Christine Pitts is an education advocate and former senior policy fellow at the Center on Reinventing Public Education. She has a decade of strategic leadership experience advancing a transformative vision for U.S. education systems and bringing analytic skill to evidence-based policy agendas at all levels of governance. Prior to joining CRPE, Christine led research and evaluation for Portland Public Schools in Oregon and served as Research Scientist and Policy Advisor at NWEA. Her academic research, focusing on accountability, governance, and social networks, can be found in Educational Researcher and Teachers College Record. As a lifelong educator, Christine has served in schools across the country as a classroom teacher and administrator. Christine earned her BS and MAEd at East Carolina University, as well as her PhD at the University of Oregon.
Surveys of a national panel of superintendents revealed that many districts are expanding nonacademic services, navigating an immediate staffing crunch and longer-range fiscal uncertainty when federal recovery funds expire, and expanding virtual schools.
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.
This paper presents school districts with six principles of summer learning that can guide pandemic recovery and planning for the summer, fall, and beyond.
