Lake County Gazette

Millburn Schools Superintendent Jason Lind recently voiced concerns about how students performed academically while learning from home.

“We will be concentrating as much of our effort as possible on the lower grades to help them catch up,” Lind said at a board meeting. “So what I’m noticing is that in general the kids in the K-1-2 groups, are lagging at this point.”

Many school districts across the U.S. offer remote learning opportunities as COVID-19 is still rampant.

While the school district is seeing the results of remote learning and time away during the pandemic, there are some bright spots. While on average they now have 2 more students in each grade level performing below the 34th percentile than pre-pandemic, the 2021-2022 school year saw the highest 8th-grade math scores ever from any cohort in the history of Millburn.

The Capitol News Ilinois reported the Illinois State Board of Education saw drops in academic performance in Illinois schools in 2021.

“We have witnessed both tragedy and heroism in our schools over the past year,” State Superintendent of Education Carmen Ayala said in a statement, the Capitol News reported. “Students and educators have lost so much and lived and learned through unthinkable obstacles, but (the) loss is not the whole story. Illinois’ schools also stepped up the rigor of high school course work, ensured students still graduated and earned early college credit along the way.”

According to the Rand Corporation, schools across the nation had much lower participation numbers for Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) tests in post-pandemic years, as well as a lack of continuation for many students in their school system. Many students did not return to school or change school systems, disrupting the data. Students who did stay in the same system and participated in MAP scores were likely already high-achieving students. 

The Economist wrote that approximately 5,000 public schools switched to remote learning during the first week of January 2022.

The Millburn School District, which encompasses 15.5 square miles, includes the Millburn Elementary School and the Millburn Middle School. Graduates of the Millburn Middle school will go to either Grayslake High, Lake High, or Warren High depending on the exact location of their neighborhood.