Teachers worry for students' futures as questionnaire reveals growing gaps

"Schooling Under Stress": CBC News sent a questionnaire to thousands of education professionals across Canada to find out how they and their students are doing in this extraordinary school year. Nearly 9,500 responded.

Grade seven math teacher Michelle Shannon is worried about her students. 

During her daily Google Meet classes, Shannon said it's common for her to see only half her usual roster of students signing in and participating. 

"To even call it school, I struggle with that, because it's not school," said Shannon, who teaches at Sunnyside Public School in Kitchener.

"There're so many kids who just aren't showing up at all." 

• Schooling Under Stress

Adding to her worries, Shannon said, is that many students began this school year already at a deficit, having lost some ground when the pandemic hit at the tail end of last school year. Those losses have snowballed, Shannon said, as she's had to make decisions about what to cut from this year's curriculum and what is non-negotiable. 

"It's difficult. I won't get covered what I want to get covered. I won't get covered what I feel I need to get covered and what the students need to have to go on to next year," said Shannon.

"It's like trying to race through it … and then to what end, if there's no mastery?"

Shannon isn't alone in her concerns. 

CBC News sent a questionnaire to educators across the country, including Waterloo region and Wellington County. Locally, 880 educators and school staff responded, including more than 650 classroom teachers. 

The results showed local teachers have noticed a downshift in what they're able to teach and what students are able to learn.

• About 80 per cent of educators who responded said they are at least somewhat behind schedule with their required curriculum. 
• More than half who responded said that fewer students are meeting their learning objectives, compared to a non-pandemic year. 
• Roughly 65 per cent who responded said they either "somewhat" or "strongly" agree that some students won't catch up academically.
• Just over 70 per cent who responded said they either "somewhat" or "strongly" agree that some students have stopped attending class altogether. 

Those responses echo the results at a national level. Around 70 per cent of administrators across the country who responded to CBC's national questionnaire believe absenteeism is higher this year than in previous years.

Nearly three quarters of teachers who responded nationally say they're behind in their curriculum. And more than half of teachers say their kids are not reaching learning objectives.

'What are we setting them up for?'

High school teacher Jim Fare said another obstacle for his students is the current quadmester system, which sees students taking fewer classes at a time on an accelerated schedule. He said this is a challenge in subjects like math and science, which take time to sink in.

"Imagine that you're a kid for whom calculus didn't come easily, to have it drilled into you for hours and hours a day," said Fare, who teaches physics, math and computers at Cameron Heights Collegiate in Kitchener. 

"You just get tired." 

Even so, Fare said, students aren't getting as much material to learn this year as they would have received in a non-pandemic year, as he and other teachers have been forced to cut out "massive swaths" of the curriculum. In a physics class, for example, he said he cut out one unit and has watered down other units. 

Like Shannon, Fare is concerned about the cumulative effect of the pandemic as students progress into higher grades and post-secondary without the foundation they need. 

"I am seeing that now in calculus, where the kids don't have the fundamental skills of algebra, of the earlier math," he said. 

"I'm worried about my kids. What are we setting them up for?" 

Plans in the works to help students catch up, says WRDSB

Waterloo Region District School Board superintendent Lila Reid said it's to be expected that some students will have learning gaps as a result of the pandemic. But, she said, the board has plans in the works to help students catch up. 

For example, she said the board has introduced a new online summer program aimed at Grade 6, 7 and 8 students to help close gaps in math and literacy. She said there are additional summer programs that pre-date the pandemic, and those are seeing higher enrollments as the board targets students from communities hit hard by COVID-19. 

"Our teachers and our educators and our administrators are reaching out directly to families to make them aware of these programs" said Reid. 

A spokesperson for the Waterloo Catholic District School Board said that board is also aware that some students have experienced learning loss in the past year. 

"There is work to be done but we are hopeful that as more normalcy returns to the school year, we will be able to re-engage students and be able get them back on track," said John Shewchuk. 

Similarly, the Upper Grand District School Board said it plans to monitor how students are doing in the upcoming year, but already has summer programs in place to help students catch up, according to spokesperson Heather Loney. 

Both Reid and Loney noted the province has recently announced new funding for the upcoming school year, and that their boards are in the process of deciding how to best allocate it. 

A spokesperson for Education Minister Stephen Lecce told CBC News the plan includes $85.5 million "to ensure students have every opportunity to enrol in summer learning, gain support of a math tutor, or access services to bolster math and reading proficiency."

Students need more, says prof

But professor Kelly Gallagher-Mackay says the funding promised by the province so far is "completely inadequate" and won't do enough to help students get back on track. 

Gallagher-Mackay, an assistant professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, said while Canadian research is sparse, there's a growing body of international evidence that shows the pandemic has led to significant learning gaps, especially for students who were already facing inequality.

"The picture isn't great," said Gallagher-MacKay, who studies educational inequality in the university's faculty of arts.

Gallagher-Mackay said funding is needed for more programs, such as comprehensive public tutoring, so that students don't end up at a permanent disadvantage.

Otherwise, she said, "we could be looking at some really long-term consequences for both students and the national economy."

Fears of long-term consequences

As for Shannon and Fare, the two Kitchener teachers agreed students need some kind of help to catch up on what they missed in the last year. 

Both said they worry about what might happen to their students otherwise, as they advance into higher grade levels and graduate from high school.

"I know a lot of the kids in my classes want to go into engineering," said Fare, who worked as an engineer before going into teaching.

"I know that it's very difficult when you've had a normal go of high school, and you've learned a normal amount of stuff. It's got to be more difficult for them. I worry about next year, whatever comes next."

"It makes me really sad to think of [what happens] if we can't hook these kids back in and get them back on track," said Shannon. 

METHODOLOGY

CBC sent the questionnaire to 52,351 email addresses of school workers in eight different provinces, across nearly 200 school districts. Email addresses were scraped from school websites that publicly listed them. The questionnaire was sent using SurveyMonkey.

CBC chose provinces and school districts based on interest by regional CBC bureaus and availability of email addresses. As such, this questionnaire is not a representative survey of educators in Canada. None of the questions were mandatory, and not all respondents answered all of the questions. (Data analysis: Roberto Rocha and Dexter McMillan)