Just when it seems we’ve reached the limit of asinine pandemic proposals in K–12 education, we are quickly reminded that there is no limit. The San Francisco board of education has come up with a real doozy that flies directly in the face of “do no harm” despite what its most ardent supporters may claim.

Last evening the SF Board of Education directed staff to present a plan to give all our students A’s. No incompletes. Just A’s.

This decision was made in full support of @UESF teachers and other education leaders.

I’m so grateful to be a part of this district. https://t.co/jdBQYntN8F

— Alison Collins 高勵思 (@AliMCollins) April 15, 2020

The proposal to give all students in San Francisco’s schools A’s is largely supported by the seven-member board of education, but no decision will be made until later this month.

San Francisco already lies to the world, hiding behind bans on plastic bags and straws so the world doesn’t see what their progressivism really looks like for marginalized students. Abdication of educational responsibility is nothing new in the Golden Gate City, a place that prides itself on “equity” driven values when it should be cowering in shame over its generational failure to educate black and brown children.

Only 12 percent of black students in San Francisco are proficient in math, and only 20 percent are proficient in reading. Those numbers both represent a 58-percentage-point gap between black and white students in the city’s schools. And now education board members want to make everything better by channeling the 2004 version of Oprah Winfrey, but instead of “you get a car,” it’s “you get an A.” They don’t want to even try to follow through on the promise of an education. It is an abdication of responsibility, negligence under the guise of kindness and love.

A couple of educators weighed in:

Giving every single child an A is the same as not giving them any grade at all. False inflations of their GPA is all that it is.

I don’t see how this is love.

— Jasmine #StayHomeMN Lane (@MsJasmineMN) April 16, 2020

If my children were going to be simply handed As, I would instruct them not to do the assignments. I can make a symbolic move too. I'd take over and provide something meaningful for them to work on, and I'd hold them accountable for it.

— Matthew Ryan (@MatRyanELATeach) April 16, 2020

Education board member Allison Collins doesn’t agree. “What are grades worth anyway?” she wondered during a recent Zoom meeting. “They don’t make kids work harder, they don’t really give feedback,” she continued.

My personal experience as a student, teacher, and parent of three do not align with Collins’s assertions. Grades made me work harder. They make my own children work harder. And they absolutely do give feedback. When I received a D on a quiz on phases of the moon, it was clear feedback that I still did not understand the phases of the moon. An “A” would have told me and my parents that I did. That would have been a lie. 

Teachers union representative Susan Solomon says that city educators also endorse the idea: “We would be in support of giving students A’s. We are very determined that this should be about doing no harm to our students.”

I’m sorry, but this proposal absolutely will do harm to students. It may take away the anxiety and fear of losing ground or failing a class due to the epic disruption of school closures, but it also renders everyone’s grades meaningless and void of any integrity. It is one thing to use discretion and take circumstances into account. It is quite another to hand out A’s like lollipops from a Fourth of July parade float.

Under this proposal—which seems like a symbolic gesture that allows adults to feel warm and fuzzy about themselves—learning is not a priority and hard work is not rewarded. It lowers the expectations to the point of insult and disrespect. And it lies to students.

If the San Francisco board of education votes later this month to move forward with this proposal, it will be yet another example of the city’s “progressive values” setting marginalized students even further back than they already are.

They don’t need fake A’s. They need knowledge.

Editor’s note: This article was first published by Project Forever Free.

1. Let’s start with a couple of non-pandemic-related stories. First up: Another end run around the requirement to sell surplus district buildings to charter schools. (Elyria Chronicle, 4/15/20) Second: While this story from Marlington Local Schools, noting the ridiculous ins and outs of the latest board meeting there, does have some reference to the ‘rona—especially the expensive Tale of the Two Treasurers—I am pretty sure that this level of dysfunction and whining predates SARS-CoV-2. Heck, it probably predates the Cretaceous. (Canton Repository, 4/17/20)
   
   

2. We go back to the Elyria area for another piece featuring the parent perspective on distance learning. Parents who are teachers, that is. One tells us that this experience has “renewed her faith in the education system.” (Elyria Chronicle, 4/16/20)
    
3. Here’s a look at how Horizon Science Academy in Cleveland is handling online education, with a focus on English and algebra. Kudos for the brief discussion of the virtual work of the school’s intervention specialist as well. (Ideastream, Cleveland, 4/17/20)
    
4. Here is another look at coronavirus-mitigation-required online career tech education, this time in the Canton area. “There is plenty of curriculum to provide students with the knowledge they need,” said one tech center director, although another noted that the hands-on fields simply cannot do what they need to do remotely during the shutdown. The center director pointed out a silver lining in that the shutdown has allowed some students who have experience and have credentials already in hand to begin employment already. As in: School’s. Out. For. Ever! Unfortunately, we are also told that further testing for students who have not yet earned their credentials is on hold for the foreseeable future. (Canton Repository, 4/17/20)
    
5. Here’s another look at the grading protocol for distance learning in an Ohio school, pandemic-style. This comes to us from tiny Tecumseh Local Schools, between Dayton and Springfield, via Facebook: “The fourth quarter student grades will be evaluated on a Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory…basis. Each teacher will continue to monitor student performance and progress on distance learning activities to determine sufficient evidence of learning. A satisfactory will be entered for sufficient evidence of learning throughout the fourth quarter. Sufficient evidence includes any attempt a student in grade K-5 has given in participating in on-line learning.” Link (WDTN-TV, Dayton, 4/16/20)
    
