Guest Blog Post: AASA Learning Recovery & Redesign

Today’s guest blog post comes from AASA Executive Director Dan Domenech and is a second piece in our series of work related to supporting superintendents in their effort to invest and leverage American Rescue Plan dollars.

Across the country, superintendents, district staff, school leaders, educators, and all other support staff are working tirelessly to meet students where they’re at and support the communities most in need. As you recover to ensure you’re meeting the needs of each student, this moment also provides a unique opportunity to redesign school systems toward a more student-centered, equity-focused, and future-driven approach to public education.

AASA Learning Recovery & Redesign Priorities is the second installment of the AASA Learning Recovery & Redesign Guidance. While the first guidance focused on how to approach planning, this second one is designed to help district leaders reflect on what is in your recovery plans and your American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds spending choices. With the SY22-23 budget cycle upon us, district leaders should make time to reflect and revise as needed, especially in light of changed circumstances and new information gained during the first half of the current school year. 

The Priorities are organized according to the three main sections of our Learning 2025 Framework: 

• Culture: Systemic redesign of educational system happens with an intentional, relationships-based culture.
• Social-Emotional, Cognitive Growth: Systemic redesign of educational system encompasses the re-engineering of instruction around the needs and interests of each individual learner.
• Learning Accelerators: Systemic redesign of educational system embraces levers for accelerating progress toward student-centered, equity-focused, future-driven education.

Each section includes guidance around the eleven components and how to effectively leverage ESSER funds to advance that area, along with links to high-quality, evidence-backed resources designed with district leaders in mind. These user-friendly pieces were selected to be actionable and implemented over both the short- and long-term. 

To make the most of these resources, we’ve created a Priorities Self-Assessment (Tool II), which districts can use to reflect on how their current plans and ESSER investments are helping advance toward any of the Learning 2025 components. As was true with the first installment of the Learning Recovery & Redesign Guidance and its four Guiding Principles — Plant Seeds, Center Equity, Use & Build Knowledge, and Sustain Strategically — these new tools and resources are universal enough that they apply in every district’s context. This is so for rural, urban, and suburban communities as well as for different individual district priorities. 

Whether on your own or with district teams, Board members, or other stakeholders, we encourage you to use all of the Learning Recovery & Redesign self-assessment tools to reflect on your decisions and work to date in order to increase the impact of your spending moving forward. 

This and additional, forthcoming resources have been developed in collaboration with the AASA American Rescue Plan Committee, the AASA Learning 2025 Network, and our partners at EducationCounsel. We will continue to support districts in meeting unprecedented needs in the face of unprecedented challenges. 

Please click here to provide your feedback on these resources and especially to suggest what else would be most helpful to you and your teams.