Schools should acknowledge upfront that they’ll likely have less instructional time this year and should plan to identify the highest priority parts of their curriculum accordingly. In some ways, the question was a welcome one, SIT president Sophie Howlett said, 'because we're not … We’ve got that opportunity now. Let’s take this opportunity to end the “one size fits all” factory model of education. If there’s evidence to suggest that students and teachers can safely return to school, then I’d say by all means. And the question is: What resources, support, or capacity do they have to do homeschooling effectively? While aiming for success in higher education as a parent is challenging enough, achieving academic goals in the midst of a pandemic can be emotionally overwhelming and exhausting. How does a principal or superintendent manage busy schedules to get all this done? What has happened is like a giant tidal wave that came and sucked the water off the ocean floor, revealing all these uncomfortable realities that had been beneath the water from time immemorial. Now, however, we’re not only going to have to construct a backup to get through this crisis, but we’re going to have to develop new, permanent systems, redesigned to meet the needs which have been so glaringly exposed in this crisis. They’ve issued a stack of papers and guidance documents suggesting that these topics are important and urgent, but it’s a daunting list to conquer. If we’re not careful, we risk overloading families. Sign up for daily emails to get the latest Harvard news. Now is the moment for educators to focus inward and repair classroom inequities, writes the CEO of Baltimore's public schools. This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity. Amid the Covid-19 pandemic the education system in India has been witnessing challenges with significant impact on higher education. During the swine flu outbreak in 2009 in the UK, in an article titled "Closure … Deep Dive: How Schools Can Redeploy Teachers in Creative Ways During COVID-19Downloadable Guide: New Roles for Educators, Contributors:Reporters: Catherine Gewertz, Sarah SchwartzDesigners/Visual artists: Laura Baker, Emma Patti Harris, Francis Sheehan, Vanessa Solis, Gina TomkoIllustrator: Stephanie Shafer for Education WeekPhoto editor: Jaclyn BorowskiWeb producers: Mike Bock, Stacey Decker, Hyon-Young KimVisual project editor: Emma Patti HarrisProject editor: Liana LoewusCoverage of whole-child approaches to learning is supported in part by a grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, at www.chanzuckerberg.com. GAZETTE: What can parents can do to help with the homeschooling of their children in the current crisis? EdWeek invited readers—and its staffers—to summarize this frightening, depressing, infuriating year in only six words. Do This Instead, Downloadable Guide: Assessing Students This Fall: Focus on the Classroom, Deep Dive: Classroom Routines Must Change. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff. In the building, social distancing could put an end to the group projects and partner work that are central to many teachers’ pedagogy. Finally, we must recognize the equity issues in the forced overreliance on homeschooling so that we avoid further disadvantaging the already disadvantaged. Schools might well need to respond to that reality by forging new roles or responsibilities for staff members—making one teacher the “remote lead,” or creating new cross-grade teams to support progressions in learning. In the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many higher education institutions around the world to rapidly switch to remote learning. Some families have parents home all day, while other parents have to go to work. For example, we have always had large gaps in students’ learning opportunities after school, weekends, and in the summer. For years, the success of our students has been measured by two arbitrary constructs — proficiency and time. The coronavirus has already restructured one big pillar of the assessment world: It obliterated federally mandated statewide testing last spring. How We Go Back to School is supported in part by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. We tried with our education reforms to build a 21st-century education system, but the results of that movement have been modest. We are still a nation at risk. How should international education work during a pandemic that largely prevents travel? And now, as the new school year approaches, it’s led experts to wave cautionary flags that say: Be very careful about how you handle testing this year. In a year when so many children have unfinished learning, leading experts are advising educators to resist a “test and remediate” mentality, which risks trapping children in a scrambling-to-catch-up place. As we move beyond test scores to a more holistic picture of students and school, Wed., January 13, 2021, 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. Germany's quick response to the pandemic in the spring allowed it to get some children back in schools after just a few weeks. Boston, for example, has bought 20,000 Chromebooks and is creating hotspots around the city where children and families can go to get internet access. I’m hoping that we can learn some things through this crisis about online delivery of not only instruction, but an array of opportunities for learning and support. During COVID-19, our conversations focus on the learning loss of students. "The best that can come of this is a new paradigm shift in terms of the way in which we look at education, because children’s well-being and success depend on more than just schooling," Paul Reville said of the current situation. REVILLE: School districts can be helpful by giving parents guidance about how to constructively use this time. Otherwise, many students will continue to be at a huge disadvantage. Deep Dive: What Should We Teach? State Superintendent Hoffman, education expert ask for legislature to 'grade with grace' during pandemic year Students throughout Arizona are experiencing learning loss due to the pandemic … Other major concerns during the pandemic have been lack of access to equipment and the internet. They are arbitrary because there is no law of nature that says a child must read by a certain date, nor is there a universally accepted catalog of core knowledge. Here’s a sampling of the topics most frequently mentioned as especially important for PD this year: Feel like a long list? Domenech imagines most districts will focus heavily on PD for remote learning, because so many teachers have not received deep training on it. Some students will be fine during this crisis because they’ll have high-quality learning opportunities, whether it’s formal schooling or informal homeschooling of some