It takes a village: The pandemic learning pod movement, one year in
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 morphs into new models and approaches, the work of learning is moving beyond the four walls of the school building […]
Vanishing in plain sight: Districts face barriers identifying and serving students experiencing homelessness
Students who are unhoused or in housing transition, an already vulnerable population before the pandemic, are falling even further out of sight in the 2020–21 school year. This summer, CRPE conducted a deep dive into the supports districts offered to their students experiencing homelessness. We found that unhoused students were largely unmentioned in districts’ fall […]
Toward Understanding Unionization’s Impact on Charter School Students
In this brief, we set out to understand how unionization may or may not shape practices central to charter schools’ ability to serve students.
State Accountability Systems in the COVID Era and Beyond
This brief presents a set of ideas and themes to begin to inform challenges around testing and accountability during the pandemic.
“Public Education Will Never Be the Same”: How COVID-19 Forced School District Leaders to Innovate on the Fly
In this brief, we summarize themes from an American School District Panel survey on innovation during COVID-19.
How Are School Districts Addressing Student Social-Emotional Needs during the Pandemic?
In this brief, we look at how our nationally representative sample of 477 school districts attended to students’ social-emotional learning and well-being in fall 2020.
The New Landscape of Public Schooling
This article originally ran in the November 2010 edition of the Phi Delta Kappan. We’re republishing it here because many of the ideas it describes are now being tested in real time on a large scale, as school systems across the country experiment with new structures that allow them to support remote learning. Critics of […]
Don’t force square-peg students back into wrong-shaped holes
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 causing many school districts to revert to all-remote instruction. The benefits of in-person contact with friends and teachers are real. […]
Five lessons on how community-driven learning hubs could change school districts long-term
In the final months of 2020, we sat in on nearly three dozen conversations with teams of district leaders and community-based nonprofits that are collaborating to run learning hubs. Learning hubs provide in-person learning environments or intensive virtual support to students—often in small groups. They offer school systems promising opportunities to rethink how they work […]
What does ‘attendance’ mean for remote learners in a pandemic? How 106 districts are dealing with absenteeism, student engagement & grades
Our analysis of reopening plans in 106 large, high-profile districts finds that they have taken student engagement and attendance far more seriously this fall than they did after schools first closed last spring. But many school systems have struggled to create consistent rules, especially for remote learners.