COVID-19’s Impact on Student Learning in North Carolina

Project READS NC (Reading Evaluation Across Diverse Stakeholders in North Carolina)

Principal Investigator: Paola Pilonieta
Campus: UNC Charlotte
Award Amount: $500,000

Project READS NC seeks to understand the overall impact of Learning Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling Professional Development (LETRS PD). This project is in agreement with the NC Collaboratory’s initiative to fund projects that support educators in North Carolina’s recurring low-performing schools and districts. Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief (ESSER III) funds were utilized by the NCDPI, a partner of the NC Collaboratory, to support participation in this program for all teachers working with children in Pre-K through fifth grade. READS NC boasts the following major aims for the project:

1. To understand the overall impact of participation in the LETRS PD on teachers’ and administrators’ knowledge of effective literacy instruction, as aligned with the Science of Reading
2. To determine the extent to which participation in the LETRS PD impacted teachers’ instructional practices.
3. To examine how administrators’ leadership practices to support literacy may have changed as a result of their participation in the LETRS PD.
4. To examine how the implementation of LETRS professional development at the local level, i.e., within the school and district, impacted the level of participation in and satisfaction with LETRS PD and implementation of LETRS.

The project methods coincide with the Collaboratory’s goal to integrate communities and local organizations – it leverages key DPI stakeholders, multidisciplinary researchers, and school district administrators to answer the research questions above. Significant contributors include consultants from Cleveland, Beaufort, and Rockingham County Schools. For RQ1 and RQ2 the researchers will leverage statewide data from report cards and EOGs, NC DPI personnel data, teacher working conditions surveys, and external ratings of MTSS implementation. Outcomes of interest will be teacher turnover rates, percentage of highly qualified teachers in the school, and perceived working conditions. For RQ3, the focus will be on three LEAs, the aforementioned counties, selected to participate in Project AWARE in 2018.

For communication and translation for impact, the researchers are also partnering with Carolina Demography, an applied demography center at UNC-Chapel Hill. Key products and deliverables include 4 policy briefs, listening sessions with district stakeholders and policy experts, webinars and podcasts, media outreach guided by the communications team at Carolina Demography, and research articles and invited conference presentations

Preventing Teacher Burnout: Supporting Teachers to Help Students (and Teachers) Thrive During the Pandemic and Beyond

Principal Investigator: Jane Fruehwirth
Campus: UNC-Chapel Hill
Award Amount: $249,838

The pandemic created immense difficulties hiring and retaining qualified teachers, in North Carolina as well as nationally. This project will inform interventions and supports that can protect educators during challenging times like the pandemic and help the educator workforce recover. It poses the following research questions:

1. How did student learning loss and behavioral difficulties experienced during the pandemic affect the educator workforce?
2. Did interventions to address diverse learning and behavioral needs, such as Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) and support personnel, better support the educator workforce during the pandemic?
3. Did mental health interventions piloted in several NC districts better protect the educator workforce during the pandemic?

The project methods coincide with the Collaboratory’s goal to integrate communities and local organizations – it leverages key DPI stakeholders, multidisciplinary researchers, and school district administrators to answer the research questions above. Significant contributors include consultants from Cleveland, Beaufort, and Rockingham County Schools. For RQ1 and RQ2 the researchers will leverage statewide data from report cards and EOGs, NC DPI personnel data, teacher working conditions surveys, and external ratings of MTSS implementation. Outcomes of interest will be teacher turnover rates, percentage of highly qualified teachers in the school, and perceived working conditions. For RQ3, the focus will be on three LEAs, the aforementioned counties, selected to participate in Project AWARE in 2018.

For communication and translation for impact, the researchers are also partnering with Carolina Demography, an applied demography center at UNC-Chapel Hill. Key products and deliverables include 4 policy briefs, listening sessions with district stakeholders and policy experts, webinars and podcasts, media outreach guided by the communications team at Carolina Demography, and research articles and invited conference presentations

Fayetteville State University (UNCFSU) Bronco Expansion Enrichment Program

Principal Investigator: Tanya Hudson
Campus: Fayetteville State University
Award Amount: $500,000

Researchers have designed an enrichment program, Bronco Expansion, at Walker Spivey Elementary to initiate a partnership with them. It is designed to involve students from Walker Spivey, teachers, parents, FSU pre service candidates, community partners, and FSU faculty and staff. Inspiration for the project came from a mixed methods study during the 2021-2022 academic year, surveying administrators, parents, and community partners that revealed the need to support parents in developing and maintaining a connection with teachers and administrators while providing professional development for teachers to foster parental engagement. The focus will be on addressing deficits in math and English skills as well as mental health and social and emotional well-being of students.

