This study explores the effects of COVID-19 on academic growth and achievement in Hawaii schools, and strategies that school leaders used in the recovery from the pandemic. The calculations in this report can support states as they investigate the impact of COVID on students and schools and their recovery from the pandemic.
The Center for Assessment examined COVID’s impact on student test scores, with some schools experiencing high impact and others a far lower impact. The Center also studied rates of student learning, and characterized some schools as “high recovery” because students were on track to catch up to where they would have been had the pandemic not occurred. Other studied schools were categorized as “low recovery” because students were significantly off-track to catch up to where they would have been pre-COVID.
Using a case study design, the authors interviewed school leaders at more than a dozen Hawaii schools to gain insight into programs, strategies and structures that influenced a school’s degree of recovery. They did not find any correlation between those supports and whether schools later experienced high or low recovery.
A fuller understanding of schools’ recovery from COVID’s impacts would require a deeper understanding of the relationships among leaders and staff, educators, students and the community, and the leadership qualities that supported high recovery where it occurred.
