1. As we have discussed several times so far, there are certain things that even the Mighty ‘Rona can’t stop. To that list, we’ll add the search for a new CEO in Lorain City Schools… (Elyria Chronicle, 4/30/20) …and we’ll add yet another so called charter/district “merger” (although they do call it an “absorption” here, which has a much more satisfactory connotation for me). Dayton supe Elizabeth Lolli says she does not expect major changes to the Mound Street Academy dropout recovery program right away. Seeing as many of Mound Street’s students are likely to be young people who had trouble succeeding in traditional schools in the first place, let’s hope whatever changes do eventuate under the new paradigm continue to serve as workable alternatives for them. (Dayton Daily News, 4/29/20) Also unstoppable: the actual, proper merger of the West Geauga and Newbury school districts. Longtime Gadfly Bites subscribers (did I really lose count of you when I ran out of fingers?) will recall that the Newbury/West G merger was a long and laborious process with quite a lot of rancor and the occasional “dead child” appeal. Now that it’s all done and ready to go into effect next year, I worry that no amount of “virtual tours” is going to help some folks absorb the changes on either side of the equation. (Geauga Maple Leaf, 4/30/20)
    
2. Graduation, also, will continue in various forms. Since Governor DeWine made his ranked list of preferences for how graduations can be handled in the midst of pandemic-mitigation restrictions, it will be interesting over the next few weeks to see which districts and high schools opt for which kind of event. To wit: Mansfield Senior High was quick out of the gate to commit to the staggered, crowd-controlled, in-person, video-taped graduation ceremony which was the gov’s least-preferred choice. (Richland Source, 4/29/20) Meanwhile, a record-high 47 high school students will graduate from Sinclair Community College with associate degrees as soon as they finish all their class requirements, thanks to Ohio’s College Credit Plus Program. There will be no ceremony of any kind, because this is real life. (Dayton Daily News, 4/29/20)
    
3. And how are the younger children faring in the pandemic-propelled pandemonium (triple alliteration!)? One Columbus City Schools dad has some complaints, which the district has responded to. If you ask me, I don’t think either side has much proof of their claims. (ABC6, Columbus, 4/29/20) Meanwhile, the superintendent of the Richland School of Academic Arts, a Mansfield charter school, describes the efforts she and her staff have implemented to maintain the progress of her school’s early readers during mandated at-home learning. “Parents have not been trained to start a reader or to give any kind of foundational strength to the reading,” she says. “And it’s not their fault, it’s not their job.” I think that Columbus dad might agree. (Richland Source, 4/30/20) Meanwhile, the good folks in Parma City Schools seem to be oblivious to the pandemic and to the possibility that the start of next school year might look a little different than the start of a typical year. Never mind that, they seem to say. Check out our new Kindergarten Launch Academy! That’s right, loyal subscribers: it’s that interesting effort we’ve talked about around here before in which kids who are legally able to enroll in Kindergarten but would be among the very youngest in their classes get the “opportunity” to not enroll in Kindergarten and instead attend a redshirt non-K/K-prep program. A Baby Gap year, if you will. (Cleveland.com, 5/1/20)
    
4. Speaking of oblivious, I’m not sure whether this interview is pre-pandemic or pre-historic. The superintendent of tiny Central Local Schools—in some part of Ohio near Brigadoon I think—is dropping wisdom and, especially, is opining on the changes he’s seen over his long career as a public servant. To summarize: tests bad; cellphones in class good. Really good, in fact. They’re just like little computers! (The Crescent News, 4/30/20)

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When Governor DeWine announced that Ohio schools would remain closed for the rest of the 2019–20 school year, many students and parents immediately began to wonder what school will look like in the fall. Given the unpredictably of COVID-19, it’s impossible to know. But one thing’s for sure: When schools do reopen, teachers and students are going to have a lot of work ahead of them. Here are four areas where lawmakers, school administrators, and teachers will need to adjust in order to address the fallout of coronavirus closures.

Data on student growth and achievement

It’s no secret that the school closures brought about by the pandemic are likely to have a serious impact on student learning. Three recent analyses have predicted poor outcomes for reading and math achievement and growth, with particularly devastating impacts for low-income students and students with disabilities.