The primary goal of the Bronco Expansion Program is to support a Title One school in a Tier 1 area, schools with a student base that are lower income, such as Cumberland County, in connecting educational experiences from school to home environments. Professionals from FSU’s Learning Loss Task Force will collaborate with teachers and administrators to increase program participant results. Methods include utilizing professional development workshops and activities to support lead teachers and assistants in developing and implementing educational experiences that would support the “whole child” developmentally.

Students enrolled in the enrichment program will participate in weekly after school sessions, the first of which includes a pre-test in math and reading to get base-line data on students in first-fourth grades. This will develop a learning plan provided from the Exact Path software, which will propel learning through an adaptive and individualized learning path. Biweekly Thursdays will be used for consultant’s to implement social and emotional skills, as well as college and career-based activities. Every nine weeks there will be a diagnostic of student progress in math and reading, along with focus groups for the parent and teacher participants to get immediate feedback. A website will be used to collect and present information, data, and resources about the project.

Implementation and Impact Evaluation of ESSER III Funded Supports for Educators in North Carolina’s Recurring Low-Performing Schools and Districts

Principal Investigator: Leslie Marks
Campus: UNC-Chapel Hill
Award Amount: $499,232

This project addresses the impact of the portion of the state’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds that was utilized to continue support for recurring low-performing schools (RLPs) and districts, including hiring district and school leadership coaches and providing professional development (PD) for teachers. Their mixed-methods study aims to provide a deeper understanding of implementation decisions, challenges, and impacts of ESSER III-funded support to RLPs, ultimately contributing to decision-making around how best to aid in recovery and accelerate learning for all students. It proposes the following research questions:

1. How are the coaching and PD supports being implemented in RLPS? What are the focal topics, dose, and frequency of services provided, and how do these vary across different school contexts?
2. How do coaching and PD efforts impact teachers’ and principals’ turnover decisions and perceptions of their school’s working environment? What factors inhibit or facilitate this impact, and how does this vary across school context and sociodemographic subgroups?
3. To what extent do coaching and PD efforts affect student outcomes, such as test scores, attendance, probability of graduation, and post-secondary matriculation and degree attainment? What factors inhibit or facilitate this impact, and how does this vary across school context and sociodemographic subgroups?

Methods include the analysis of statewide administrative data, conducting interviews with district administrators and principals, holding focus groups with teachers and coaches, a principal survey with a matched comparison group, and coaching logs to address the aforementioned research questions.

Implementation findings will be shared with coaches and facilitators for short-cycle feedback, and triangulated with data around potential impacts on students, teachers, and administrators to help inform decision-making among local and state-level education stakeholders.

Effective World Language Teaching Strategies: Lessons from a Global Pandemic

Principal Investigator: Scott Kissau
Campus: UNC Charlotte
Award Amount: $148,492

Before the pandemic began, world language (WL) instruction was one of the largest and most well-established content areas offered by NC Virtual. With the shift to online instruction across the state, NCDPI partnered with NC Virtual language educators to share best practices and strategies with world language teachers across the state. This project proposes to conduct a collective case study involving 10 districts from across NC. Each district was recommended by the NCDPI World Languages Team for its strong world language instruction and innovation in online delivery. The following research questions are raised:

1. What do WL coordinators identify as promising practices at the district level that emerged during the pandemic to maintain students’ engagement and promote language learning in virtual environments?
2. What do WL teachers identify as effective practices at the school or district level that emerged during the pandemic to maintain student engagement and promote language learning in virtual environments?
3. How did WL students experience the effective practices identified by WL coordinators and teachers?
4. To what extent did the identified practices vary by grade span or level of instruction (Level I, II, etc.)?

Data sources for each district will include interviews, focus groups, and artifacts. Each case will consist of the district’s WL coordinator, three WL teachers within each district, and 10 students from each participating district. Via a series of webinars, a white paper, state, regional, and national conference presentations, publications, and infusion into one of the state’s largest world language teacher preparation programs, the study’s findings will be shared broadly, and its impact will be significant and extend beyond world language instruction to include the growing number of dual language/immersion (DL/I) programs across the state.

