From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Distance Learning Under COVID-19 Provides More Challenges for Students with Disabilities, English Language Learners Description: Most of the nation's schools are closed to in-person learning as part of an effort to protect children from contracting COVID-19. However, in the scramble to keep kids safe, schools encountered logistical and instructional challenges in providing remote learning. Perhaps no population has been impacted by these challenges more than students with learning disabilities or those learning English. We talk to GAO's Jackie Nowicki--an expert on K-12 education--about a new report on the challenges facing these students during COVID-19. Related GAO Work: GAO-21-43, Distance Learning: Challenges Providing Services to K-12 English Learners and Students with Disabilities during COVID-19 Released: November 2020 [Intro Music] [Jackie Nowicki:] School districts are facing real challenges providing services to English learners and students with disabilities during distance learning. [Holly Hobbs:] Hi, and welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office-- I'm Holly Hobbs. Starting last spring and continuing this fall, most of the nation's schools are closed to in-person learning as part of an effort to protect children from contracting COVID-19. However, in the scramble to keep kids safe, schools encountered logistical and instructional challenges in providing remote learning. Perhaps no population has been impacted by these challenges more than students with disabilities or those learning English--populations of kids who face persistent achievement gaps when compared to their peers. Today, we talk to GAO's Jackie Nowicki--an expert on K-12 education, and a director in our Education, Workforce, and Income Security Team--about her new report on the challenges facing these students during COVID-19 and the lessons that we can learn to help these kids moving forward. Thank you for joining us Jackie! [Jackie Nowicki:] I'm happy to be here, Holly. [Holly Hobbs:] So Jackie, kids with disabilities and kids learning English are two pretty different populations. Let's start with the kids with disabilities. What challenges has distance learning under COVID-19 created for them? [Jackie Nowicki:] So, one big challenge we heard about relates to families' capacity to assist kids with the education and special education services they'd normally receive in person in school. Some specialized support services, things like occupational therapy and physical therapy are particularly difficult to provide, and some students might not have the same technology at home--how they do when they're physically present in school. So, things like brail readers, and that can make communication more difficult. But even when school personnel were providing specialized instruction and services themselves, many school districts shortened their school day last spring, and you know sometimes to only a few hours a day, so that made it pretty difficult to just find time to provide these kinds of services. [Holly Hobbs:] And how about the kids learning English? [Jackie Nowicki:] So English learners are among those kids that were disproportionately affected by a lack of access to technology--so things like access to broadband or internet service, computers. And that made it difficult for them to participate and get basic information from their schools. And as with kids with disabilities, success was often dependent on family support, especially for younger students, and the English-learner families could not always help their kids in this way. Sometimes it was due to language barriers, but also because the adults at home were more likely to be essential workers. They maybe were more likely to need to work outside the home. One thing that exacerbated all of these issues was that in some school districts, the number of languages that English learners speak can be incredibly high. So believe it or not, in some of our largest school districts, close to 100 different languages are spoken. [Holly Hobbs:] So what are the potential long-term impacts for these children? [Jackie Nowicki:] So we don't really yet know what the long-term impacts will be for these students. There are definitely concerns that these gaps could be exacerbated. Part of our goal in this work was to try and shed some light on these challenges as well as some strategies that educators found helpful to address them. [Holly Hobbs:] And for your new report, you and your team talked with local school officials from around the country. What did they tell you about their efforts to address these challenges? [Jackie Nowicki:] We heard about a number of different things that districts tried. So, let's first start with English learners. There were so many creative ways that educators used to connect with English learners and their families. Some schools had more success reaching English learners' families through texting and smart-phone applications rather than email. Some school districts, to help mitigate fears of government authority that some families face, sometimes had their teachers drive to students' homes for socially distant visits, books to provide educational materials, and to increase families' comfort levels with school personnel. We even heard about a teacher who arranged to deliver pizza to a student's home and attached a note with her contact information. There was one district that hosted a virtual game night for families of English learners, and partnered with the local library system, so that families could pick up books at the library and then participate in a virtual storytelling session. We also talked to one district that partnered with a Spanish-language TV network to broadcast curriculum for an hour every morning. And for students with disabilities, we heard a lot about districts that successfully held virtual IEP meetings with parents. Several districts told us that holding those meetings worked so well that they're considering offering them as an option even after they fully return to in-person education [Holly Hobbs:] So since you gave an example of a good new practice that schools are going to continue using, was there any other good news? [Jackie Nowicki:] We also consistently heard that some students flourished in this virtual environment, so for example, kids with social anxiety were sometimes better able to focus outside of a classroom of their peers. And another silver-lining seemed to be increased collaboration and communication among the different parties. So in one district, they noted that the general education teachers got a much clearer picture of just how much the special education department does for its students. And they said that that kind of insightfulness is really an opening for better communication and better appreciation of special education moving forward. [Music:] [Holly Hobbs:] So, it sounds like schools have taken steps to help students with disabilities and those learning English overcome some new obstacles to their education caused by distance learning during the pandemic. But that there are still some challenges in delivering services and lessons to these students.Jackie, is the Department of Education providing any guidance for schools on how to help these students? [Jackie Nowicki:] So they are, but it's important to remember that education is fundamentally a state and local responsibility. So, the Department of Education often provides information on what needs to be done rather than how states and school districts should do it. So, for example, in March and May, the Department of Education issued guidance essentially saying that if school districts provide educational opportunities to the general student population during a closure, they also have to provide services for English learners and they have to ensure that students with disabilities have equal access to the same educational opportunities as other students. The Department of Education also recognized that during this kind of national emergency, schools may not be able to provide services in the same way they would typically do so. So they released a question and answers document in September to help address those kinds of concerns. [Holly Hobbs:] So did we identify any lessons learned that we can take forward to better help these kids? [Jackie Nowicki:] We heard a lot of examples about how school districts have addresses those challenges, and how those approaches may benefit other districts as they're navigating these kinds of situations. And as we talked about, some districts found practices that worked so well that they may keep them up even after they fully return to in-person education. And you know, we also heard about things that didn't work so well. One district told us that allowing teachers flexibility in setting their own schedules and deciding how much they'd engage with kids in live meetings versus meetings that you know where they recorded videos ahead of time, that that resulted in some pretty different experiences for students across the district or even within a school. So that district learned its own lesson, and they said they were going to require greater consistency across the district for the fall of 2020. [Holly Hobbs:] And last question, what is the bottom line of this report? [Jackie Nowicki:] School districts are facing real challenges providing services to English learners and students with disabilities during distance learning. And while some of those challenges affect all children, they often disproportionately affect these particular groups of kids, who are already experiencing achievement gaps. And there's clearly opportunities for educators and administrators to learn from each other about things that may work in different situations and about things that didn't work quite so well. And we hope this report provides a starting place for sharing that kind of information. [Holly Hobbs:] That was Jackie Nowicki talking about a new report on the challenges students with disabilities and English learners face as a result of distance learning during the pandemic. Thank you for your time Jackie! [Jackie Nowicki:] My pleasure, Holly. [Holly Hobbs:] And thank YOU for listening to the Watchdog Report. To hear more podcasts, subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts. And make sure you leave a rating and review to let others know about the work we're doing. For more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, visit us at GAO.gov.