COVID-19 and CTE Perspectives: This March, EdChoice conducted a national survey of high school students and their parents to determine how the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted their views on post-high school plans and learning experiences. The following highlight the survey’s CTE-related findings:
- Since the pandemic started, the number of students planning on attending an in-state technical school increased from 3% to 6%.
- More than half of parents and students agreed that learning skills for future employment is the main purpose of high school education.
- Roughly 20% of parents stated that CTE is the most important subject for their child to learn before graduating high school.
- About 40% of students and 64% of parents say that apprenticeships would be useful right now.
K-12 Pandemic Learning: The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently published a report that discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted K-12 learning during the 2020-21 school year. Researchers surveyed teachers and parents to uncover the following findings about learning obstacles and strategies to prevent learning loss:
- Virtual and hybrid learning teachers were about 21 percentage points more likely than in-person teacher to state that their students had more difficulty learning than a typical school year.
- Nearly 75% of all teachers had more disengaged students than a typical school year, with high school teachers and virtual teachers experiencing higher levels of disengagement.
- Teachers that used live in-person instruction were significantly more likely to say it improved academic progress for at least half their students than teachers that used live virtual instruction or asynchronous instruction.
Relatedly, the Institute of Education Sciences released new data for the School Pulse Panel, a study that surveys K-12 public schools each month to assess the impact of the pandemic on a variety of topics. Detailed below, the latest survey findings from March and April touched on mental health, staff concerns and updates to school health policies:
- K-12 staffs’ top concerns included getting their students to meet the school year’s academic standards, a shortage of substitute teachers, and students’ social, emotional and mental health.
- About 70% of schools said that the percentage of students seeking mental health services has increased since the start of COVID-19 and 29% of schools reported the same for K-12 staff.
- In April, 30% of schools needed to quarantine one or more students due to COVID-19 exposure, symptoms or a positive test, which is a 64 percentage point decrease since January.
Postsecondary Pandemic Impacts: Recently, the Federal Reserve Bank released its annual Economic Well-being of Households report, which contains survey findings about adults’ financial challenges and opportunities related to employment, education and income. This year’s report included the following findings related to postsecondary education, the workforce and the COVID-19 pandemic:
- While K-12 schools largely returned to in-person instruction, more than 75% of postsecondary students said their classes were partly or completely virtual.
- Technical college and associate degree students prefer virtual education more than bachelor’s degree students, likely due to a greater adult population who may have other responsibilities.
- Around 31% of those with some postsecondary education said the benefits from their education exceeded the cost compared to 46% of associate degree and 67% of bachelor’s degree holders.
- Although the percentage of adults aged 25 to 54 that are not working increased, adults who said they were not working because they couldn’t find work returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Supporting Community College Students: As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt students’ academic and personal lives, the Hope Center published a study that demonstrates how community colleges can raise awareness of support services. Throughout the 2020-21 academic year, researchers sent two types of text messages to Dallas College students: one offering information about resources and another offering both information and language to reduce stigma. The information-only texts increased emergency aid applications by five percentage points and outreach to college navigators by one percentage point. In contrast, the texts reducing stigma were successful at empowering students but did not increase support-seeking behaviors.
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