Since the spring of 2020, learning pods have evolved from a new idea to a significant feature of the pandemic learning landscape. As the pod movement grows in real-time through the current school year and...
Since the spring of 2020, learning pods have evolved from a new idea to a significant feature of the pandemic learning landscape. As the pod movement grows in real-time through the current school year and...
CRISIS BREEDS INNOVATION PANDEMIC PODS AND THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION This research study concluded in 2022. For more on CRPE’s research on innovative learning environments, check out the Canopy Project. https://youtu.be/MV16xdueb0E On November 14, 2022,...
Over the past school year, CRPE has tracked how pandemic learning pods evolved from emergency responses to, in some cases, small, innovative, and personalized learning communities. This summer, as COVID-19 vaccinations increased, it seemed like...
We are looking for more examples of learning pods and hubs. If you know of any, please let us know by filling out this short form. In October, 100 Black Men of Valdosta, in Georgia,...
Pandemic pods were born out of necessity, as schools shuttered around the country last spring and families cast out in search of urgent solutions to childcare and remote learning support. But in a year characterized...
This report offers the first in-depth look at families’ and educators’ experiences with pandemic pods.
K–12 Dive covers CRPE’s working paper by Eupha Jeanne Daramola, titled Progress and potential: The innovations of pandemic learning communities led by leaders of color.
The City of North Las Vegas funded education nonprofit Nevada Action to set up a microschool.
REACH’s story demonstrates the potential for community-based organizations to play a larger role in addressing both current challenges and longstanding iniquities in the public education system.
During the pandemic, HPNC staff supervised students’ online learning and provided social experiences that were designed to mimic those that students would experience in school in a normal year.
Initially an in-person, local organization, My Reflection Matters launched its virtual “Village” platform in August 2020 to connect and support primarily Black, Indigenous, and People of Color families.
CFUL opened Whitney M. Young Academy, a microschool designed to meet the individual needs of low-income, African American students.
An education advocacy group that responded to the COVID-19 crisis by launching two microschools for Black families in Phoenix, Arizona.
Engaged Detroit was created to help Black families interested in homeschooling “take control” of their children’s learning.
The African Leadership Group created a learning pod that in most cases not only helped students keep up but actually improved their academic performance over the 2020–21 school year.
Pandemic pods were borne by necessity as families faced urgent needs for childcare and remote learning support. But they also offer fresh solutions to an age-old education problem: how to dramatically lower class sizes without...
Samantha* had been a veteran educator for fourteen years, first as a classroom teacher and then a principal, when the pandemic shut down schools. Last year, when she learned about the then-growing learning pod movement,...
Across Indianapolis, hundreds of students are getting help navigating remote learning while school campuses remain closed. The city is now home to two efforts—one led by the local school district, one outside it—to extend an...
Education Dive covers CRPE’s webinar on efforts in Indianapolis to create equitable learning hubs for students.
Chalkbeat Indiana covers CRPE’s webinar on efforts in Indianapolis to create equitable learning hubs for students.
Bree Dusseault is quoted by BBC News on widening gaps of inequality in education during the pandemic.
For years, developments at the margins of public education hinted at a new world, struggling to be born. Microschools, hybrid homeschools, and a la carte online courses offered an array of new learning experiences to...
When schools closed down last spring, some parents and educators responded by forming “pandemic pods,” or small groups of students who came together outside of school to learn during the pandemic. These experiments from last...
Parent advocacy groups are empowering families to reimagine public schools. But sometimes parents are simply opting out as the ultimate form of empowerment. Chemay Morales-James was working as an equity coach providing consulting services to...
CRISIS BREEDS INNOVATION: Pandemic Pods and the Future of Education Appendix About This Project In the fall of 2020, the Center on Reinventing Public Education launched a national learning agenda on the small pandemic learning...
This paper outlines lessons we can draw from the focused implementation of the whole-child approach in pandemic learning communities.
For more than two years, CRPE has studied the practices and impact of pandemic learning pods in hopes of identifying lessons that can be applied more broadly to improving public education for all students. In...
Neighborhood North leaders saw a need to support students at risk of falling behind in school and support families by providing childcare.
When the pandemic closed schools in Denver, an enterprising parent with community connections stepped in to meet immediate needs.
A group of community-based organizations that had been working to reimagine education before the pandemic capitalized on a window of opportunity to create new microschool-inspired learning environments for Black and Latino youth.
After an optimistic summer, Delta’s rise and an escalating public health situation has crushed many people’s hope for a quiet, even “normal” school year. Families worried about the risks presented by COVID-19 are increasingly stuck...
Cleveland came into the pandemic with a history of collaboration among civic organizations and schools.