EC Collaboratory: Collaborating with School Partners to Identify Evidence-based Practices for Learners with Extensive Support Needs during School Closures

Principal Investigator: Melissa Hudson
Campus: East Carolina University
Award Amount: $499,668

The East Carolina University Exceptional Children (EC) project will focus on academic learning for students with extensive support needs (ESN), students defined as the 1% with the most significant cognitive disabilities who participate in the alternate assessment based on alternate academic achievement standards. They aim to support the state’s equity commitment to its most vulnerable learners. During the pandemic, when instruction began to be delivered virtually, many special educators used the Unique Learning System (ULS), an online curriculum designed to support, assess, and access an adapted standards-based curriculum for students with ESN.

The main purpose of the EC Collaboratory is to investigate the use of ULS for virtual instruction by special educators in public school units and support these teachers in delivering high quality instruction with fidelity to students with ESN. This research will go on to inform decision makers to make good decisions about high quality virtual academic instruction for learners with ESN when virtual instruction is necessary. The project facilitates collaboration between ECU, 15 public school units including their Exceptional Children program directors and special educators supporting learners with ESN, and the Exceptional Children’s Assistance Center. Ultimately, this project will be conducted to study the effect of:

1. ULS instruction on academic achievement of learners with ESN
2. Coaching on implementation fidelity of special educators’ use of ULS

The 15 public school units assessed will be spread across three cohorts. The team will begin work with Cohort 1 by collecting baseline data on ULS student learning, conducting monthly Cohort 1 training, and data on ULS student learning at the end of the semester. Cohort 2 participation will occur afterwards when Cohort 1 teachers are selected to serve as Cohort 2 peer mentors. Finally, Cohort 3 participation will occur when Cohort 2 teachers are selected to be Cohort 3 peer mentors following a semester of training like that of Cohort 1’s. By the end of the study, all cohorts will have received training and mentoring for virtual learning.

Enrollment of Nontraditional Culturally and Linguistically Undergraduates for Diversity and Equity at Historically-Minority Serving Institutions in School Mental Health Professions

Principal Investigator: Issac Woods
Campus: NC State University
Award Amount: $119,185

This project responds to the lack of school psychologists in NC to meet the needs of diverse students, schools, and communities that have been exacerbated during the pandemic. One of the aims is to recruit more Black and Native American school psychologists into the profession by creating an empirically based pathway program for students from Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) as they were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. This program is an asset-based approach to develop a pathway for participating college juniors from the six MSI in the UNC System to receive mentorship and preparation across 22 months to achieve acceptance into a school psychology program. It consists of the following activities:

1. Qualitative interviews on challenges and barriers to promoting school mental health careers
2. Construct interventions that expose and recruit students to school mental health careers based on feedback from qualitative interviews
3. Distribute invitations to undergraduate students to participate in a pre-test, self-guided course, and post-test
4. Participants will receive a newsletter and attend a virtual panel discussion, complete a post-test, and receive invitations for the next activity
5. Participants will receive a newsletter, and attend a virtual meet and greet to establish a time and date to shadow a school psychologist in their area or school psychology graduate student.
6. Participants will attend a workshop to prepare them to apply and interview for graduate school programs and complete the post-test with a narrative reflection.
7. All participants will be asked to complete a post-test and follow-up survey

Deliverables will consist of an analysis of why careers in school mental health are not pursued and what can be done to recruit and train diverse professionals to fill shortages, data that will inform interventions for a pathway program to school mental health careers, a newsletter that includes information about psychological organizations in the area and tips for preparing for graduate school, and full drafts of applications for graduate school for participants.

Mitigating Educator Workforce Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic Through Coaching

Principal Investigator: Anne Cash
Campus: UNC Charlotte
Award Amount: $249,624

A research partnership between faculty at UNC Charlotte and representatives for the North Carolina New Teacher Support Program (NC NTSP) seeks to identify teacher coaching practices that support teacher retention and mitigated negative impacts of the pandemic. NC NTSP serves teachers by introducing experienced instructional coaches who understand local school districts, teachers’ needs, and quality instructional practices.