Just how large Ohio’s learning losses will be is not yet known. In late March, Governor DeWine signed legislation waiving state testing requirements for the 2019–20 school year. This was the right call, but it also means we have no idea how much kids learned this past year. When schools reopen, one of the first orders of business should be determining where students are academically. That could mean administering state tests when students return in August or September. But given that state tests have historically been used to gauge achievement and growth on a broad scale, and are not typically used to identify the immediate needs of individual students, it might be better to encourage districts to use interim and diagnostic assessments. Those exams often have a faster turnaround time, so teachers won’t have to wait for state testing results to begin addressing their students’ academic needs.

Testing is only one piece of the puzzle, though. As a recent piece by Laura Slover in The 74 points out, data aren’t useful without “analysis and subsequent adjustments.” Once schools have identified learning gaps and losses, the next step will be to use those data to plan for and adjust to student needs. “Data-driven instruction” can no longer be just a buzzword. Next year, schools need to make it a guiding principle.

School funding

Another obvious impact of the pandemic is the financial toll. As Fordham fellow Dale Chu recently wrote, schools across the nation are facing a “triple threat” of financial fallout. First, students who have fallen behind academically thanks to the closures will need extra help, which can cost extra money. Second, declining state revenues will result in historic budget cuts. And third, districts are likely to face rising costs in other areas, such as pensions.

Ohio is no exception. School finance in the Buckeye State is about to look very different than it did at the beginning of the year. The Cupp-Patterson plan to revise the state funding formula is probably off the table for at least the next few years. Funding that could be considered supplemental—such as student wellness funds, performance incentives, and reimbursement programs—could disappear under future budget proposals. Ohio elementary and secondary schools are set to receive hundreds of millions in federal funding, and future relief bills will hopefully provide more. But even with this infusion of cash, schools of all types are in for a rough few years.

Over the next few months, state lawmakers and district leaders would be wise to consider the recommendations of my colleague Aaron Churchill. They include targeting funds to help the state’s most disadvantaged students, restarting the school funding formula, and providing additional flexibility around how schools can spend funds.

Instructional time

School leaders and advocates will also need to rethink how long and how often kids attend school. Prior to pandemic-related closures, research indicated that increased instructional time could lessen or eliminate achievement gaps. Many low-performing schools—district and charter—opted for extended days and extended years as a means of providing extra instruction and remediation for students who were academically behind their peers.

Now, in the wake of widespread coronavirus closures, extended time may no longer be an intervention that’s reserved only for chronically underperforming schools. All schools will need to consider extending school days and years to make up for the learning losses brought about by COVID-19, even if those extensions only last for a year or two. Summer school may or may not be off the table for 2020—it all depends on a virus that’s shown itself to be very unpredictable—but districts should consider planning intensive summer school programs for 2021. Beefed-up afterschool or weekend programs are worthy of consideration. It may also be time to finally rethink grade-level progressions, and allow students to advance based on what they know rather than how long they’ve been sitting at a desk.

Obviously, there are pros, cons, and complications to each of these options. Not one of them is a silver bullet. But school leaders and advocates should be ready to have serious conversations about instructional time over the next few months to mitigate coronavirus learning loss.

Innovation and improvement

It seems odd to discuss innovation and school improvement when educators and administrators are still trying to adjust to unforeseen circumstances. But all this change is exposing cracks in the education system, and those cracks are presenting opportunities for growth. As schools reopen and educators start evaluating the best ways to get students back on track, it’s important to take advantage of the lessons we’ve learned during these unprecedented times.

For starters, it’s critical for Ohio to start gathering information from students, parents, and teachers about how distance learning implementation worked on the ground. This feedback will be instrumental in planning for future remote learning efforts, should schools need to close again in the fall due to the virus. Identifying best practices and working to refine them could also help address issues that schools have when they’re operating normally, such as how to prevent learning loss during snow days or student suspensions. Online platforms that schools found particularly helpful during the shutdowns could be leveraged into blended learning models or to provide remediation and enrichment for individual students who need it. And the gaps this crisis has revealed in access to Wi-Fi and internet-enabled devices shouldn’t cease to matter once schools are back in session. In our increasingly digital world, all students need internet access—which means expansion efforts must continue.