Ashley Jochim is quoted on pandemic learning pods in the Boston Globe.
Education Week covers CRPE’s survey report on pandemic learning pods.
This working paper maps the ecosystem of organizations needed to support equitable learning pods.
When school buildings closed in March 2020, Community Works started offering more versatile programming options to meet the needs of their students.
A new company sustaining the pandemic pod model offers flexibility to teachers, students and parents.
This brief examines the involvement of the 100 largest cities in the U.S. in creating learning pods during the pandemic.
K–12 Dive covers CRPE’s survey report on pandemic learning pods.
CRPE’s database of learning pods is cited in The Hill.
Robin Lake and other guests discuss learning pods and hubs in this EdSource podcast.
For nearly a year, schools’ unpredictability has created stress and suffering for kids and families, especially in Black and brown communities where jobs and lives are also most at risk from the virus. We’ve seen...
Regardless of how long or short a time the current pandemic lasts, the “normal” in politics and schooling is unlikely to return anytime soon.
While President Biden has promised to have most public schools open within his first 100 days, new data indicate it will be a daunting challenge. Spiking virus rates and intense opposition from teachers unions is...
School as we know it is gone and it won’t be coming back. Deprived of the ability to physically gather grade-level cohorts of students into large facilities reliably staffed by authorized district employees, it lost—with...
For Black children, the public education system is like a dirty fish tank. They’re swimming in toxic conditions like discriminatory discipline and low expectations. But before the water can be treated, those students need to...
Pod staffing arrangements have the potential to be replicated at a much larger scale and in a way that endures beyond the pandemic.
COMMUNITY-LEDINNOVATION TRANSLATING GRASSROOTS SOLUTIONS TO SYSTEM-WIDE CHANGE The pandemic opened up unprecedented opportunities for families, educators, community-based organizations and entrepreneurs to design their own educational solutions. Some of these solutions recall one-room schoolhouses, freedom schools,...
Survey results show there is potentially a robust market for learning pods, or similar arrangements such as microschools, hybrid homeschools, and homeschool cooperatives.
After opposing in-person schooling for more than a year, teachers unions and some Democratic elected officials have flipped, and now want to end all online teaching and force everyone back to school whether they’re comfortable...
What a year! Since early in March, the CRPE team has been operating at full steam to try to be helpful in the pandemic. In the first few months we pushed for urgent action to...
For the second year in a row, many school districts are not ready to switch kids to remote learning if in-person school is interrupted. While most large districts offer full-time remote learning, parents had to...
This commentary is a response to the Center on Reinventing Public Education’s State of the American Student project, an effort launched in fall 2022 to track and report on pandemic recovery and school reimagining efforts...
Home I Pandemic Learning The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a hard truth: A rigid system designed more than a century ago is ill-equipped to meet students’ needs. Despite the heroic efforts of many educators, a system...
Before the COVID meteor knocked them for a loop, school districts were the primary providers of child care, nutrition, recreation and education — not to mention the largest employers of adults — in their communities....
THE EVIDENCE PROJECT FIVE YEARS OF TRACKING THE PANDEMIC’S IMPACT& WHAT STUDENTS NEED TO RECOVER The pandemic exposed deep inequities but also presented an opportunity to rethink and rebuild. However, five years later, school systems...
To CRPE followers, colleagues, and friends: Happy 2025! Longtime readers will know that CRPE prides ourselves on “thinking forward.” We do make straight-out predictions from time to time, but mostly, we look around the corner...
The consensus is becoming clear: families and district leaders want a return to in-person learning as soon as possible. But in a growing number of communities, that does not mean a return to normal. “Normal”...
Announcing a new forum for bold ideas to build momentum Proposals to eliminate the Department of Education (ED) have been a Republican talking point since Ronald Reagan first suggested it in the early 1980s. The...
All SY22 SY21 SY20 School Mask, Vaccine Mandates Are Mostly Gone. But What if the Virus Comes Back? This piece was originally published by The 74. Dusseault: As 100 large districts gear up for a...
Lakisha Young writes about building pathways for minoritized students to access higher-performing schools when their current schools were closed during the pandemic.
Learning Recovery The Center on Reinventing Public Education closely followed the Covid-19 pandemic, producing rapid response research on how systems responded to school closures, mask policies, and related issues. Today, we continue to produce extensive...
No shortage of ideas abound about how to address post-pandemic learning loss, mental health problems and low school attendance. But the best-sounding ideas may make demands on schools and other public agencies that they often...
Kids may be back at school after three disrupted years, but a return to classrooms has not brought a return to normal.
INNOVATIVE SCHOOL SYSTEMS GRANT SUPPORTING BOLD IDEAS TO TRANSFORM THE LEARNING EXPERIENCE The need for systemic, student-centered change could not be greater at this moment. The pandemic exacerbated stark inequities and revealed that students want...