It begins by identifying and describing coaching practices that supported teacher retention prior to and during the pandemic and that mitigated teachers’ perceptions of negative impacts during the pandemic. Teacher, coach, and school characteristics are incorporated into the study to understand for whom the coaching practices are beneficial and in what educational settings – allowing the team to produce specific recommendations for education policy makers and practitioners to guide coaching practices.

Following this portion of the study, researchers will conduct an in-depth examination of coach-teacher interactions to better understand important coaching practices in specific teacher-coach subgroups. The study will be extended to ‘post-pandemic’ years to investigate the consistency of coaching practices associated with retention post-pandemic, and whether these associations and their consistency vary by teacher, coach, or school characteristics. Methods for this phase will consist of focus groups and interviews to gain insights from coaches and teachers about how their work has changed over time.

Methods for this phase will consist of focus groups and interviews to gain insights from coaches and teachers about how their work has changed over time. The partnership will produce technical reports describing the methodology and findings of the study, presentations summarizing the study for practitioners and scholars, briefs highlighting recommendations and guidance for policy makers and school district leaders, and peer-reviewed articles that detail the study for publication in academic journals. The findings are intended to be used by education policymakers to identify teacher coaching programs suitable for funding as well as district leaders to identify coaching practices to be implemented and for whom they should be implemented.

Teacher Attrition, Health and Well-Being: Exploring the Mismatch Between Teacher Preparation (and Teacher Expectations) and District Realities in the Midst of COVID-19

Principal Investigator: Lorrie Schmid
Campus: Duke University
Award Amount: $249,450

This project provides insights to NC DPI and other key stakeholders on how the pandemic has impacted the educator workforce and what districts throughout the state are doing to retain existing teachers and recruit new hires. It aims to determine which interventions are working and provide insight into additional supports that may be needed to reduce teacher attrition. Researchers will provide valuable information to Educator Preparation Programs (EPPs), programs that engage in remedies to teacher attrition that are aimed to circumvent pre-service candidates not matriculating into the workforce, that can be accessed to inform potential adjustments to course offerings, pre-service teacher placements, and overall teacher preparation. The following research questions are proposed:

1. What factors are associated with in-service teacher attrition, and what factors lead to in-service teacher retention?
2. What factors are associated with teacher candidate attrition or retention in EPPs?
3. What challenges are districts currently experiencing in teacher/instructional workforce staffing, and how have these challenges changed during the COVID-19 era?
4. What efforts have districts undertaken to combat attrition, and what interventions and efforts most successfully support teacher candidates and teachers?

Furthering the Collaboratory’s initiative to develop local partnerships, the team at Duke University will meet biweekly with staff at the North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities (NCICU) and a researcher liaison at Lenoir Rhyne University to gain unique, in the field, real-time knowledge in teacher preparation in NC and retention for specific districts.

Methods phase 1 consists of an NCICU EPP dean’s survey followed by a focus group with interested member schools. Phase 2 integrates data to identify which school districts have consistently high attrition rates before, during and after the pandemic. Phase 3 will focus on those targeted districts with high attrition rates and conduct surveys as well as focus groups with teachers who continue to teach in that district, those who have left the district but are still teaching, and those who have left teaching.

Leading Workforce Effectiveness: Inhibiting and Supporting Factors

Principal Investigator: Laura Lunsford
Campus: Campbell University
Award Amount: $149,717

This research study will examine the longitudinal impact of COVID-19 on student learning in North Carolina. The research focus is on how the pandemic influenced the education workforce in rural counties. The study will leverage Campbell University’s strength in rural education as the majority of students at CU come from NC and mostly rural and small towns. The team will focus on the five Local Education Agencies (LEAs) with the highest and lowest teacher attrition in North Carolina, totaling to 10 LEAs. The overarching aim is to identify the supporting and inhibiting factors influencing teacher retention in rural LEAs. The following research questions are presented:

1. How did the pandemic affect staffing at public schools?
2. How did the pandemic affect school climate?
3. What were the reasons cited by educators for staying or leaving their profession?
4. How do patterns of retention vary by educator characteristics and contextual factors?
5. What are the most promising strategies and policies at the district, school, and State level to recruit and retain staff and fill vacancies?

