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What does education policy need to do in the next 12 months? There are three big time chunks ahead 1) The rest of this year, 2) Summer and pre-full-vaccination fall, and 3)post COVID . Let's work through them (3), then (1), then (2)
Post-COVID, we need to develop an education system that is more resilient to interruption. The climate emergency means more pandemics, more fires, more floods, more storms, more interruptions. Sadly, we need to learn from COVID-19 how to do remote learning better, more often
Some parts of this are easy to figure out-- make broadband a utility instead of a luxury good. But others are trickier. Do certain pedagogical approaches--like project based learning or competency learning--work better during remote/interrupted learning?
So this winter, we need to figure out a) what is actually happening in schools and b) what might be working. If you were to ask a question like "what %age of remote learning science classes are attempting labs remotely, and what does that look like?" I think we'd have no idea.
We need thick description of current pandemic practice, so we can figure out what's working and what's not. Some of that learning we should apply right now, but much of it we probably won't figure out for months or years, so it will need to help the school resiliency project.
The other main thrust of the rest of this year needs to be make schools safe so we can get more students back in school buildings. More masks, more vax, more air filtration...
That then leads us to summer/fall. For the summer, we should ask a question like "How might we make this the best summer for youth learning and growth in U.S. history?"
How could we support Y's, boys and girls clubs, rec programs, summer schools, and camps to have the best summer ever for the most kids ever? In a sane world, this would be a no-brainer investment in youth.
Schools should be exploring early starts in July and August, paid for by another school supplement from the federal government. Maybe it's not mandatory, but I think many kids really want to be back with their friends and many parents want their kids out of the house.
For early starts, let's not do double broccoli math and literacy, but have school starts be about rebuilding relationships, celebrating what students have learned during the pandemic, doing some awesome projects (And OK, maybe some broccoli).
Fall is trickier. My hunch is that most people's mental model is "we'll all just be back." Friends, what part of this pandemic has the U.S. handled effectively? Vaccine rollout already seems to be behind schedule. Not everyone who needs it will be vaxed by Aug.
We're still going to have 5-25% of students who don't want to come back to school, mostly concentrated in big urban districts among the populations with the most co-morbidities and the least access to good healthcare.
There won't be enough kids in each school to merit a separate remote/hybrid program, so if you leave it up to individual schools, most will just fail to serve these kids well.
Districts need to start figuring out how to take what we learned this year, and provide better remote options for this smaller, but still really important population. Building these supports for this fall will be a useful step towards more resilient long term systems.
Maybe by Jan 2022 most of these kids are back, but I'll predict that this group of still-remote students in Sept is going to be larger than people think.
To sum:
*Now: 1) document remote learning practice now, 2) make schools safer for in-person return
*Summer-Fall: 3) supplement summer learning, 4) support early starts, 5) prepare for smaller remote cohorts in 21-22; *Post-COVID: 6) Build a system resilient to interruption.
*Now: 1) document remote learning practice now, 2) make schools safer for in-person return
*Summer-Fall: 3) supplement summer learning, 4) support early starts, 5) prepare for smaller remote cohorts in 21-22; *Post-COVID: 6) Build a system resilient to interruption.
