State leaders must choose accountability over complacency in reopening plans
Schools around the country are once again scrambling to keep students learning in person against a rising tide of COVID-19 cases. Whether they succeed will hinge on how local officials are able to mount effective mitigation strategies that keep students and staff safe amid an escalating public health crisis. States have a critical role to […]
From crisis response to sustainable solution: What’s next for school district- and community-driven learning pods?
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 the major impetus for these efforts was fading from view. We turned to our existing database of 372 school district- […]
A pandemic innovation: The power of national mentors to build teacher capacity everywhere
In TNTP’s 2018 report The Opportunity Myth, the consequences of low expectations endemic in America’s classrooms are laid bare. Students’ lives, the authors wrote, “were slipping further away each day, unbeknownst to them and their families—not because they couldn’t learn what they needed to reach them, but because they were rarely given a real chance […]
Systems upgrade: Central offices join the tech revolution
The COVID-19 pandemic forced decades of technological innovation on schools in the span of one year. As classes moved fully online and into hybrid modalities, teachers across the country adapted in a variety of ways: learning to instruct and facilitate collaboration over Zoom; hosting virtual parent-teacher conferences that enabled families to participate from any location; […]
Curricula on the cutting-room floor: What are we learning about high school priorities, scope, and goals?
This year has been an endless stream of hard choices for teachers. Perhaps the most consequential of these is what curriculum they will cover amid the year’s many distractions, shifting schedules, and the challenges of remote and hybrid learning. Teachers face pacing decisions every year, but this year they described facing a daunting tradeoff: press […]
How 100 large urban districts are wrapping family & community input into plans for spending federal emergency school relief funds
A first look at ESSER priorities indicated many districts may be struggling to reconcile public input with their own strategic priorities.
Bolder leadership needed to keep students safe and learning next year
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.
How 18 top charter school networks are refining remote learning for the fall
18 leading charter school organizations are strengthening curriculum offerings and modifying schedules — although their plans are less detailed than districts’ on remote learning improvements or lessons learned from the spring.
Addressing learning loss for students with disabilities: Could Universal Design for Learning be one answer?
This is the third blog post in our Notes from the Field: Special Education blog series. Data on students’ academic progress during the pandemic is scarce, but early signs show that many students with disabilities struggled to stay on track. Our year-long study of special education in a sample of 15 schools revealed that most already-weary teachers and […]
In thousands of districts, 4-day school weeks are robbing students of learning time for what amounts to hygiene theater
Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made clear(link is external) that good ventilation and consistent mask wearing are far more effective at preventing the spread of COVID-19 than disinfecting surfaces. This clarification was long overdue. Scientists have long suspected that the virus is mainly airborne. They recognized that measures like deep cleaning and […]