The mixed methods study will draw on existing data sets and combine that information with newly collected interview and focus group data. The quantitative data will analyze teacher average pay and mobility compared to the average workforce, teacher workforce satisfaction with resources and school leadership, and average years of experience of school leaders. The qualitative data will be collected during a 2-3-day site visit. Between 50-70 interviews are planned. Interviews will be conducted with school superintendents, human resource directors, and 3-5 principals of schools in the LEA with at least one from each school level. Two in person focus groups and one online focus group of 4-5 teachers are planned for each LEA.

Deliverables consist of a website presenting the aggregated results, a white paper prepared and linked to the website and shared with all participants as well as NC elected officials by email, and presentations submitted to key audiences like principals at the spring 2024 NC Conference on Educational Leadership and spring 2024 NC Rural Center Conference.

Strategies and Innovations for Multilingual Learner Success

Principal Investigator: Ye He
Campus: UNC Greensboro
Award Amount: $249,924

This Project will support the Collaboratory’s goal of monitoring, assessing, and addressing the
public health and economic impacts of COVID-19, as mandated by the North Carolina General Assembly. More specifically, this project will attempt to study, examine, and provide recommendations for the best policies and practices to bolster multilingual learners’ academic development. Multilingual learners are students who are developing proficiency in multiple languages.

This project aims to:

1. Identify schools that demonstrated success in supporting multilingual learners (MLs)’ academic development
2. Explore strategies and innovations that contributed to the support for ML learning
3. Summarize lessons learned and offer recommendations to inform ML-focused policies and practices.

The project will be carried out in two phases. Phase 1 will center around selecting schools that have demonstrated success in supporting MLs’ academic development. Eight schools demonstrating ML student success and reflecting varying district/school characteristics will be selected for Phase II data collection. A research team of experienced educational researchers will be selected from the ML key stakeholder groups in North Carolina to oversee data collection and analysis in Phase II. During Phase II, the research team will collect qualitative interview and focus group data from district and school leaders, educators, families, and community partners to further explore impactful strategies and innovations. Individual school reports and a final report comparing findings across schools will be prepared with implications and recommendations to inform ML-focused policies and practices. Deliverables will be accessible at the end of each phase, and stakeholders will be able to provide input and feedback. The final project report with specific recommendations regarding strategies to support MLs will be shared with education policymakers and district leaders to inform practices and future decision making.

Factors Driving School Choice in North Carolina During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Principal Investigator: Anna Egalite
Campus: NC State University
Award Amount: $244,542

This research project will study changes to North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship program during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Opportunity Scholarship program is an income-based program that helps low-income families pay tuition and fees for private school expenses. This research will study the program to investigate parents’ motivations for leaving the public school system during the pandemic years, families’ experiences with the program, and changes reflected in the applicant pool. Data will be collected via two methods: through administrative data collected by the program operator and from an original survey administered to program applicants.

The primary research questions of this study are:

1. In what ways have the characteristics of applicants to the Opportunity Scholarship program changed since the program began and during the COVID-19 pandemic?
2. What reasons do families give for applying to the Opportunity Scholarship program?
3. What reasons do families give for why they subsequently did or did not use the Opportunity Scholarship?

This work will shed light on student experiences during the peak pandemic years, and how public and private schools’ decisions’ concerning remote learning, reopening, academic recovery, and re-engagement impacted their student enrollment. By documenting families’ exit from and, in some cases, return to the public school system, we will be able to learn more about the practices and experiences that parents say are attractive to them when choosing a school environment for their child. This study and the subsequent information will shed light on strategies for improvement that could be undertaken by both public and private schools, supporting the Collaboratory’s goal of bettering the state of North Carolina, and its education system.

A Comprehensive Evaluation of North Carolina’s Supplemental Salary Fund

Principal Investigator: Matthew Springer
Campus: UNC-Chapel Hill
Award Amount: $499,870

As a result of the COVID0-19 pandemic, students have experienced disruptions in their expected education and lost instructional time. Partly in response to this learning loss, Governor Cooper signed into law SB 105, which mandated $1,800 bonuses for principals, $2,800 bonuses for most teachers, and $100 million in recurring funds to help low-wealth counties compete with bigger, wealthier counties when recruiting and retaining teachers. These initiatives are collectively referred to as strategic compensation reforms. The purpose of this study is to investigate the implementation and impact of these strategic compensation reforms. The primary research questions of this study are:

1. How are districts using their strategic compensation funds?
2. What are the effects of these strategic compensation reforms on educator turnover, mobility, and quality?
3. To what extent do the strategic compensation reforms affect student outcomes, such as achievement on standardized tests?

