Scores from standardized testing that Colorado public school students took in the spring proved what educators have suspected: classroom disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic have caused significant learning losses and cut achievement from 2019 to this year across all grades and subjects.

Colorado Education Commissioner Katy Anthes called the findings “sobering data that confirm just how hard last year was with school closures, class quarantines and remote learning,” in publicly releasing statewide results for Colorado Measures of Academic Success and PSAT and SAT exams during Thursday’s State Board of Education meeting.

Declines in math were greater than English language arts, and in some grades the worst ever, Joyce Zurkowski, chief assessment officer for the Colorado Department of Education, told media earlier in the week.

The 28.5% of fourth graders who met or exceeded expectations statewide in math constitutes the lowest performance since the assessments began, she said.

Less than one-quarter of sixth graders statewide — 24.1% — met or exceeded performance expectations in math.

Math was more adversely affected likely because it’s sequential, with concepts building on one another, which usually requires more direct teacher-student interaction for students to grasp, education officials said.

The results are no surprise, said Eric Mason, director of assessment for Colorado Springs School District 11.

“We definitely saw learning loss, with a significant drop in math, not so much in English language arts, and we see that validated in the state scores as well,” he said.

Everyone realized COVID was affecting students not only academically but also socially and emotionally, said Wendy Birhanzel, superintendent of Harrison School District 2 in Colorado Springs.

“We knew students didn’t have the time to learn all the standards,” she said.

Despite the altered learning conditions under COVID, neither the content of the tests nor the expectations changed, Zurkowski said.

Officials also noted that performance gaps between Black and Hispanic students and white and Asian students have widened.

For both English language arts and math, white students outperformed Black and Hispanic students by about 30 percentage points, data show.

Where half of ninth and 10th grade Black students met or exceeded expectations in English language arts, 80% of white students did, for example.

Similarly, where about one-quarter of ninth grade Black and Hispanic students met or exceeded standards in math, more than half of white test takers did so.

English language learners posted even higher gaps of 50 to 64 percentage points.

Alexis Knox-Miller, director of equity and inclusion for Colorado Springs D-11, attributes the disparities to “learning privilege,” rather than “learning loss.”

“Some kids were privileged enough to continue learning during COVID, and some were not,” she said. “There’s no easy fix — these gaps have been around for a long time.”

State education officials said socio-economic disparities in access to electronic devices and internet connectivity, not have personal space to do schoolwork at home, not having parents who could work at home and other pandemic-related issues

Under its broad-based equity program, D-11 is focusing on increasing achievement for all students, Knox-Miller said.

Initiatives include “culturally responsible teaching, dealing with bias that may prevent some kids from learning, restorative practices around discipline to keep kids in the classroom and making sure facilities have all the stuff 21st century learners need,” she said.

“D-11 is a microcosm of the bigger public education system, where if your skin is a certain color and you live in a certain region, you have less access to more effective teachers.” 

What’s worked to close achievement gaps in Harrison D-2, where about three-quarters of district enrollment is made up of students of color, is holding all students to high standards, regardless of their background, and building strong relationships with teachers, Birhanzel, the superintendent, said.

“Content, growth and performance don’t matter unless you care about them (students),” she said. “Our staff go above and beyond to make sure our students are successful.”

Whether remote learning is to blame for the statewide increasing in achievement gaps among racial groups is unknown, Zurkowski said, since Colorado did not collect daily, like some states did.

Officials think that because the virus disproportionately impacted Black and Hispanic communities across the nation, learning for students in those households was more difficult.

Some students didn’t take the tests because of family concerns about health and safety, Zurkowski said, and some had limited access to tests, with instruction being delivered remotely and in hybrid formats. And some school districts adjusted or reduced academic content covered, which affected their advancing in mastering the curriculum, she added.

School district leaders say they began planning months ago for the scenario the scores reflect.

Harrison D-2, which started the fall semester on Tuesday, is introducing new pre-math assessments to gauge what level students are at and what skills they’re lacking, said Rachel Laufer, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning.

Small-group learning and individual attention will be emphasized as the school year progresses, she said.

Nearly 20% of Harrison students attended an academic or enrichment summer school program to help them get caught up, Laufer said.

“This is a huge increase from previous years,” she said, “and one of the ways in which we are using federal stimulus … funds to address the ‘unfinished learning’ caused by the pandemic, as well as to provide students social enrichment opportunities that were limited in the previous year due to COVID.”

The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief fund is part of the Education Stabilization Fund in the federal government’s CARES Act to mitigate COVID impacts.

Colorado Springs D-11 also will step up additional support for math at all grade levels, Mason said, and change its normal method of targeting students who have fallen behind with tutoring or other individualized assistance to “systemic intervention.”

“We’ll be giving full court press even in regular classrooms to provide additional support for math and English language arts across the board,” he said.

“We’re making sure we have a reliable district benchmark locally to make sure we can get a good read on where students are academically and adjust instruction in a timely fashion throughout the year.”

Recovering from the academic backslide could take a while, Zurkowski said.

“If we go back and return to what we’ve done in the past in terms of instruction and learning, it may take us more than a year to recover,” she said.

“If we return to a similar rate of learning to what we’ve had in the past, it will take us longer to get back to where we were historically.

“If we can accelerate learning, we will get back to our historical levels more quickly.”

Hypothetical models show the rebound could stretch for five years.

Also as expected, statewide testing participation was lower than in previous years in all grades, ranging from 58% to 78% participation for required tests — a decrease of 20 to 30 percentage points — and very low participation — 6% to 10% — for non-required tests.

After canceling state assessments and PSAT and SAT exams in the spring of 2020 due to pandemic-related school closures, state lawmakers reduced the requirements for this year’s spring testing. A federal waiver approved fewer tests to fewer students and optional testing for certain grades.

Third, fifth and seventh grade students were required to take the English language arts tests, and fourth, sixth and eighth graders were required to take the math assessments. Parents could opt-in their children to take both. Ninth and 10th graders did the PSAT, and 11th graders took the SAT college-entrance exam.

Participation in coming years “could be a challenge,” Zurkowski said.

“We know 75% of our students tested this year, we need to get that 25% who didn’t test this year back into testing, in order for us to get a more accurate picture of what is happening in the state of Colorado,” she said.

Nonetheless, this year’s data serve as “an important indicator of student achievement,” Zurkowski said.

The statistics set a baseline, she said, and will drive recovery efforts to rebound and guide some spending.

The Colorado Department of Education will release district-level and individual school scores by the end of this month, officials said.