English Language Arts Instructional Systems in the First Full Year of COVID-19. Research Report. RR-A279-2

Since March 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has placed unprecedented stresses on the public education system in the United States. At every level, from the U.S. Department of Education down through local districts and individual schools, the pandemic has presented formidable challenges. Many of these challenges have been operational in nature but there have also been substantial instructional challenges during the pandemic. Early insight into the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on public schooling identified the challenges that schools faced in the pivot to online learning in spring 2020. Large proportions of teachers reported through the RAND American Teacher Panel (ATP) that they had not received adequate guidance from their school systems to serve particular populations of students, such as students with disabilities (SWDs), homeless students, and English learners (ELs). These pandemic-era instructional challenges compound existing barriers to quality instruction. This report examines issues of instructional system coherence during the 2020-2021 school year. Specifically, the report investigates teachers' perceptions of: (1) guidance they received about ELA instruction, (2) guidance around addressing the needs of traditionally underserved students, (3) coherence of their ELA instructional system, and (4) presence of contextual conditions identified through literature as supporting coherence.

One Year into the Pandemic, What Secondary Math Teachers Said about Challenges to Standards-Aligned Instruction and Skipping Content. Data Note: Insights from the American Educator Panels. Research Report. RR-A827-8

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic upended math instruction--but not equitably. Although little is known about the quality of math instruction in different school settings during the 2020-2021 school year, evidence from national survey data collected throughout the pandemic suggests that students' "opportunity to learn" (OTL)--defined here as time on instruction and content coverage--differed dramatically depending on whether students were learning in person or through an alternative mode of instruction. This Date Note presents findings from the 2020 and 2021 Learn Together Surveys to highlight the challenges to standards-aligned instruction that secondary (grades 6 to 12) math teachers might have perceived one year into the pandemic, how frequently they skipped standards-aligned math content, and their reasons for doing so. These findings add to the growing body of evidence showing that students in fully remote and hybrid school settings had fewer opportunities to engage with grade-level math than students learning in person. Specifically, secondary math teachers who provided remote or hybrid instruction reported skipping standards-aligned content more frequently and were less likely to report being able to devote as much time as they would have liked to math instruction compared with their in-person counterparts. These findings are particularly significant for students who attended schools that were less likely to offer in-person instruction during the 2020-2021 school year.

The Collaborative Model for Teaching o-SEL: Preparing Educators to Design Online Environments for Social-Emotional Learning

In this study, we sought to develop a model to provide educators with training and resources to effectively support and guide social-emotional learning (SEL) in PK-12 online environments, which we refer to as o-SEL. We utilized five national sets of standards and competencies to guide the development of six online modules for educators to gain skills, knowledge, and resources to help students learn SEL-related skills. Qualitative methods and analysis were employed to examine our research question. We utilized design thinking as a strategy for developing o-SEL professional learning. Five SEL experts were identified and invited to participate in a brief survey to determine areas of focus and then we conducted two one-hour focus groups. The focus group discussion was transcribed, coded, and analyzed to determine emergent themes related to areas of SEL needs in online learning environments. Based on our findings, we identified six elements (i.e., Empower, Engage, Motivate, Include, Collaborate, Extend) for educators to foster inclusive o-SEL environments for PK-12 learners that we describe as the Collaborative Model for Teaching o-SEL. We discuss the positive impact that o-SEL instruction can have on student learning outcomes, while also designing inclusive and culturally relevant support structures. This study calls for further investigation regarding teacher application of the o-SEL model and impact of o-SEL on student learning.