Five Years On From COVID Shutdowns, TCAPS Is Still In Recovery Mode

It was five years ago this week.

On March 12, 2020, Governor Gretchen Whitmer ordered “the closure of all K-12 school buildings” in an effort “to slow the spread of Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) in Michigan.” The original plan was for schools to reopen Monday, April 6, but students wouldn’t see the inside of their classrooms again until September.

Half a decade later, schools in Michigan – including those in Traverse City – are still recovering from the COVID-19 shutdown. While schools pivoted to deliver instruction virtually, local education leaders say being out of the classroom for so long left a lasting mark on every student who experienced it.

“So much of learning is scaffolded,” says John VanWagoner, superintendent for Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS). “In math, when you learn one piece, you’ve got to master that concept to be able to go on to the next step. I think we missed some of those building blocks during the pandemic because it was only virtual, and teachers didn’t have all of the tools that you have when you are face-to-face to assess where kids were in their learning.”

Statewide, the story of post-pandemic academic recovery is a mixed bag. Just take a look at the Education Recovery Scorecard, a Harvard/Stanford collaboration that “evaluates how states and districts performed in math and reading on the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) during the pandemic and compares them to pre-pandemic levels.” Between 2019 and 2024, Michigan ranked 17th among states in math recovery, and 44th in reading recovery. Overall, students in the state “remain 40 percent of a grade level behind 2019 levels in math and over three-quarters of a grade level behind in reading.”

The good news for locals is that Traverse City is singled out in Education Recovery Scorecard’s Michigan report as a “bright spot.”

“That study showed that we were an outlier,” VanWagoner says. “In math, we have actually reached above scores from before the pandemic. And in reading, we’re getting close. We’ve done a lot of interventions to get kids those building blocks that they didn't have during that time. We’ve had coaches going into classrooms and working with teachers on their pedagogical skills, really looking at the science of reading, the science of math, and why we teach those subjects the way we do. We’ve also run a lot of summer school programming; we had that at the elementary level for the first time after the pandemic.”

Part of the challenge of getting students back on track, VanWagoner says, is the fact that every grade level missed something different during that six-month absence from the classroom. Some kids missed academic building blocks, but for others, the biggest losses had more to do with social-emotional learning.

“We now have social workers in every building, so that we can really work on some of the behaviors that came out of the pandemic from kids being isolated and alone,” VanWagoner says. “There are pieces of their brain development that they just missed.”

VanWagoner expects TCAPS will still be dealing with the fallout of the 2019-20 school year at least until every student who was enrolled in the district that year has graduated. For reference, kindergartners from the pandemic year are currently in fifth grade. The challenge going forward, VanWagoner says, is that federal pandemic relief funds for schools have now dried up, which could make it difficult for TCAPS to continue some of its intervention programs.

Ty Schmidt, who was elected to the TCAPS Board of Education last November, says he “campaigned on student achievement equity” because he felt that economically-disadvantaged students might get left behind in the wake of the pandemic, especially as relief funding disappears.

“I think that’s a critical issue for our district,” Schmidt says of student equity. “I think the numbers are trending in the right direction, but right now, as a Board of Education trustee, I want to make sure we’re doing all we can to support the kids who are furthest from opportunity. And graduation rate is one of the metrics I’ve been looking at.”

Graduation rates are looking up – not just for TCAPS, but for Michigan as a whole. Chalkbeat Detroit reported last month that Michigan’s four-year high school graduation rate for the 2023-24 school year, 82.38 percent, was the highest in 16 years. TCAPS recorded an 88.45 percent four-year graduation rate for the same academic year, per MISchoolData.org, its highest since 2019-20’s 90.5 percent.

The problem, Schmidt says, is that overall graduation metrics don’t tell the entire story.

For instance, for the 2022-23 school year, MISchoolData.org shows an 84.04 percent four-year graduation rate for TCAPS, but it also reports that TCAPS had 46 dropouts and another 73 who were “off-track continuing,” terminology for students who needed extra time to graduate. Among economically disadvantaged students, Schmidt says the four-year graduation rate for 2022-23 was just 68 percent – a clear sign that kids from poorer households are less likely to graduate on time.

One program Schmidt sees helping those students is the Trojan/Titan Integrated Experience (TIE), a cohort available to 9th and 10th grade students at both main high schools. The program, which covers a variety of subject matter depending on grade level, uses a two-hour block structure “that allows flexibility in grouping and timing beyond the rigid bell schedule.” The idea is to make sure students have a “true understanding” of skills and concepts before moving on to the next building block.

“My son struggled as a freshman,” Schmidt tells The Ticker. “He was in middle school during COVID, and entered freshman year the second year of the pandemic. Now, he’s at the Career-Tech Center and he’s thriving. But kids in Traverse City don’t get to go to trade school until they’re juniors, and those first two years can be tough for some of them. I think the TIE program helps provide options for those kids who learn a little differently.”

If there’s been a silver lining from the pandemic, VanWagoner thinks it’s that some of the stigma around kids not graduating on time is falling away. Traverse City High School, the TCAPS alternative high school, has seen an uptick in student numbers recently, because more kids are continuing their education even after they miss that traditional four-year graduation window.

“I don’t love that the only thing that’s put out there is the four-year graduation rate,” VanWagoner says. “We run one of the only alternative ed high schools in the region, and many of our kids who have crossed the finish line there did it with an additional year or two. We’ve even had some students who were 20 or 21 years old, and they were finishing up. So, we feel it’s important, especially in the wake of the pandemic, to recognize five-year and six-year cohort graduation rates as well, because they help show that, no matter where the student is or how old they are, if there’s a way we can get them that diploma credential, we’re going to do it.”

For reference, TCAPS recorded a five-year graduation rate of 90 percent for the 2023-24 school year, and a six-year graduation rate of 91.62 percent.