Putnam Officials Expect Learning Loss To Be Less Than State

Preliminary data from the State Department of Education projects COVID-19 has produced a 50 percent proficiency decrease in 3rd grade reading and 65 percent in math among students statewide.

The data ties the losses to prolonged school closures and time away from the classroom.

Putnam County Curriculum Supervisor Jill Ramsey said the large gaps in learning makes sense. But Ramsey said Putnam County may not be as behind as other communities.

“Putnam County, unlike a lot of districts across the state, we continued to teach kids until school was out, remotely,” Ramsey said. “We feel like that they still got a great deal of instruction in the Spring.”

Ramsey said Putnam County will not know the full severity of the learning gap until the fall assessment is available. Ramsey said that will be available in the next few weeks.

“Until we get that big piece of data back in the next couple of weeks, we won’t really know how great those gaps are,” Ramsey said.

Ramsey said she attributes the decrease in math skills being bigger than reading to the way kids learn during the summer as well as the type of instruction used during Spring’s remote learning.

“They probably spent vastly more time in reading, whether it just be casual reading on their own,” Ramsey said. “A lot of the instruction was around reading from their teachers.”