Biden School Reopening Plan Now Has a Survey | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

Biden School Reopening Plan Now Has a Survey | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

Biden School Reopening Plan Now Has a Survey

In December 2020, President Biden pledged to reopen most schools in his first 100 days in office– dependent upon sufficient resources to protect students and staff during the Coronavirus pandemic.

Months later, in February 2021, the Biden administration is catching flack for a seriously modified version of that pledge– 51 percent of K-8 schools open at least one day per week– which just goes to show that opening schools is complicated. 

Before making promises about opening schools ASAP, it is best to first find out the status of in-person learning nationwide and from that construct an informed plan for moving forward.

To that end, it seems that the US Dept of Ed (USDOE) does (now) have a plan to begin informing its plan, so to speak, which it announced in this February 05, 2021, press release:

ED Announces National Survey to Gather Critical Data on School Reopening

To help safely reopen America’s schools and promote educational equity, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) at the U.S. Department of Education today announced the largest representative and highest-quality effort yet to gather vital data on the impact of COVID-19 on students and the status of in-person learning.

Currently, there is not enough data to understand the status of school re-opening and how students are learning nationwide. This project, known as the “NAEP 2021 School Survey,” will collect high-quality data from a nationally and state-representative sample.

Today’s announcement follows President Biden’s Jan. 21 Executive Order to ensure CONTINUE READING: Biden School Reopening Plan Now Has a Survey | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

Education Dept. Launches First Federal Effort To Track School Reopening | 89.3 KPCC

Education Dept. Launches First Federal Effort To Track School Reopening | 89.3 KPCC

Education Dept. Launches First Federal Effort To Track School Reopening

Ever since the pandemic closed the nation's schools in March 2020, there has been no official national source for understanding where schools have reopened, how many hours of live instruction students are getting online and just how unequal the access to learning has been over the past 11 months.

On Friday, the National Center for Education Statistics, at the U.S. Department of Education, announced a new survey to answer all these questions and more. The survey will be administered to approximately 7,000 nationally representative elementary and middle schools across the country. It follows an executive order from President Biden.

Schools will be surveyed on, among other things:

• Whether they are fully remote, hybrid or fully in-person
• How full-time, remote and hybrid enrollment varies by student race/ethnicity, income, English learner status and disability status
• Attendance rates, whether online or in-person, and by each subgroup listed above
• If hybrid, how often students are learning in person
• If remote, how many hours of live instruction are offered
• Whether certain students, such as younger students or those with disabilities, are being prioritized for in-person classes

Results will be collected monthly from February through at least June 2021, and reported to the public. To get up and running quickly, the survey will rely on some of the existing data collection systems of the "Nation's Report Card" testing program, and the results will be used to help contextualize the results of that test when it is CONTINUE READING: Education Dept. Launches First Federal Effort To Track School Reopening | 89.3 KPCC