***

There’s no doubt that the next few years are going to be hard. Funding shortfalls and learning losses are steep mountains to climb, and it’s going to take a lot of work on the part of teachers, parents, and communities to help kids thrive in the midst of adversity. But if lawmakers and leaders focus on addressing the four issues outlined above, climbing those mountains will be more than possible.

Over the last month, I’ve been talking with superintendents and special education leaders in many districts, and can distill some of what I’ve learned to reflect on Secretary DeVos’s recent decision not to press Congress to waive major provisions of IDEA.

That decision, let me stress, while not surprising to folks who follow policy and politics, came as a big surprise to many districts—a large majority of them, as best I can tell.

My impression during the COVID-19 shutdowns is that, in their approaches to special education, school districts can be sorted into two camps. The first, smaller camp said, “the law is the law and fortunately it has some inherent flexibility.” They acted quickly and used the latitude afforded by IDEA to rapidly amend IEPs to reflect remote learning realities for their students. They also shifted to remote IEP meetings and are documenting everything they do to have proof in case of future parent pushback. I have seen both suburban and urban schools do this. They will be in good shape in the fall from a compliance perspective, and their students with special needs will have been served as well as could be hoped. That’s not necessarily well served, mind you, but the same goes for all kids. The pandemic has reduced learning for all.

The second camp said to themselves that “a waiver is surely coming, so we don't need to do anything.” They turned out to be wrong. Or they said that “it’s humanly impossible to follow the law, so we’ll deal with the fallout in September.” The first camp, we can now see, has proven the second camp wrong.

Each camp has been serving kids similarly during remote times and providing them with some services, but not as much as anyone wants. The big difference will come in the fall, assuming something akin to normal schooling resumes then. Those that didn’t amend IEPs and continue with IEP meetings have already accumulated a great deal of compensatory services that are due to kids in the fall and also have a backlog of meetings that are now overdue. A key component of IDEA regulations is that services that are in an IEP but not provided must be provided at a later date. Similarly, annual IEP meetings with parents and teachers are required, and if delayed, they must be quickly scheduled.

In both types of districts, students with disabilities need extra help in the fall (as will their nondisabled peers), but what’s different between the two camps is, in one case, the extra services are mandated and in the other they are not. This doesn’t mean that the students with the legally required make-up services are better off, because they are guaranteed the services designed for a different time, the pre-pandemic-schools-are-closed era. They may be better served by an entirely different set of services focusing on months of lost instruction.

This is an example of intended and unintended consequences coming into play. Parents and advocates might say “great, schools should make up the missed services, so the law is working as intended.” Others will observe that doubling up on services in the fall will pull kids from core instruction a lot, overwhelm special ed staff, who are already leaving the field in droves, and will press those who should be providing students with mental health counseling into lots of meetings, meaning that much less counseling will be available.

Ironically, the law already allowed schools to avoid this overwhelmed fall, but most didn’t act accordingly. IEPs are a funny thing. They are legally binding commitments to provide set services, by specific folks, on a fixed schedule for identified amounts of time. In short, they are the law and very specific. That said, if parents agree to change the IEP, they can at any time. Guidance from the U.S. Department of Education made it easier to get these amendments in place during school closures. 

In either case, kids with disabilities come up short, as compliance takes the front seat because of legal worries, at the expense of a more impactful focus on teaching and learning, clear eyed strategies for making up for lost instruction, missed learning, and summer slide.

One other comment: As schools first closed down, they initially worried about feeding kids, then about not breaking special ed laws, and finally about remote learning. They didn’t worry as much about teaching kids with disabilities as about the potential litigation. That’s an unintended consequence of IDEA in general, but the crisis has trained a bright light on it.

The Department of Education’s initial guidance made a good faith attempt to put the focus on teaching and learning, urging districts to provide as much instruction as practical. This helped some districts accelerate their remote learning efforts, but it couldn’t shake off the fear of future litigation and noncompliance.

