Education equity advocates say they’ve reached “an important milestone” in addressing pandemic-era learning loss after the Los Angeles Unified School District agreed to provide three years of high-dosage tutoring and other remediation services to more than 100,000 of its 390,000 K-12 students.
The agreement, which attorneys are calling “one of the largest education class-action settlements in history,” results from a September 2020 case brought by parents who argued the nation’s second-largest school district’s remote learning was inadequate and inequitable. The settlement, announced Sept. 3, awaits approval from the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, but implementation is “already underway,” plaintiffs’ lawyers said.
“For nearly five years, we have fought tirelessly on behalf of LAUSD students and their families to enforce students’ constitutional right to basic educational equality,” Edward Hillenbrand, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “We are thrilled that LAUSD has committed to providing the critical support and resources students need to recover and achieve their full academic potential.”
The agreement is a notable step after parent advocacy groups around the country have called for more urgent action to address the academic fallout of the pandemic. Its focus on general education is unusual because many settlements, civil rights investigations, and lawsuits have focused more specifically on the rights of students with disabilities who had gaps in services, like physical and speech therapies, during the rocky transition to remote learning.
National data show test scores have declined across the board following the pandemic, even as districts committed to recovery plans like tutoring, after-school programs, and summer enrichment. LAUSD’s recovery plans outside of this agreement included targeting extra supports to poorer performing schools and offering expanded learning time.
“Following the pandemic, LA Unified has made tremendous strides in closing the learning loss gap that impacted the entire nation,” a district spokesperson said in a statement about the settlement. “As recent data shows, the district’s efforts have improved test scores better than the national average in multiple critical areas.”
The district announced in July that students’ state test scores had surpassed pre-pandemic levels following two years of incremental growth, the Los Angeles Times reported. But large portions of students, disproportionately students of color, are still performing below grade level.
Case dates to early days of the pandemic
Parents originally brought the suit five years ago, arguing that the district had failed to ensure access to technology; suspended student engagement programs; and significantly reduced teacher schedules, professional development, and instructional minutes, exacerbating achievement gaps for Black, Latino, and low-income students.
The Superior Court of California dismissed the case in August 2021 when schools reopened, but plaintiffs later revived it on appeal.
Current LAUSD students who were enrolled during the 2019–20 or 2020–21 school years are eligible to participate in small-group, after-school academic support programs and summer school, the settlement says. About 100,000 of those students will qualify for 45 hours per year of one-on-one tutoring. They include students with below-basic test scores, English learners, students with disabilities, children in foster care, and students experiencing homelessness.
LAUSD also agreed to:
- administer three mid-year assessments in math and reading (LA schools already use i-Ready tests to track students’ mastery of subjects);
- provide mandatory, “evidence-based” teacher training in math, English/language arts, and multi-tiered systems of support, which provide increasing levels of interventions to match students’ needs;
- provide family outreach to re-engage chronically absent students;
- release detailed public data on participation in tutoring programs, assessment, and absenteeism; and
- an annual evaluation of tutoring programs.
As districts around the country used federal COVID-19 aid to provide voluntary tutoring, and after-school and summer-school programs, many reported that the students who most needed those supports did not participate. Advocacy groups that supported parents in the lawsuit said they are prepared to launch outreach efforts to ensure that the most-affected students are aware of the new tutoring options.
Problems with equity predate the pandemic
LAUSD’s remote learning offerings have been flagged as inadequate before.
In April 2022, the district agreed to provide compensatory services for students with disabilities after the U.S. Department of Education’s office for civil rights said it failed to provide services required by students’ individualized education programs during remote learning. The district also failed to adequately track special education services, and to deliver adequate compensatory services, such as additional physical therapy or reading interventions, to address those gaps, OCR found.
The most recent settlement is notable for its scope and focus on evidence-based practices, said Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University.
“So many kids were affected by the pandemic, so the solutions have to be widespread,” she said.
Concerns about lingering effects of the pandemic aren’t limited to LAUSD, and students in many other cities would benefit from similar settlements, Lake said.
“The basic argument seemed to be that students were discriminated against because of unequal access to resources within the district, and that they weren’t given the same opportunity to learn as other districts,” Lake said. “That unequal opportunity argument certainly existed before the pandemic and still exists today.”
