Evidently, this year is the one when students will be held accountable to catch up on learning loss by focusing on lessons, not slacking off, and taking school seriously. This should also mean that administrators broadcast the message that students will no longer get an easy A in many classes, which is what happened during the pandemic. They will advice that teachers cover material at a decent clip, like they did in 2019, and require vigor including final exams, research papers, and midterms.

My high school is taking the curricula of classes seriously with each department making sure they complete everything on it during the year. This means that each Spanish 2 class will teach the same grammar, vocabulary and culture no matter who the teacher. They also have required that each course has about the same number of grades per marking period—a minimum of 15 and maximum of 25. This consistency makes sense to me. As a parent, I would want my child to have the same syllabi in a particular course and follow it regardless of who teaches the class.

But are the students up for the increased rigor? They’ve gotten use to watered down standards, including no final exams since June 2019. Teachers have been advised to understand that during the pandemic students suffered social-emotional issues, and couldn’t learn on Zoom. We were told to be gentle, generous in our assignments and grading, and my district adopted a new way of evaluating students based on number of completed assignments, not actual scores on work completed. This meant, that a high percentage of got As when in normal times they would have received a C or D.

Even after my school reopened for in-person instruction, standards were still low–and students got used to getting good grades without doing as much work.

Now we have to get them back on track. But will they be willing to exert themselves and learn more this year than they have in the past so that a French 2 class isn’t a repeat of French 1? Can my French 3 course really be one that stretches them with the class being conducted almost entirely in French? Honestly, this year I see my students as being one level behind in their learning, which is very discouraging.

According to a recent article in Ed Week, teachers, school leaders, and district administrators are optimistic that students will reach grade level in all their subjects. Seventy percent are confident students will end this school year on grade level, according to the July survey conducted by the EdWeek Research Center. Last year, teachers estimated that 53 percent of their students were on grade level in the subjects they taught. So, this translates to about half the students in classes are in need of serious help.

This comes at a time when student performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as “the nation’s report card,” plunged to historically low levels in math and reading in the spring 2022. This was the first time students were tested nationally since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020.