Like most everything in special education, all parties want to help kids, but differences of opinion over what helps abound. It will be interesting to see this fall if compensatory services help as intended or create undesirable consequences for kids, teachers, and families.

Education leaders nationwide are working twenty-four/seven to set up distance-learning opportunities for their students for the rest of the school year. That includes navigating multiple logistical and regulatory hurdles, training millions of educators overnight in how to use online tools, and figuring out how to get digital devices and packets of printed material into children’s hands, among dozens of other pressing tasks.

So it’s understandable if educators are a bit preoccupied at the moment. But it’s not too early to plan for next year, because major decisions loom that could impact students’ trajectories for the rest of their academic careers. Most critical—and sensitive—is whether kids should be “socially promoted” to the next grade come fall. The answer for millions of elementary pupils who were already a year or two behind when the crisis struck should be no.

That is especially true since the 2020–21 school year is likely to be rocky as well. Even if some states and communities are prepared to return to a semblance of normalcy in September, localized outbreaks are likely to shutter schools again for weeks or months at a time.

All of this time away from school is going to be particularly devastating for poor and working-class youngsters, many of whom are already below grade level. Their parents are often working the sorts of jobs that don’t have the option of being done virtually, and their homes are more likely to lack high-speed Internet and ample devices.

Click here to read the rest in the Washington Post, where it was originally published.

A crisis—less organic but no less virulent than the coronavirus pandemic—has been raging through the United States for years. Between 1999 and 2016, the rate of drug-related mortality grew 225 percent, due mostly to opioid overdose deaths. And while the most direct negative effects of the opioid crisis, like those of the current pandemic, bypass school-aged children, indirect effects have been widespread and innumerable. Babies exposed to opioids in utero are often born with significant health problems and lingering cognitive impairments; children can lose one or more parents to addiction, jail, or death; families can be deprived of financials resources when all their money goes to drugs; and communities can face overwhelming drains on scarce public resources when fighting the drug scourge.

A new report takes a look at the connection between elementary education outcomes and the opioid crisis.

Authors Rajeev Darolia of the University of Kentucky and John Tyler of Brown University draw upon previous work that models how neighborhood contexts can impact the education outcomes of children. Here their context is the opioid crisis in the community, and the education impact is measured via the interaction between the child’s level of exposure to the pandemic and the child’s vulnerability to any given level of exposure. Darolia and Tyler are quick to note that exposure occurs on a continuum from “the personal and traumatic to the less direct but potentially pervasive,” and that there are mitigating factors at varying levels in each individual child’s life—such as family support or strong schools—working to blunt the negatives. This is an important caveat to have in place when evaluating such research, as we have been warned recently about misuse of a common measure of childhood trauma. Additionally, the researchers consider only one educational outcome: a composite result of state test scores in third-grade math and English language arts. These are individual test score results aggregated at the county level over the study time period, sourced from the Stanford Educational Data Archive.

They first present a scatter plot of the unconditional relationship between test scores and drug-related overdose mortality rates by county. The dashed line is downward sloping and linear, indicating a negative relationship between the two, although there are many outliers in all four quadrants. Next up is a sort of “heat map” of counties across the U.S. where test scores are low and drug-related mortality is high. Mortality figures, broken down by deciles, indicate that counties in the highest (tenth) decile of mortality have third-grade test scores that are about one-tenth of a standard deviation lower than test scores in the lowest mortality rates. While this is a small effect, it is big enough to register when looking at entire counties as individual data points. Darolia and Tyler also point to a notable jump in drug-related mortality from the ninth to the highest decile, which they surmise could indicate a stronger correlation between the most visible outcome of the opioid crisis—death rates—and the lowest test scores observed. They also observe a stronger correlation in opioid exposure and test scores in rural areas than in nonrural. To wit: Rural counties in the highest mortality decile show third-grade test scores almost two-tenths of a standard deviation lower than rural counties in the lowest mortality decile. This is about twice as large as the analogous comparison among nonrural counties. The researchers suggest that this indicates a mitigating factor of available local resources such as community behavioral health services, high-performing schools, or plentiful jobs.

