When Pandemic Ends, Pre-Pandemic Education Should End With It
There is a major opportunity to reconstruct America's long broken education system
Caprice Young | Learn4Life
The phrase “Build Back Better” was never anything new. In recent years, it became the mantra of post-disaster reconstruction, coined since the United Nations’ seminal 2006 report “Key Propositions for Building Back Better.” That report, written in the wake of the horrific 2004 Indian Ocean region tsunami, pointed out that disasters can be leveraged as opportunities for change and improvement.
Similar lessons could be applied to America’s K-12 education system. We have all watched education get turned upside down in recent months - and we should all hope that we never go back to the way things were before. Let’s look at this as a helpful interruption to inadequate policies and practices that have been largely unchallenged for generations - policies that have been harmful to disadvantaged students and their families. We have had needed changes in education for a long time and leaders must address them while there is a genuine sense of urgency.
As we reimagine K-12 education, let’s then build back better with six crucial strategies …
Broaden Access To Technology To Eliminate Inequities
If there is one thing this crisis has exposed, it’s the extreme inequity in our school system. The most obvious is the digital divide that plagues low income households …
Basic laptops now cost below $200 (less than a semester of high school text books), so there is no excuse if education systems can’t ensure a laptop for every student starting in kindergarten. Ideally, those laptops would be loaded with the software and communications tools needed to compete with peers in affluent communities and they should be able to spark their imagination about the world. The Federal Communications Commission should make basic internet service free to all households or homeless shelters with children of any age.
Leverage Data To Serve Students
It is time for school districts to invest in online professional development for teachers and staff. According to a 2020 edWeb Teacher Professional Learning Survey, most teachers agreed before pandemic …
After a full year of major disruptions and adjustments, Center for Digital Education fellow Kipp Bentley writes in GovTech that “ … schools have been scrambling to build, buy, borrow and deliver online teacher PD. As a result, many educators are now wondering why they didn’t go this route long agoeducators are wondering.”
We’ve more than demonstrated our ability to learn and collaborate electronically. So why would we ever go back to boring afternoons of administrators drilling staff with canned PowerPoint presentations? Let’s stop that. Technology enables us to have real-time and asynchronous training whenever it works for the workers.
Create More Individualized Instruction
Students should progress from grade-to-grade based on their competency in the subject matter … not how much time they sit in a classroom. Some students learn best in small groups, others with one-on-one tutoring or through experimentation. Others thrive in a classroom model or independently. Older students may not need to be on campus all day every day, and basically prefer a university-like model.
Make Trauma-Informed Practices The Standard
Many students and teachers are feeling the stress and grief from COVID-19. Even before this pandemic, schools primarily treated the behaviors associated with grief as discipline cases. When youth and adults act out in grief, typically characterized by short tempers and signs of emotional withdrawal, we need leaders and counselors to recognize grief and respond through trauma-informed practices. In this crisis, we are seeing a warming of empathy and compassion in our communities.
School Safety Will Also Mean Cleaner Schools
People need to feel safe in our schools. Building maintenance and cleanliness often has been given short shrift in urban public schools. But, as a Penn State Center for Evaluation and Education Policy Analysis found “… school facilities affect health, behavior, engagement, learning and growth in achievement. [W]ithout adequate facilities and resources, it is extremely difficult to serve large numbers of children with complex needs.” And the most recent Infrastructure Report Card gave the nation’s school facilities a grade of D+ …
That must change. The elementary school my daughter attended was the best science magnet in Los Angeles, but the halls always smelled of urine and there was a school nurse on duty only once a week. Without a greater investment in sanitization and physical safety, our families will be reluctant to send their children back and our schools and staff won’t want to teach there.
Revise The Financial Structures of Our School Systems.
Many of our schools were facing financial strains before this crisis. That crisis was aggravated by the pandemic, as an EdWeek analysis shows …
With the nation slipping into economic depression, by necessity we will need to rethink and revise the financial structures of our school systems that have long been calcified into laws, regulations and union contracts. We may need more money, and we will need to spend it differently based on new priorities that put students first - while treating our educators as the professionals they are.
The wellspring of academic creativity and sharing of resources inspire all of us to recognize that education really can become exciting and engaging again. Let’s make potions in the kitchen, learn executive functioning skills with Legos and see that special education can highlight the strength in different ways of knowing. Let’s build back better.