This project will result in multiple, key deliverables, including a policy brief describing the impact and implementation of NC supplemental salary fund on student outcomes, as well as a policy brief describing the impact of these funds on educator turnover, mobility, and quality. This research also aims to provide insight and guidance to North Carolina DPI’s Office of Learning Recovery and Acceleration, as they continue to navigate educational recovery following COVID-19. This project will support the Collaboratory’s goal of serving the people and state of North Carolina by monitoring, assessing, and addressing the public health and economic impacts of COVID-19, in the hopes of providing insight towards education loss solutions.

Keeping Students Safe in the Digital World: Examining Monitoring Technologies Used by K-12 Schools During the Pandemic

Principal Investigator: Florence Martin
Campus: NC State University
Award Amount: $297,953

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when schooling moved online, students were at an increased exposure risk to online threats. The NC General Assembly used ESSER III state reserve funds to help schools monitor student internet activity and help protect young children from related threats such as self-harm, child pornography, violence, cyberbullying, drug or alcohol abuse, and more. This research study uses literature review, extant data analysis, program review, surveys and interviews to evaluate the effectiveness of monitoring technologies used in K-12 schools in North Carolina during the pandemic. The project will examine what and how monitoring applications were implemented in North Carolina districts, measure their impact and effectiveness, and provide policy recommendations at the state and local levels.

The research team will collect data from K-12 students, technology directors, technology facilitators, teachers, school counselors, and principals who might be affected by this program implementation. The project will have the following impacts:

1. Thorough understanding of the effectiveness and impacts of adoption of the monitoring software
2. Identification of primary stakeholder concerns upon adoption of monitoring software and methods designed to address such concerns
3. Identification of the features of monitoring software that could provide the most useful information to schools to guide future adoption
4. Recommendations of identified ways to strengthen privacy protection at the state level.

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Patterns of Post-Secondary Enrollment in NC

Principal Investigator: Daniel Klasik
Campus: UNC-Chapel Hill
Award Amount: $227,677

From high school performance, to how students searched for colleges to apply to, there are many ways the COVID-19 pandemic could have disrupted the college-going trajectories of students. The broad goal of this project is to produce a sophisticated description of those changes along the path from high school to college for students in North Carolina. Amongst many other impacts, the pandemic led to a large decline in undergraduate enrollment and a decline in expressed interest in attending college amongst K-8 students. These findings point to the importance of understanding how the pandemic shaped the college-going choices of North Carolina’s high school students.

Data for this study will be collected from two sources: the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction and the University of North Carolina System Office. The subject pool will collect data from students who graduated high school before, during, and after COVID-19– those who started 9th grade between 2013 and 2018. The students will be compared on multiple metrics, including their 12th grade GPA, the number of Advanced Placement courses they took, whether they expressed an intention to enroll in college, and whether they submitted a FAFSA. We will also look at differences in whether and where students applied to UNC System campuses, as well as whether they enrolled in a System campus or elsewhere. This study will also investigate how these differences vary across multiple student background characteristics and school characteristics. The research’s results intend to help the UNC System, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, and state and local leaders target policies and resources to the students who most need it as the state works to combat pandemic- related learning losses.

Mitigating COVID-19 Impact: Implementing Community School Framework in Rural Schools

Principal Investigator: Amy Swain
Campus: East Carolina University
Award Amount: $499,989

ECU Rural Education Institute (REI) will engage in a research-practice partnership with Elizabeth City Pasquotank Public Schools to closely examine the Community School framework in rural settings. This study will intentionally plan the implementation of the framework in selected school(s) and evaluate the impact of initial implementation on the critical outcomes of student learning, school engagement, and community involvement. The primary research question of this study is: In what ways and to what extent does the Community School Framework in a rural context impact student learning, school engagement, and community involvement post-pandemic? The two secondary questions framing this study consider how school engagement increases with implementation of the Community School framework and how community involvement increases with implementation of the Community School framework. Both qualitative and quantitative data will be used to analyze changes regarding student learning, school engagement, and community involvement. Data analysis will focus on disclosing and describing changes in critical outcomes when schools implement the Community School framework.