In the end, Darolia and Tyler can only present conditional correlations between the effects of the opioid crisis and elementary education that account for some, but potentially not all, confounding factors. They wisely point out that the nature and level of mitigating supports is an important unknown. There are numerous counties with high levels of drug-related mortality over the period where test scores remain high and vice versa. Are there great community or individual supports buoying children through the worst of the crisis, supports which can be replicated elsewhere? Or perhaps there are areas where “drug-related mortality” is driven by meth or cocaine, still deadly but less all-encompassing in their effects. These outliers are perhaps more important than the obvious opioid hot spots about which we have already learned much.

Education researchers will have much to unpack after life returns to some semblance of normal following the coronavirus pandemic. But this is neither the first nor the last large-scale disruptor of our communities and the school-age children living in them. We must learn as much as possible from each disruption so as to minimize them in the future and to make sure that children’s educational trajectories are obstructed as little as possible despite the vicissitudes—man-made or otherwise—of the world.

SOURCE: Rajeev Darolia and John Tyler, “The opioid crisis and community-level spillovers onto children’s education,” Brookings Institution (April 2020).

1. We’ll start today with what should probably be news from the “no duh” department: the so-called “online gaming” E-Sports club at Middletown High School has continued uninterrupted during school building closure. Honestly, I’ll bet their playing time is way up. If only we could get their attention to ask them. (Journal-News, 4/28/20)
    
2. Speaking of entrepreneurialism (were we?), here’s a story about two undergrads at the University of Akron, both teaching majors, who have created a Homework Hotline. It’s a free service for K-12 students in the area to receive assistance in math, science, social studies, and English in the form of a video or telephone call. That help, they say, is important due to the difficulties of distance learning. (Akron Beacon Journal, 4/28/20) But honestly, with all of the bar lowering, pass/incomplete frameworks, and attempted-participation-only grading that most schools are engaging in across the state, I’m not sure who really needs all that high-wattage help. Except maybe the E-Sports nerds…and those guys are already plenty busy! (Toledo Blade, 4/27/20)
    
3. And what about graduation for the Coronavirus Class Class of 2020? Kind of a mess also. We told you on Monday that the Ohio Department of Education went as far as they could to heavily discourage in-person graduation ceremonies, especially ones that are postponed until far into the summer. Well, the good folks at Perrysburg City Schools did not seem to take that guidance onboard, releasing elaborate plans for the ultimate in socially-distanced graduation ceremonies. They did at least stick to the original May date, so I guess they sorta listened. (Fox 8, Toledo, 4/28/20) In response to a question about this during the daily #YakkinWithActon press event on Tuesday, Governor DeWine played the grandpa card and said he was cool with Perrysburg’s plan…and any other district who goes the (social) distance with their ceremony. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 4/28/20)
    
4. Next school year is also kind of a mess, especially if you ask the head of Cincinnati’s teachers union. In this op-ed, she lays out an impossible-sounding set of roadblocks to return kids to the classroom next year. Seriously? It’s like you guys want families to embrace online school. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 4/28/20)
    
5. And finally today, in non-rona news… Ohio’s March primary election ended yesterday. I won’t waste your time after such a long slog talking about which levies won or lost (except to send a very heartfelt neener-neener out to an unnamed Ohio school district whose attempted fear mongering and doom-saying was apparently so feeble and transparent that other folks besides me, especially local voters, saw right through it and refused to buy in), but I will note with alarm that Columbus City Schools is already looking toward the next election. Sheesh you guys; haven’t we suffered enough?! Two things to note here. There is a citizens committee gabbing about what millage to set for a levy to raise money for capital repair projects. The district is looking for big money, even though the biggest thus far suggested would only scratch the surface of their to-do list. If only the district hadn’t wasted capital dollars a couple years back buying the old ECOT headquarters for no reason other than pettiness. The second thing is that this citizens committee business is said to be a positive thing because it helped set the rate for—and then work for the passage of—the last district operating levy. However, it is also noted that the district’s facilities master plan is “out of date” and should be updated. If you will recall, a similar citizens committee (perhaps even including several of the same people on the current millage committee?) was indeed convened not long ago to refresh that facilities master plan. Their recommendations, not favored by someone, were ignored and the matter dropped. So, it’s probably less a function of the committee itself, but a function of the committee coming up with the “right answer” that really matters. And it’s definitely graded pass/fail. Neener-neener indeed. (Columbus Dispatch, 4/27/20)

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Editor’s note: This blog post was first published by Partnership Schools.

