NC's Restart schools are outpacing some other schools in reversing learning loss. State leaders want to know why.
Schools with greater financial and regulatory flexibility suffered less pandemic learning loss and recovered more of the losses they did suffer than schools that didn’t have those flexibilities.
That’s according to a new analysis from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction released Wednesday, which studied learning recovery among low-performing schools.
The finding could provide state officials with an idea of what else could help schools better serve students academically, as test scores have declined post-pandemic.
State Board of Education members reviewed data on what state education officials call “recurring low-performing” schools, or institutions that have produced test scores below a certain threshold in at least two of the past three years.
A subset of these schools — Restart Schools — did better during the 2021-22 school year than other low-performing counterparts. The board asked the DPI to conduct more analyses to find out why schools in the state-run program performed as well as they did. Schools can stay in the program for five years after exiting “recurring low-performing” status.
“What we need clearly is a rapid expansion [of] whichever models are most effective, in whichever circumstance they match up with,” Board Chairman Eric Davis said.
Restart schools have fewer restrictions than typical public schools on how they spend state dollars. Many Restart schools have been using funds that would otherwise be restricted to hire more people, to offer more services to students.
“We know that that is needed,” said Juliane Garber, who leads support for the state’s school reform models. She added that the department will analyze more factors contributing to Restart Schools’ success.
During the 2021-22, the state had 297 recurring low-performing schools last school year, though just 148 of them were participating in the Restart program. In Wake County, those included several schools, such as Walnut Creek and Barwell elementary schools.
Data released Wednesday show Restart schools suffered less learning loss after the pandemic than recurring low-performing schools that aren’t in the Restart program. They also demonstrated faster rates in learning recovery, with greater recovery in math.
State board members said Wednesday they’d like to find out more about why so many recurring low-performing schools have not applied for the Restart program.
Most Restart Schools aren’t taking advantage of other allowances, such as lifting class size restrictions or following a different school calendar than the late August through mid-June calendar permitted under state law.
“I am shocked at the lack of flexibilities being used,” State Superintendent Catherine Truitt told the board. With most schools only participating in one of the flexibilities, she said, she isn’t confident in associating simply having flexibilities with success.
Board Member Olivia Oxendine asked the department for a case study to see whether factors beyond flexibilities are playing a role, too, such as teacher retention.
Many factors outside of the Restart program are also at play, such as a multibillion-dollar influx of federal pandemic relief dollars in the state, hundreds of millions of which will go toward learning recovery efforts.
In another report released Wednesday, data show Restart Schools made greater academic progress before the pandemic than after it. Based on test score data from the 2021-22 school year, 18% of the Restart Schools would no longer be considered recurring low-performing. In the 2018-19 school year, it was 23%.
