Tomorrow’s release of the Nation’s Report Card will surely generate abundant hand-wringing among parents, policymakers, business leaders, and educators. While the fine-grained details deserve examination, we can already tell you what the headlines will say: American students are not receiving the educational opportunities they deserve, nor those that will enable them to thrive in an increasingly complex society and changing economy.
CRPE was among the first to warn that the pandemic would worsen the issues that have plagued public education for decades: inadequate services for students with learning differences and complex learners, unequal opportunities for low-income students and students of color, and dysfunctional school systems, among many others. We continue to relentlessly draw attention to these issues via our annual report on the State of the American Student, though our choir has seemed to shrink as exhaustion deepens and attention shifts elsewhere.
The good news is that rather than only issuing warnings, we can now show where action has brought results for kids and families—and inaction has brought further chaos. Those in positions of power at the federal, state, and local levels owe it to every student to ensure educators implement research-based and transformative solutions. Here’s how:
States and districts need to act now to adopt evidence-based policy measures that we know will support learning. Policies can promote the use of high-quality instructional materials along with aligned professional learning for teachers and a commitment to analyzing and acting on data, as Rhode Island and Mississippi are doing. Action to extend learning time in core subjects, as both Alabama and Colorado are doing, can ensure that students have opportunities to practice foundational skills while still moving along with grade-level content. High-intensity tutoring and summer programs have produced strong results in places like Arkansas, D.C., Colorado, and Indiana.
As always, these policies are only as good as their implementation, but the evidence is strong for their impact on student learning. Every student can benefit from these policies, especially those furthest from opportunity. None of these are fundamentally partisan issues, and both red and blue states are adopting them. These should be no-brainers.
However, as challenging as policymaking on these key issues can be, there is also a more challenging task at hand. Beyond ensuring that evidence-based practices are in place, states and districts must also begin relentlessly tackling the assumptions that narrow the scope of potential solutions that students need. We must question whether the one-teacher, one-classroom model is really the best option or if alternative staffing models can make teaching more sustainable and fulfilling while also improving student outcomes. We must question whether high school should be a collection of 50-minute periods locked inside a school building or if adolescents can build knowledge, discover their interests, and gain credentials through work-based learning and early college. We must question whether rising special education rates will continue to strain an unsustainable dual-delivery system or if universal design and emergent technologies can unlock individual potential for every student. Finally, we must find thoughtful and transparent ways to hold adults responsible for student outcomes.
Every state in this country has work to do. And we’ve known that for a long time. The time for strong leadership is now to overcome inertia, political resistance, and implementation fatigue. So governors, state chiefs, mayors, and newly-installed U.S. Department of Education officials: will you continue to simply hope scores improve, or will you lead?