As the adage goes, “defense travels.” The idea is that, no matter how high-powered, a team’s offense is more likely to falter in a road game than a well-practiced defense. And so coaches who focus on building strong defense can more reliably prepare players for the rigors of a road game.

The same could be said for English language arts lessons in this period of remote learning: When forced to take our show on the road, it is reading that travels because it prepares our students to be independent learners. The supports present in the classroom, even things as simple as being able to watch a student’s reaction to reading a text, that allow teachers to play offense during instruction largely have been taken away. While teachers and students have adapted elements of physical classrooms to synchronous online ELA lessons, our students are still more on their own than they were before the pandemic.

The reality of this situation means that our ELA “road game” rests on how effectively we’ve helped students learn content and develop habits they need to make meaning from complex texts independently. And as we consider the most important instructional lessons of the COVID era, one is that, when we have the advantage of in-school instruction, we should focus our reading lessons on three key moves that help build strong reading comprehension. They are:

• Immerse students in a rigorous, coherent, knowledge-building curriculum.
• Help students understand and focus on the affordances of a text.
• Help students unlock the power of background knowledge as they read.

First and most importantly, we believe that a student’s ability to understand complex text depends largely on whether s/he has built a store of knowledge that provides the context and content background s/he’ll need to make sense of the text.

At Partnership Schools, our upper elementary and middle school ELA road game was made stronger by the fact that our students are immersed in knowledge-building curricula beginning in pre-K. They learn about history, science, literature, and the arts. And so, as they work to read independently during the remote lessons that coronavirus now demands, they have a wealth of background knowledge that provides the context they need to understand grade-appropriate texts.

However, learning facts and figures is just the tip of the iceberg. The heart of our instructional focus in fourth through eighth grade is helping our students make the most of the knowledge they have built by using it to make sense of new texts that have new ideas.

Kat Prevo, a fourth grade teacher from Our Lady Queen of Angels in Harlem, is testament to this approach. In her first year of teaching she has set up her students to be independent readers.

The key to Kat’s reading lessons is that the text is the anchor for building knowledge. She does not start a lesson from a unit on the American Revolution about the burgeoning discontent in Massachusetts in the 1760s by telling her students why the colonists were frustrated with Parliament. They have to figure out the author’s view on the subject by reading the text.

But just assigning fourth graders a chapter to read is not teaching. Kat helps students become independent readers by supporting them in two ways as they read to learn content:

One, help students understand and focus on the affordances of a text. In Timothy Shanahan’s words, an affordance of a text is “any resource or support the text offers to readers that can help to facilitate communication or understanding.” Independent readers need to be able to identify and use the affordances of a text to make meaning from it. In her classroom, Kat often gives students a chance to catch affordances independently. If they miss an important one, she asks them about it. If they are still confused, she is ready to provide an explanation of its meaning so that they might be more likely to catch a similar affordance next time.

While Kat is always there to provide support in the classroom, her students are socialized to look for help in the text first. When students transitioned to distance learning, they were prepared to use the affordances the author provides them to help figure out the meaning of a text.

Two, help students unlock the power of background knowledge as they read. Kat teaches students to use their background knowledge to help make sense of a text. In the classroom, this takes the form of retrieval practice before the day’s reading or a scaffolding question about relevant information they have studied when a text trips them up.

Kat adapted these instructional moves to distance learning when her students read My Brother Sam is Dead. She used questions to support comprehension by directing her students’ attention to vocabulary and ideas that they would recognize from their recent study of the American Revolution. For example, in the following two questions from Kat’s teaching materials, she asks students to use what they know about Patriots and Loyalists to help them understand the effects that politics of New England towns in the 1770s have on the characters:

Kat’s instruction throughout the year made her students better readers, which prepared them to be more independent learners. When they read My Brother Sam is Dead at home, they learned about the perils of choosing sides during the overthrow of a government, which they will be able to draw on when they study the French and Haitian Revolutions in sixth grade. When they are reading independently, they are considering ideas that are transferable and transformative, which seems like a worthwhile goal no matter where students are learning.