INNOVATIVE SCHOOL SYSTEMS GRANT SUPPORTING BOLD IDEAS TO TRANSFORM THE LEARNING EXPERIENCE The need for systemic, student-centered change could not be greater at this moment. The pandemic exacerbated stark inequities and revealed that students want...
Small learning environments that operate outside public schools—such as microschools, hybrid homeschools, and learning pods—exploded into broad public consciousness during the pandemic. While many children who were in these programs have now returned to public...
State of the Student 2025 Situation Report .glass { backdrop-filter: blur(10px) saturate(100%); -webkit-backdrop-filter: blur(10px) saturate(100%); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.05); } .blue-glass { backdrop-filter: blur(10px) saturate(50%) brightness(200%); -webkit-backdrop-filter: blur(10px) saturate(120%); background-color: #65BFEC08; } March 2025...
Lakisha Young explains how Oakland REACH is training parents to be literacy tutors.
The pandemic created further opportunity and accelerated a movement toward nontraditional learning environments, such as independent microschools, homeschool cooperatives, and hybrid or virtual schools. Though nationally representative research on this movement is scarce, research reports...
The Center on Reinventing Public Education, now at ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, will study pandemic recovery and district redesign.
The Current Crisis Five years after the pandemic disrupted education, public schools are still struggling to recover. Achievement gaps have widened, student performance is in decline, and many schools have reverted to an outdated, ineffective...
Happy 2023! Did you, like me, take time over the break to play with one of the new artificial intelligence bots? I asked ChatGPT to write a blog in the style of Robin Lake on...
As students and teachers begin the new school year, the opportunity gap for students living in poverty is likely to be wider than ever.
Ashley Jochim is quoted in Wired on CRPE’s work studying pandemic-born learning pods.
One Saturday morning a few years ago, I was walking through an outdoor market in downtown St. Petersburg, Fla., where I lived at the time, when something piqued my professional curiosity. A group of homeschool...
Divisions about mask and vaccine mandates, in-person vs. remote learning, student discipline, and racism and anti-racism in the curriculum will make it difficult for schools to serve anyone well this year. In some localities, district...
Schools owe students a chance to gain back the learning opportunities they were denied last year. They cannot afford to squander another year because of tepid leadership and political squabbling.
The Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund (GEER I and II) gave states $4.25 billion in discretionary federal dollars to support K–12 schools, higher education, and workforce initiatives. These were welcome resources, coming just as the...
While most schools are back in person this spring, they continue to grapple with lagging enrollment. Pre-K and kindergarten have been hit especially hard.
Last winter we interviewed 29 school leaders about lost learning time over the last year and a half, and they were nearly unanimous on one point: rather than diverting struggling students to remedial tracks, they...
Trust, a societal resource that has been steadily bleeding away, is indispensable for schooling. As the classic book by Anthony Bryk and Barbara Schneider showed, a school can’t be good, and can’t improve, without trust...
Like many students across the country, Walter Lopez started falling behind on his work when schools suddenly shifted to remote learning this spring. But this year, he gained access to a new support system that...
Perhaps as to be expected, districts’ already lackluster plans for the start of school have been beset by execution challenges, confusing and tardy federal guidance, and barriers to student access.
The State of the American Student: Fall 2022 A guide to pandemic recovery and reinvention Report download Executive summary download QUICK LINKS Fast facts | Student voices | Key findings | Roadmap to recovery |...
According to a new analysis of state reopening plans by CRPE and Public Impact, states have largely ceded their role in defining how school systems must address the COVID-19 pandemic. To be sure, these plans...
A diverse array of communities are working to reinvent schooling in pursuit of their visions for thriving young people and families.
This brief presents a set of ideas and themes to begin to inform challenges around testing and accountability during the pandemic.
We will get through this (hopefully) final stage of the pandemic. But then what?
Marketplace cites CRPE’s survey report on pandemic learning pods.
The 74 highlights CRPE’s survey report on pandemic learning pods.
Amid all the concern about staffing shortages in America’s schools, the continued strain is showing up in another key place: at the top.
Lakisha Young writes about starting The Oakland REACH.
Home | Pandemic Learning | Pandemic Data Tracking Pandemic Data Tracking This page catalogs the Center on Reinventing Public Education’s efforts to monitor how states and large school districts responded to the Covid-19 pandemic. Some...
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Teachers Want to Innovate—Schools that Don’t Let Them are Losing Out
This piece was originally published in The 74. Waite: Education entrepreneurs are taking their creativity and ingenuity to hybrid schools and microschools — and taking their students with them At the end of April, I...