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Given the amount of time and learning loss since schools were shuttered, districts will face a strong temptation to
test students immediately upon re-entry to school, identify their academic “deficits,” and reteach or remediate.
According to research, both are largely ineffective practices, resulting in student disengagement with school and
greater inequities in access to grade-level instruction and educational opportunity.
Instead, school and district curriculum leaders should keep the focus on grade-level content and rigor, addressing
learning gaps as needed within the context of grade-level work. In reading, for example, when students stumble over
unfamiliar words or have difficulty understanding a text, don’t retreat to less demanding or simplified texts, or assume
that students who are having difficulty require remedial practice on basic reading skills. This is particularly important for English Learners, whose struggle with reading may be a reflection of the process of second language development
rather than a lack of literacy skills.
Instead, teachers should take the time to discuss the text, provide scaffolded support on how to discern the meaning
of words in context, and allow opportunities for students to express their thinking and ideas with their peers. This will
ensure that students continue to work with rigorous, engaging grade-level text and content. This daily re-engagement
of prior knowledge in the context of grade-level assignments will add up over time, resulting in more functional
learning than if we resort to watered down instruction or try to reteach topics out of context.  - Council of Great City Schools

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Addressing unfinished learning in the context of grade-level work - Peers and Pedagogy

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As a teacher, I had an understanding of the grade-level math content I was supposed to teach and the belief that students’ new learning had to build from their prior understanding. But the harsh reality was that most of the students in my class were several years below grade level, and I only had on…

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Students with significant unfinished learning need scaffolds and multiple entry points to access grade-appropriate instruction. These supports are critical to avoiding an approach of over-remediation, where struggling students are given work suited for earlier grades. In order to close opportunity gaps, students need a just-in-time strategy, where interventions happen right as they encounter grade-appropriate materials (Steiner & Weisberg, 2020). It is important to note that most high-quality instructional materials offer built-in scaffolds for educators. Teachers without access to these materials, or those looking to supplement existing materials, can use the strategies below to strengthen student supports. These strategies are important at any time, but are particularly relevant as teachers seek to accelerate learning lost during the COVID-19 pandemic.  -RISE

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Districts should also avoid the temptation to rush to cover all of the ‘gaps’ in learning from the last school year. The pace required to cover all of this content will mean rushing ahead of many students, leaving them abandoned and discouraged. It will also feed students a steady diet of curricular junk food: shallow engagement with the content, low standards for understanding, and low cognitive demand—all bad learning habits to acquire. Moreover, at a time when social emotional wellbeing, agency, and engagement are more important than ever, instructional haste may eclipse the patient work of building academic character and motivation. As educators we need to remain focused on the learning that could and should be happening today, and not allow ourselves to be distracted by how we will catch students up. These distractions shift our attention from just in time learning to just in case teaching. “Just in case” teaching wastes time teaching content and skills from earlier grades just in case students need it for grade-level work. “Just in time” concentrates time expenditure on needs that actually come up during grade-level work. In other words, taking the time to provide patient, in-depth instruction allows for issues related to unfinished learning to arise naturally when dealing with new content, allowing for just in time instruction and re-engagement of students in the context of grade-level work.   - Council of Great City Schools

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2020–21 Priority Instructional Content in English Language Arts/literacy and Mathematics_Pre-Publication Draft_May 2020

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Prior research on students displaced by Hurricane Katrina indicated that they had difficulty concentrating and often manifested symptoms of depression in the months following the hurricane. Understanding these impacts and how best to support students’ social and emotional needs after the huge disruption of COVID-19 will be essential. Many students may face greater food insecurity, loss of family income, loss of family members to the coronavirus, and fear of catching the virus themselves. While the scale of the COVID-19 school closures is novel, the inequalities in our school systems are unfortunately anything but new.  Over investing in academic supports without the same or larger investment in social emotional work would be disastrous.  - Brookings

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A Trauma-informed Approach to Teaching Through Coronavirus

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Experts from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network share their recommendations for educators supporting students during the COVID-19 crisis.

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In an environment like Flexible Learning, the opportunity to 'flip' or supplement grade-level appropriate instruction with fluency and other supports with technology is more possible.  This remediation should focus on very concrete skills, rather than new instruction, and can often be uses school wide to build an ecosystem and network of connected classrooms within one platform, accelerating buy in.  This approach only works if grade level curriculum is high-quality, providing a clear contrast in what this type of remediation is, and it should never account for a significant amount of learning time.  Ensuring you have high-quality, grade level curriculum is step one, but once you have that, tools such as Reflex, Lexia, NoRedInk, Freckle, K12, and more can support.  These tools also make it possible to incentivize home learning and track and celebrate progress. Small group instruction at all ages can also support a supplementation of grade level lessons and tasks. In small groups, students can work on tasks at their level, and get targeted teacher support on grade level content. - BetterLesson

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Dr. Divac is a middle school instructional coach. Instead of focusing on assessing gaps, he asked teachers to do a diagnostic before unit 1 to see what students knew going in. This allowed him to help teachers focus on teaching the grade level content.

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Ms. Juliens is a vice principal at a high school in Illinois. To address gaps students have, she has created a PLC structure for teachers of each major subject area to practice strategies that engage students and scaffold their lessons.

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Dr. Omar is a district administrator. He supported instructional teams to create a new scope and sequence that gave renewed focus to specific units in each grade level. while it isn't ideal, his idea is that This will help teachers go deeper into these topics.

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Ms. Parker is a school dean in NYC. She identifies a need to collect data that is not so deficit oriented and academic only. She creates a school wide survey around social emotional well-being to collect trends about how students are doing to share with teachers to inform instruction.

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Mrs. Laghari is a principal at an elementary school in Florida. She identified a tool called Freckle that automatically meets students where they are based on a diagnostic. Students will do this on their distance learning days, and she will give out prizes to students for engagement.