During the first six months of this school year, we may not have realized we were preparing for a “road game.” But we’re realizing now more than ever that students’ ability to grapple with rigorous work independently—so essential right now—is built by teacher providing frequent “workouts” of finding affordances, tapping into background knowledge, and doing so with coherent, knowledge-building curricula—whether that practice happens in class or at a distance.

As part of the gargantuan aid package recently passed by Congress, Ohio will soon receive $105 million through the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund. The purpose of this pot of money is “to address student needs arising from the COVID-19 related disruption of the current academic year.”

The governor’s fund is rather unique, as federal money usually flows through state education agencies and is then allocated to schools via statutory formulas (that is how the larger relief fund for K–12 education is expected to work). Instead, the governor’s office will have broad discretion over how these dollars are spent, meaning the DeWine administration will need to decide how to parcel out a sizeable chunk of change.

They must first be mindful of a few federal rules for this program. First, the dollars must be allocated to K–12 public schools[1], colleges and universities, or “other educational entities” such as preschools, afterschool providers, or technical training centers. Second, governors must award grants swiftly—within one year of receiving funds from the U.S. Department of Education (the disbursement should occur within the next two months). Third, federal guidance suggests, though doesn’t appear to require, that funding be targeted to areas that have been “most significantly impacted by coronavirus.”

How then should the governor spend these funds? While there are a number of worthy causes, two critical needs are IT infrastructure and career supports for transitioning high school seniors. Given the broader need for technology, however, it would likely warrant a larger portion of the fund.

Ensure more students have computers and Wi-Fi access

A number of news stories indicate that schools—especially in big cities and rural areas—have struggled to transition to remote learning due to uneven Internet access and computer shortages. This has not only hampered learning this spring but it also jeopardizes summer school and even instruction this coming fall, should schools remain physically closed or need to adopt some type of “blended” learning model. One sensible use of these funds, encouraged by Secretary DeVos, is to support efforts that enable students to engage in digital learning.

To best leverage these somewhat limited funds, the governor should focus on two goals: 1) distributing dollars to the places with the greatest need, and 2) getting funds to schools as fast as possible. Likely the most efficient way to accomplish this is to award formula grants based on poverty rates (low-income students are less likely to own computers) and perhaps data on broadband access. While it may not be a perfect system, this would steer more aid to needier schools. And a formula grant would likely be a fairer method than a first-come, first-served grant—less needy districts may end up at the front of the line—and it would also move dollars much faster than an application-based program, which could take months to administer. If schools had to apply for funds, the most urgent need for remote learning—this summer and fall—may have come and gone by the time schools actually receive aid.

Governor DeWine could go a step further to truly maximize the impact of an IT-based grant. As my Gadfly colleague Chad Aldis observes, there is a troubling lack of hard data about at-home education during the pandemic. We don’t have basic information about how many students log on to access assignments or participate in any type of online learning. Nor do we have a clear idea of how many Ohio students have no home computer or Wi-Fi access. As a condition of receiving these funds, the governor could require districts and schools to report data that would cast much needed light on students’ remote learning experiences and better guide any further investment in IT.

It’s true that the modest size of the governor’s fund is unlikely to meet the technological needs of all Ohio students. But these dollars—supplemented by the larger federal support arriving soon in addition to existing school dollars—could help most students get online, a basic first step in successful distance learning. In Cleveland, for example, a $1 million grant could get Chromebooks into the hands of about 5,000 students. A $75,000 award for a small, rural district could help roughly 625 students have Internet access for three months. Should a district already have the necessary devices and online supports, it could spend these dollars on other priorities or it could take a pass on the funds (perhaps if reporting requirements were included).

Support career transitions for high school seniors

In the coming months, about 100,000 Ohio seniors will graduate high school. Roughly two in three will be heading to college (whether it’s on-campus is another story), meaning that another third will be pursuing employment. Through no fault of their own, thousands of newly minted high school graduates will face scarce job opportunities due to the economic damage wrought by the pandemic.