kind coupled with various enrichment opportunities. This is part of our Coronavirus Update series in which Harvard specialists in epidemiology, infectious disease, economics, politics, and other disciplines offer insights into what the latest developments in the COVID-19 outbreak may bring. When teachers go back to school this fall, the classroom as they’ve known it will be gone, and their instruction will be more critical than ever. That information offers the best way to do what’s crucially important this year: adjust instruction to meet students’ needs, and provide support to help them be successful with on-grade-level work. Here's what they said. In this section, we explore staffing ideas that some schools are implementing to better support students’ academic and emotional needs, whether they’re in the building or learning from home. Deep Dive: What Should We Teach? How can leaders forced to consider distance learning as the primary mode of education during the coronavirus pandemic do … We should be asking: How do we make our school, education, and child-development systems more individually responsive to the needs of our students? We can’t leave this to chance or the accident of birth. Again, in 1983, the report “Nation at Risk” warned of a similar risk: Our education system wasn’t up to the demands of a high-skills/high-knowledge economy. With many students on hybrid schedules that plan for some in-person and some remote learning, one “class” of students likely won’t be the coherent unit that it was in past years. But it’s a lot to take on. And we decided to dramatically boost the involvement of the federal government in schooling and to increase and improve our scientific curriculum. Why not construct a system that meets children where they are and gives them what they need inside and outside of school in order to be successful? It’s particularly important this year, experts say, to use each kind of assessment for the right purposes, and to avoid overidentifying struggling students, English-learners, or students with special needs for remediation. Here’s What Teaching Looks Like Under COVID-19, Deep Dive: Taking Care of Teachers: Round-the-Clock Communication Is Exhausting, Deep Dive: How Schools Can Redeploy Teachers in Creative Ways During COVID-19, Downloadable Guide: New Roles for Educators, Shielding Students From the Economic Storm, Bridging Distance for Learners With Special Needs, Do Parents Trust Schools? GAZETTE: How seriously are students going to be set back by not having formal instruction for at least two months, if not more? Suddenly we see front-page coverage about food deficits, inadequate access to health and mental health, problems with housing stability, and access to educational technology and internet. The COVID-19 pandemic has also had a severe impact on higher education as universities closed their premises and countries shut their borders in response to lockdown … A more deliberate approach this fall could mean a better experience for students; the lack of one could turn equity gaps into chasms. That’s where a rethought approach to assessment can play a role. Tue., January 12, 2021, 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. ET, Our new world has only increased our students’ dependence on technology. Now that their entire learning lives, as well as their actual physical lives, are outside of school, those differences and disparities come into vivid view. But on this scale? The most obvious place to start for schools is working on equitable access to educational technology as a way to close the digital-learning gap. In order to learn, children need equal access to health care, food, clean water, stable housing, and out-of-school enrichment opportunities, to name just a few preconditions. That made the transition, in this period of school closure, a relatively easy one for them to undertake. Andrew Cuomo as Henry V to cereal for dinner — in the shower, Office of Work/Life director talks about keeping things in balance while under self-quarantine. A lot of parents are struggling with that. But districts can’t expect teachers to be available 24/7—setting boundaries is essential for creating a sustainable work environment and protecting teacher mental health. To … Deep Dive: Classroom Routines Must Change. With so much riding on instruction, districts need to plan for it with the same rigor they’ve applied to more operational aspects of reopening. REVILLE: One that’s most striking to me is that because schools are closed, parents and the general public have become more aware than at any time in my memory of the inequities in children’s lives outside of school. The pressing challenge facing our national, state and local leaders of how to structure K-12 education during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has only intensified during the past few weeks. Despite some challenges, high schoolers say … We decided to look at education as an important factor in human capital development in this country. REVILLE: I think the lessons we’ve learned are that it’s good [for school districts] to have a backup system, if they can afford it. Schools also need to plan how they will keep curriculum and instruction cohesive across different environments. Teresa Vazquez, a teacher in Fort Wayne, Ind., remotely teaches a Spanish 1 class to students at Monroe High School in Albany, Ga. Police hold back pro-Trump rioters who tried to break through a police barrier Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol. Reassuring students and parents is a vital element of institutional response. We have to strike a balance between what children need and what families can do, and how you maintain some kind of work-life balance in the home environment. Disadvantaged students suffer the consequences of those gaps more than affluent children, who typically have lots of opportunities to fill in those gaps. It offers advice for deciding what to teach this year, how to teach it, and how to make sure students and teachers both get the support that they need from schools. I was talking recently with folks in a district in New Hampshire where, because of all the snow days they have in the wintertime, they had already developed a backup online learning system. The coronavirus didn’t just disrupt learning last spring; it opened up vast craters of academic and emotional need in students that adults must now try to meet. GAZETTE: Schools in Massachusetts are closed until May 4. Illinois parents may be going through their individual struggles during the pandemic — but they appear to be sharing one major parenting woe in common: they’re very worried about the soft skills that have slipped through their children’s fingers since COVID-19 entered their lives. There were substantial closings in many places during