COVID-19, the educational equity crisis, and the opportunity ahead - ,The Brookings Institution

COVID-19, the educational equity crisis, and the opportunity ahead

COVID-19, the educational equity crisis, and the opportunity ahead

As the one-year anniversary of campus closures due to COVID-19 passed last March, nearly half of America’s children were 

attending schools operating remotely or open only on a hybrid basis. In California, more than 70% of students were attending schools that were fully remote.

But spring brings new hope. Amid steps to ensure safe health practices and the acceleration of vaccinations, the rates of transmission have decreased from earlier peaks in the winter and students are beginning to return to school.

While the return of students to campus is something to celebrate, it is essential to note that the pandemic and related prolonged school disruptions have and will continue to have a profound impact on the lives and learning of students.

Due to inequitable access to health care, income inequality, and disproportionate employment in high-risk, “essential” jobs, low-income, Black, Latino, and Native American communities have borne the brunt of the pandemic, with dire health and economic impacts that hinder their children’s educational opportunities and learning. It is difficult for children to learn if they are sick or hungry, or if they have family members who are sick or even dying. Some students have found themselves without a safe, stable place to live, lacking basic necessities, and disconnected from needed services and supports when schools—a primary avenue for public service delivery—closed for months on end. CONTINUE READING: COVID-19, the educational equity crisis, and the opportunity ahead

Recommendations for a restorative restart

1. Center relationships. • Connect 1:1 with every family and every student to build partnerships, trust, and communication between families and educators. • Create dedicated time and space for relationship-building and re-engagement. • Implement positive and restorative discipline practices.

2. Address whole-child needs. • Conduct regular student wellness screenings. • Assess student learning and review data on attendance, engagement, grades, and stakeholder perceptions about school conditions and climate. • Create an action plan to meet the individualized whole-child needs of every student, by addressing student trauma, implementing community schools strategies, and better aligning services within schools and districts to meet students’ diverse needs.

3. Strengthen staffing & partnerships. • Pair students with high-dosage tutoring and mentoring. • Provide mental health supports. • Offer expanded learning opportunities, including those in the summer and in out-of-school time, that are hands-on, fun and engaging, student-centered, and complementary to classroom learning. • Staff up to support student re-engagement by hiring new staff, liaisons, and community partners.

4. Make teaching & learning relevant & rigorous. • Advance racial equity and cultural responsiveness through instructional materials and books. • Advance racial equity in teaching through providing all educators with professional development opportunities and strategies and tools. • Offer students choice and voice in their learning. • Focus on priority standards and lessons to accelerate rather than remediate learning.

5. Empower teams to rebuild & reimagine systems. • Create restorative restart and transformation teams so that this work is systematized and continues long term. • Establish a districtwide vision and framework for transformational and systemic change.

COVID-19, the educational equity crisis, and the opportunity ahead

NYC Educator: If We Can't Learn from Crisis, School Doesn't Matter

NYC Educator: If We Can't Learn from Crisis, School Doesn't Matter

If We Can't Learn from Crisis, School Doesn't Matter

Well, according to the NY Times, most pediatricians, all of whom had access to the vaccination well before we did, don't think we need it in order to return to work. I'm not surprised. Ever since the plague hit, I've been reading in the Times about how awful it is that schools were closed. The fact that schools are, in fact, not closed, and that they have not been closed is neither here nor there. And hey, why err on the side of caution when we can just hope things like this don't happen?

It's vital that we get those buildings open, and that we get those kids in there to study algebra, or whatever it is on their programs. Otherwise, how will Western Civilization continue its great march ahead? Obviously, living through a pandemic is not an educational experience. There is absolutely nothing to be learned from it.

One thing, for example, that cannot be learned is preserving the environment. Who cares if we've destroyed a whole lot of rain forest, and that animals out of their element bring us diseases that come from theirs? Who cares if we keep interacting with bats, and that they carry resistance to a whole lot of deadly diseases that we don't? As long as we have someone solving for X, let's forget about the earth, our home, altogether. That algebra cannot be allowed to simply go by the wayside.

Another thing we can't be bothered learning is it is not, in fact, a good idea to elect a self-serving, self-important, solipsistic serial liar to the Presidency of the United States. Why should kids bother learning things like that? That's cancel culture. We have an absolute right to select politicians who don't give a golly gosh darn about the environment (not to mention working people). If politicians choose not to take precautions in public, and if they get COVID and infect others with it, well, that's their right as Americans. Every time they breathe virus into one of our faces they're doing their sacred duty of owning the libs. 

So let's get those kids into physical classrooms, for goodness sake, and never mind if, in fact, it's only a distinct minority of children who actually attend. Never mind if the people themselves, by a margin of two or three to one, don't trust the NY Times or the pediatricians in the survey. Never mind a consistent history of medical mistreatment that leaves minorities (majorities in our area) wary of doctors and even the NY Times reporters who preach to us.

Who cares if the few students who make it into buildings are kept separated and masked? The important thing is to keep them doing that algebra, or whatever it is we happen to be offering them that day. It doesn't matter if we invite them into rooms and preclude social interaction. It's good for kids to sit masked and far apart from one another, and it's healthy that most of them don't come in, evidently. But NY Times reporter have yet other brilliant insights to share with us:

Yeah, it's an absolute disgrace we keep closing down schools so that CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: If We Can't Learn from Crisis, School Doesn't Matter