Forward Thinking About Vulnerable Students

Executive Perspective

We are into the third school year affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. High school students who were in their sophomore year at the outbreak now are seniors. They have been subjected to significant disruption of their academic life at a point that is the traditional launch pad to work and career.

How well are they prepared to move on to higher education or to find gainful employment?

An NWEA Research Brief, “Learning During COVID-19: Reading and Math Achievement in the 2020-21 School Year,” reports that “achievement was lower for all student groups in 2020-21; however American Indian and Alaska Native, Black and Latinx students, as well as students in high-poverty schools were disproportionately impacted, particularly in the elementary grades we studied.”

This finding would be shocking except for the fact the same results were occurring pre-pandemic. The pandemic further accentuated the disparity we all know exists. Approximately 14 million students were without laptops and/or internet access at home when schools had to pivot to remote learning. Those students were predominantly the impoverished minorities described in the NWEA study.

Past Practices

Thanks to American Rescue Plan funding, many school districts now provide all their students with the technology needed for remote learning. Those dollars also allowed summer programs for all students, beyond the traditional summer remedial classes for students failing high school courses. Accelerated learning strategies now are helping students recover the learning losses. Remote learning will continue to be part of that strategy, not as a substitute during the cancellation of in-person learning due to virus outbreaks but as an extension of learning beyond the school day.

Some voices have suggested the most effective way to learning recovery is to have students repeat the disrupted grade level. That would be a practice representative of the educational system we want to leave behind. Repeating a grade negatively impacts the vulnerable students who have suffered the most during the pandemic. The ideal strategy would be to assess where students are at mastery of the material and have them move forward from there.

To combat the many antiquated practices that have prevented education from moving into the 21st century, AASA assembled a national commission on student-centered, equity-focused education. I was honored to co-chair the group along with Bill Daggett, founder of the International Center for Leadership in Education and the Successful Practices Network. Serving as Learning 2025 commissioners were thought leaders in education, business and philanthropy.

At the opening session, we told the group we did not want to return to the past. Rather, we want bold steps to create a new vision for our public schools.
In addition, we do not want the commission’s report to be another white paper to sit on a bookshelf and have little impact on change. We want the recommendations to be actionable, we want to see them implemented in school systems throughout America.

As of mid-September, more than 100 school districts have stepped forward to be demonstration sites. These are schools implementing a commission recommendation and desiring to put others in place.

A Meaningful Welcome

The focus on equity could not come at a more opportune time. Discriminatory practices that marginalize students are to be rooted out. The focus is to be on the whole child, not just academics but the social and emotional needs as well. It is reaffirming to hear so many school system leaders emphasize the social and emotional needs of their students as a pandemic impact. They do not want to welcome their students back with “open your textbook to page 24,” but rather with “how are you all doing today?”

The implementation of the commission’s recommendations is called Learning 2025 because we intend to have them implemented widely by that year. The resources to bring about change will require the creation of a diverse educator pipeline. Access to early learning is also important, as is alignment with community resources.

Other elements include personalized learning, greater voice for students over what they learn and teachers as engineers of instruction rather than sages on the stage. But most importantly, we must ensure our vulnerable students are never marginalized again.