To address this challenge, the governor’s fund could support short-term, continuing-education programs that specifically target non-college-going students. It might take some moxie to design a program on the fly, but one possibility is to model it after TechCred, a relatively new state initiative that aims to “upskill” Ohio workers. That program reimburses businesses when their employees attain technology-focused certifications and credentials that can be earned within one year. But rather than reimbursing employers for training costs—they’re likely ineligible for governor’s funds—community colleges or technical centers could be the target. Whenever non-college-going graduates in the class of 2020 earn a credential approved under TechCred, the educational institution would receive funding. At $2,000 per credential—the reimbursement rate for TechCred—setting aside $10 million of the governor’s fund would support about 5,000 young adults.

During an economic downturn, supporting the continuing education of high school graduates would give them a boost that could help secure better entry-level jobs when hiring starts to pick up again. It might also do justice to some of this year’s seniors who had career-technical and workforce training opportunities scuttled due to school and business closures. The narrow scope of such a program—limited to the class of 2020—and the expectation that credentialing programs last no more than a year would mesh well with the temporary nature of the governor’s fund and the federal requirement that funds be awarded within the next twelve months. Lastly, if successful, Ohio could consider extending the program to future graduating classes (though state funds will be limited in the near future).

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As with any funding stream, the governor’s fund won’t be a cure-all that fixes every educational problem, much less all the new challenges that schools face in light of the health crisis. But if used wisely, these dollars can address some of the most glaring issues that schools and students face. Spending these funds to help bridge the digital divide and to smooth career transitions for this year’s seniors would be smart uses of federal aid.

Editor’s Note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute occasionally publishes guest commentaries on its blogs. The views expressed by guest authors do not necessarily reflect those of Fordham.

Author’s Note: The School Performance Institute’s Learning to Improve blog series typically discusses issues related to building the capacity to do improvement science in schools while working on an important problem of practice. However, in the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing how the United Schools Network, a nonprofit charter management organization based in Columbus, Ohio, is responding to and planning educational services for our students during the COVID-19 pandemic and school closures.

The transition to remote learning due to the coronavirus pandemic has significantly shifted how United Schools Network (USN) plans and delivers educational experiences to its students. We've outlined our remote learning system—and it is helpful to think of it as a system—in our Education Plan. As soon as that document was created, and the new system was outlined, we immediately started thinking about how to improve it.

A first step in understanding this new remote learning system is to visualize the processes that happen in a single classroom. This visualization process, combined with asking key questions about the process steps, can help reveal areas for improvement, as well as areas where the system could potentially break down. I’ve illustrated the process steps for an eighth grade math classroom, along with key questions, in the flow chart below.

Remote Learning Flowchart: 8th Grade Math

Mapping a system in this way serves a number of purposes. First, it is helpful for school teams to understand how each teacher operationalizes the Education Plan. In Steps three through six, it is clear how the eighth grade math teacher is thinking about lesson design in the remote learning environment. Second, the complexity of the system becomes much clearer when the process steps are listed. You can visualize where the system may break down. Third, the flow chart highlights process steps in the system that may be vulnerable to access and equity issues for different student groups. For example, a breakdown could easily happen right at the start of the process if the information from Step 1 (device access) and Step 2 (internet access) aren’t stored in the same location. Fourth, the flow chart allows teams to start thinking about the key questions from each process step and in turn how to improve the system.

Early data being collected at each USN school indicate that there is significant variation in terms of student engagement with remote learning. However, before we can work on improving student engagement levels, we have to fully understand each teacher’s process for designing and delivering instruction, as well as have clearly articulated operational definitions for key remote learning concepts. The four concepts we've keyed in on include those for lesson, feedback, grading, and engagement in a remote learning environment.

As soon as we have those four in place, we can then start measuring and working to improve engagement levels. This will be a critical next step given that Governor DeWine recently extended the school closure order in Ohio through the end of the school year. We’ll share those definitions in the next article in this series.

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John A. Dues is the Managing Director of School Performance Institute and the Chief Learning Officer for United Schools Network, a nonprofit charter-management organization that supports four public charter schools in Columbus. Send feedback to [email protected].