the 1918 Spanish Flu, some as long as four months, but not as widespread as those we’re seeing today. We need to correct for these inequities in order for education to realize its ambitious goals. GAZETTE: What lessons did school districts around the country learn from school closures in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and other similar school closings? While a dip was expected due to health risks, they say a tense political climate also contributed to the decrease in international students. The pandemic forced school leaders and teachers to reach out to their communities in ways they had never done before. We have to reconceptualize the whole job of child development and education, and construct systems that meet children where they are and give them what they need, both inside and outside of school, in order for all of them to have a genuine opportunity to be successful. Shutting down should not be an option. The only precedent in our field was when the Sputnik went up in 1957, and suddenly, Americans became very worried that their educational system wasn’t competitive with that of the Soviet Union. Doing so can widen equity gaps. Deep Dive: Don’t Rush to ‘Diagnose’ Learning Loss With a Formal Test. GAZETTE: Schools around the country have closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. "We need to look holistically, at the entirety of children’s lives.". During the pandemic, teachers across the country have been forced to find ways to reach their students in a manner suited to their needs: by recording videos for children who missed synchronous lessons, sending worksheets home with kids who lacked internet access and adjusting deadlines to fit students’ schedules. Some communities can take it for granted that their children will have such tools. Here’s How. Experts say no students should be held back from grade-level work—instead, teachers and instructional leaders should figure out where they might need to revisit prerequisite skills in the context of instruction. As if staffing isn’t challenging enough, professional development is shaping up to be a full plate all by itself. Online, they will have to develop relationships and classroom routines with students they may have never met in person. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, many students are attending school online and from home. You’re not alone. What’s your take on this? Do This InsteadDownloadable Guide: Assessing Students This Fall: Focus on the Classroom. But there are some priorities—like engaging with students, providing access to cognitively demanding work, and responding to formative assessment—that teachers can address in any environment. These times are unprecedented. Despite the incredible challenges of offering medical education during this time, the pandemic has led to many positive and potentially long-lasting innovations. Professional development will carry an outsized burden this fall, too, as school staff members require training to serve not only as instructors, but as social-emotional supports for students. During the influenza pandemic in 1918, even though the world was a … But should we be thinking broadly about education in some new way? The default in our education system is now homeschooling. We also offer one organization’s thoughts on a way to envision and rework staffing models. DigitalVision Vectors/Getty and Laura Baker/Education Week. Teachers will have to address those losses as they introduce grade-level content. When it comes to staffing, it’s likely that the usual roles and responsibilities will need to shift to allow a school to focus deeply on things that matter most: good instruction, since many students missed key content last spring; support for technology, since many students will be learning remotely; emotional support for students, who have likely experienced trauma in the pandemic; and connecting with families, whose help is required now more than ever as more learning takes place at home. With about 57 million kids enrolled in kindergarten through high school, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the closures during … There is a powerful case for making meaning parental engagement a critical piece of what K-12 education looks like during and after this pandemic. What preparations should institutions make in the short time available and how do they address students’ needs by level and field of study? “It’s aspirational,” said Dan Domenech, the executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association. We need to look holistically, at the entirety of children’s lives. Conversely, other students won’t have access to anything of quality, and as a result will be at an enormous disadvantage. For most Physical Education teachers, everything changed when schools began to move to online learning in the early days of the pandemic. And we haven’t done a very good job of providing these. Political analysts say they will be hampered by tight legislative majorities, Bacow, Harvard faculty, students call for affirmation of American principles, Large-scale study finds gut microbes associated with lower risks for diabetes, heart disease, obesity, Experts say it raises need to speed vaccinations, lifts herd immunity threshold, © 2021 The President and Fellows of Harvard College. No, certainly not in my lifetime. The coronavirus pandemic has turned the spotlight on one of the problems that hasn’t been resolved until now: making education accessible to all, under any circumstances. That’s a great start but, in the long run, I think we can do better than that. Within this coronavirus crisis there is an opportunity to reshape American education. Leaders vary on which of these they feel should be top priorities, but it’s easy to see there is a lot to tackle. Even if students had little instruction in the spring, districts should fight the impulse to require extensive remediation or reteaching of whole units from last year. Instead, they’re urging schools to focus deeply on instructional techniques and informal tests in the classroom. In this way, we can make the most of the crisis to help redesign better systems of education and child development. The COVID-19 pandemic has created the largest disruption of education systems in history, affecting nearly 1.6 billion learners in more than 190 countries and all conti- nents. Running a school during a pandemic is like building a plane while flying. Through eight installments, Education Week explores the steps administrators need to take to ensure the safety of students and faculty. REVILLE: The best that can come of this is a new paradigm shift in terms of the way in which we look at education, because children’s well-being and success depend on more than just schooling. 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