into age-based standardized chunks and having lost several of those chunks is now helpless to see how to squeeze them back in. We can know that because if we started schools from scratch today we would have no old ways through which to define this sense of loss, but only future needs that must be met. And while those future needs are considerable given the last 2 ½ years, they are likely to be meetable, but not within the old way of doing things.

Throughout the pandemic businesses, nonprofits, and hospitals (to name but a few), also had their normalcy disrupted in profound ways. Those that survived knew that when the world changes you better change to face it, or the price will be irrelevance and a strong chance you won't be around much longer. What they did not hold was the notion that the old way of doing things should be the lens through which to view the future, nor did they accept that there was one singular way to do things that should continue to define their work in a post pandemic world. In a world where the assumptions and needs going forward are new, the way forward must be new as well.

Imagine instead a world in which these organizations held an almost sacred belief that there was one way to do things and therefore the only thing they could imagine in a post-pandemic world that had shifted out from under them would be to return to the old ways as quickly as possible. Their loss would be in the gap between where they are now and where they would be absent the crisis, and if that was their only way of seeing that gap would indeed appear as impassable--a loss to be sure. The view from the perspective of the new needs and circumstances that now exist would reveal that the old ways of doing things fits reality like a square peg in a round hole. The choice at that moment would be to lament the loss of a nostalgia that cannot be replaced and carry on towards irrelevance and obsolescence by ignoring the fact that the world changed, or to design new systems and structures around the new needs and circumstances. Foolishness would ask for the former, wisdom the latter.

In schools, we have two choices going forward: continue with an old system in which the needs of students who endured the pandemic will never be met and the gimmick of learning loss becomes self-fulfilling prophecy or create a new system in based on the new needs. One of those is foolishness and one wisdom. I hope we make the right choice.