The track record for the Community School framework in achieving desired goals in urban settings is well established, but research on its effectiveness in rural settings is still emerging. This research is salient to the state because North Carolina is a predominantly rural state. Success in this project will help refine the Community School framework to enhance its potential for addressing COVID-19 impacts in rural settings. This study will contribute to the Collaboratory’s mission of educating policymakers and stakeholders on best practices for the improvement of student education post-pandemic.

The Impact of COVID on North Carolina Students’ Postsecondary Trajectories

Principal Investigator: Julie Edmunds
Campus: UNC Greensboro
Award Amount: $149,873

This study will explore the postsecondary education experiences for high school students who graduated during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, comparing their experiences to those of students who graduated prior to the pandemic. The project will examine whether pandemic students enrolled in postsecondary education, the level of institution in which they enrolled, and the location of the institution. It will also study students’ selection of majors and their performance in college classes, as well as their completion of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). We will examine whether these outcomes differ by student, school, and district-level characteristics.

The study will answer these questions using data compiled from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, the NC Community College System, and the UNC System. Additionally, the study will supplement these analyses with interviews conducted with high school counselors, college counselors, and with students from the classes of 2020 and 2021. The interviews will explore the reasons why students made the postsecondary choices they did. This study will serve to inform discussions with state policymakers, stakeholders, and the public. This research furthers the Collaboratory’s goal of serving the state of North Carolina by attempting to inform and assist the state in its COVID-19 pandemic education-related recovery.

Assessing the Impact of COVID on the Applications to and Enrollment in UNC System Institutions

Principal Investigator: Yudan Wang
Campus: North Carolina A&T
Award Amount: $149,873

This proposed project plans to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on first-time undergraduate enrollment in the UNC system. Specifically, this research will address the following two questions:

1. To what extent can county-level variability in application to and enrollment in the UNC system be explained by socioeconomic factors and COVID-19 case and death rates?
2. To what extent do individual and familial characteristics, high school experiences, college admissions experiences, COVID experiences, and the timeliness of COVID experiences contribute to college admission decisions?

To investigate research question 1, data will be collected from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, the UNC System, and the CDC and COVID-related statistics from NC DHHS. The data collected will be compared with the “control group” data, from students who applied or enrolled in the pre-pandemic years. To investigate research question 2, surveys will be conducted amongst students currently enrolled at five UNC campuses and one private liberal arts college, asking students questions regarding their individual and family characteristics, COVID experiences, high school experiences, and college application and admission experiences. Each student will be assigned to a subgroup probabilistically and these subgroup memberships will then be used to predict enrollment decisions. This analysis will be conducted for the pre-COVID, COVID, and post-COVID cohort, in order to determine if the timing of COVID experiences altered the relationships among the variables. Findings will be shared amongst the State Board of Education, the public, education policymakers, school district leaders, as well as a national audience. This study will educate the state’s decision making in regards to addressing pandemic-related learning loss at the secondary education level.

High Dosage Tutoring to Support Pandemic Learning Recovery and School Improvement in Union County

Principal Investigator: Douglas Lauen
Campus: UNC-Chapel Hill
Award Amount: $499,936

High dosage tutoring –frequent, small group tutoring, conducted during the school day, by an adult who has been trained to deliver instruction that helps students meet grade level standards– is being widely considered as a promising intervention to address COVID-19 pandemic learning loss. Researchers at UNC Chapel Hill will partner with Union County Public Schools (UCPS) to evaluate a new high dosage, full-year, in-school tutoring program in math for 4th graders. The program will be implemented in five low performing elementary schools in Union County. The proposed study is designed to analyze two different approaches to delivering tutoring: a whole grade (WG) model and a targeted tutoring (TT) model. The project will estimate program impacts both pre-pandemic and post-pandemic, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. This research will contribute to the Collaboratory’s goals of serving the state of North Carolina by informing future best practices for K-12 student success following the pandemic.

The aims of this study are to:

1. Positively affect pandemic learning loss and school reform through successfully implementing high dosage tutoring in nine elementary schools
2. Learn how to implement this tutoring intervention in the most cost-effective manner possible (whole grade versus targeted)
3. Evaluate the effectiveness of tutoring in each of the schools and overall
4. Understand the staffing and policy tradeoffs between the two approaches (whole grade versus targeted)
5. Inform future practice of high dosage tutoring in Union County, the State of North Carolina, and elsewhere.