Libraries can help close pandemic learning gap

My seven-year-old son recently started the first grade, and he loves it. I think school feels like an adventure to him, like each day is full of surprises that are specially designed to delight him. His experience is exactly what I wish for every kid.

But my son’s school experience is vastly different from that of the children who were in school at the height of the pandemic. To him, “zooming” means running around the playground; for many other kids, Zoom was their portal to learning.

We already recognize the profound impact of pandemic learning loss: student performance in math and reading has hit its lowest levels in decades. What’s more, students demonstrated slower than average growth in the last school year, meaning learning gaps aren’t closing—in some cases, they’re growing.

One way to think about this issue is in chunks of time. The Education Recovery Scorecard, a collaboration of researchers from Harvard University and Stanford University, calculates that the average student fell half a year behind in math and a third of a year behind in reading. Those in the hardest-hit communities, which were disproportionately low-income and minority districts, would have to learn 150 percent of material typically covered in a school year for three years just to break even. Even if we could speed up learning, there simply isn’t enough time in school to recapture the lost ground.

But what about the time students are not in school? That’s where libraries can step in. Our ability to reach students with highly engaging out-of-school time programming means libraries play an important role in addressing learning loss. From supercharged summer reading games to robotics camps to art, many libraries already deliver programs that generate positive benefits. When I spent an afternoon with a group of tweens at my library last year inventing board games inspired by their favorite books and characters, the kids didn’t realize they were practicing critical thinking or problem-solving skills—they just knew it was fun.

Librarians are particularly adept at developing creative learning experiences using books. As fewer 13-year-olds report reading for fun today than in all previous assessment years, we have an opportunity to lean in to our role as experts helping kids discover their love of reading. In leading that discovery, it’s important that we help students and families navigate new learning on the science of reading and introduce literacy skill-building activities that feel less like lessons and more like…dare we say it: fun?

Researchers have found (and are advocating for) high-dosage tutoring as an educational intervention with significant demonstrated benefit. Libraries should be reaching out to their school district partners to develop a plan for collaboration on tutoring so that every kid has access. And there’s urgency to making this happen—the last round of federal COVID relief funding for schools must be committed or spent down by this time next year.

Time seems to be the critical factor in this moment that we cannot afford to squander. Yet libraries everywhere are facing the time suck of increased material challenges and the need for advocacy against frightening censorship legislation. The new Orchard Park Branch of Meridian Library District, ID, featured on this month’s LJ cover, includes an adaptable learning lab and programming to support literacy and STEAM education—exactly what kids need right now. But the district spent the past year fending off attacks from activists who sought to shut the library down because they wanted to ban books. Imagine thinking that the best thing for kids in the middle of an educational crisis is to remove books from the library. What a colossal waste of precious time.

Librarians, like educators, are understandably exhausted in this moment—and the kids are, too. But in fewer than nine months, approximately 3.5 million students will graduate less prepared to enter college or the workforce than their peers just four years ago. Can we make libraries the place where we add to the hours of learning that students need to catch up—but subtract some of the stress? We have a very short window of time to figure it out.