Critical and situated engagement with literacies offers educators an important, documented pedagogical tool that has the potential to increase elementary students' understanding of issues of equity, while developing their empathy, self-awareness, and critical consciousness. What we don't know is how literacies can be used during a global pandemic…

The purpose of this ex-post facto quantitative study was to compare English Language Arts (ELA) and math Tennessee Compressive Assessment Program (TCAP) scores of students in grades four through eight who attended school virtually or in-person during the 2020-2021 school year. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the school district in this study allowed…

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools were forced to close their doors and alternative learning environments had to be established (Wyse et al., 2020). Most districts addressed this issue by creating virtual learning environments (Kaffenberger, 2021). The creation, adoption, and navigation of this new virtual environment created a plethora of…

In the fall of 2020, many students and educators returned to school in person, despite the threat of the COVID-19 virus. Though safety measures such as masks and social distancing were put in place, educators remained concerned for their students' health, well-being, and academic attainment. The current study examined teacher concern for students'…

The current study aimed to explore the COVID-19 impact on reading achievement growth by Grade 3-5 students in a large urban school district in the U.S. and whether the impact differed by students' demographic characteristics and instructional modality. Specifically, using administrative data from the school district, we investigated to what extent…

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an unanticipated, near-universal shift from in-person to virtual instruction in the spring of 2020. During the 2020-21 school year, schools began to reopen, and families were faced with decisions regarding the instructional mode for their children. We leverage administrative, survey, and virtual-learning data to…

This explanatory mixed-methods study explored if there was a change in student progress as measured by STAR percentile rank due to the multiple instructional modalities caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Educational institutions had to shift to distance learning in March of 2020 due to the outbreak of COVID-19. The return to school for the 2020-2021…

The Assessment-to-Instruction (A2i) Professional Support System has been shown to be effective in improving literacy proficiency among young readers by combining data-driven technology with professional development (PD) activities to help teachers provide personalized literacy instruction. To identify efficient ways to expand the reach of A2i,…

The current study aimed to explore the COVID-19 impact on the reading achievement growth of Grade 3-5 students in a large urban school district in the U.S. and whether the impact differed by students' demographic characteristics and instructional modality. Specifically, using administrative data from the school district, we investigated to what…

In March of 2020 the COVID-19 Pandemic changed the world in education as we knew it. Schools, along with businesses and public venues around the world shut their doors in order to attempt to slow the spread of the virus. Just because the brick-and-mortar buildings were being closed did not mean that schooling would stop. Teachers and students from…

In March of 2020, in response to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the state of Illinois mandated the transition to remote instruction for all schools. Although schools had the option to resume in-person instruction during the 2020-21 school year (SY21), the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) acknowledged that in-person instruction may not…

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020 was marked by a transition to remote learning in Illinois schools and nationwide. The following school year, schools and families faced difficult decisions about how and when to return to in-person learning. School leaders, parents and caregivers, and students considered how to balance…

For over two years, schools, teachers, students, and families across Illinois have worked to adapt instruction and learning under the ever-changing conditions wrought by COVID-19. This report, the third and final in the Learning During the Pandemic in Illinois series, investigates how much time students spent learning in-person and/or remotely…