6. “…[T]his is an opportunity for us to envision education very differently, and Columbus City Schools wants to be one of the districts that wants to lead the way in that. I think we’re going to see that our students are kind of leading this for many of our families. Our organization is going to have to ... we’re being forced to embrace that even more.” What could Superintendent Dixon be talking about? As a taxpayer in her district—who has no. further. stake. in the district himself—color me intrigued. (Columbus Dispatch, 4/16/20)

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Over the past few weeks, schools have closed, living rooms have transformed into classrooms, and kitchen tables have become desks. Many parents who typically receive an update on their child’s daily school progress by asking the question, “How was school today?” have been flung into the role of teacher, as districts have moved to various versions of remote learning. In addition to taking care of the kids and routine work, this has them checking assignments, monitoring take-home tests, and coaching their students. More and more, they are leaning on technology for support.

This sudden shift is having a profound impact on education and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Educators and parents are asking themselves the same question: How do we keep children safe, healthy, and connected during this crisis?

Without the ability to meet in person, many schools have arranged for teachers to hold classes via video conferencing and for students to complete assignments and projects online. Although a great deal of students still lack devices and internet to accommodate virtual learning, schools that leverage technology to drive connection and meaningful learning are transcending the walls of traditional classroom settings. Technology is allowing students to maintain, and even strengthen, their relationships with their teachers and fellow students, demonstrating that not all screen time is created equally.

Take Westchester Torah Academy in White Plains, New York, for example. From their own homes, students are holding a virtual courtroom experience as part of their seventh grade English language arts project about “The Outsiders.” A lawyer from their community will serve remotely as the judge in their trial. This activity, planned prior to closures, was able to continue because the school, teachers, and students were prepared to pivot and deliver education despite challenging circumstances.

At Charette High School in Providence, Rhode Island, students are continuing to join one-on-one mentoring sessions with their teachers via videoconference. “We are engaging in meaningful dialogue with no distractions. Our students really appreciate the opportunity to continue to complete checkpoints and projects. The level of engagement is striking,” said Kathy Vespia, Executive Director at Charette High School. Continued mentoring is providing students of all backgrounds with the one-on-one support they need to navigate school and life during closures.

Parents are also seeing firsthand that not all screen time is created equally, and that technology is best leveraged when teachers are continuing to drive learning, just as they would in the classroom. When technology is used as a tool to enhance human connection, particularly during times of stress, fear, and uncertainty, students are better able to continue learning and exercising the skills they’ll need in life after graduation.

“With the world rapidly changing around us, many parents are put into the position of now homeschooling their children, or at least partnering with the school and teacher to deliver content in the home environment” said Nicki Chase, the parent of a student at Classical Academy High School in San Diego. “Our students aren’t concerned about a disruption to teaching and learning. They still have access to the college preparatory curriculum, they know they can work their way through the resources to learn the material, and they know the teacher is available to answer any questions they might have. Mentoring conversations are now via the web rather than in-person, but they still happen.”

Simply put, for students to achieve significant outcomes—including lifelong skills and social and emotional learning—at home, they need more than a laptop and an internet connection. They need a school that has committed to preparing them for life’s challenges, teaching skills like self-direction, agency, and resilience. They need teachers who truly know them, and who foster a sense of belonging that helps them overcome obstacles. Most importantly, they need to have been bolstered by their education system with the confidence that they are capable of leading their own education, even outside of the walls of their classroom. 

At Summit Learning, where I am Executive Director of T.L.P. Education, we partner with hundreds of schools across the United States who have been preparing their students with the skills they need to persevere for the future, including challenging times such as these. In our program, students learn valuable skills like self-direction and resilience that help them thrive after graduation and throughout their lives. We have heard from many of our partner schools that, because they had already been utilizing technology with a purpose and empowering students with these skills, they were better prepared to quickly pivot to remote learning when school closures were announced. These schools are not having to make do with scattered resources pulled together from the internet. They are able to continue implementing key parts of their education vision because they have been participating in an outcomes-driven program.

“The transition has been made much easier for our students because we have been teaching them real-world skills to adapt to unexpected challenges,” said Tynetta Harris, a teacher at Henry Snyder High School in New Jersey. “We’ve focused so much throughout the school year on teaching our students how to set goals and actively incorporate feedback, and this is an opportunity for our students to demonstrate their ability to be scholars and for us as educators to expand our teaching skills.” 

While nothing can replace in-person instruction from teachers, schools across the country are finding ways to continue to connect and engage students in meaningful learning using technology. Remote learning looks different in different places, but the concept is the same: Technology is the thread that is keeping humans connected and students on track to reach their goals. Human relationships—between students, teachers, and families—are carrying education through this unprecedented time.

Editor’s note: This article was first published by Summit Learning.

EDITOR'S NOTE: On April 20, 2020, Governor DeWine ordered that schools should remain closed to in-person learning for the rest of the 2019-20 school year. Thus, the first option presented here has been rendered unfeasible.

As COVID-19 related closures stretch into the sixth week, students are now facing the threat of significant learning loss. A recent study by NWEA found that if students return to school in the fall having not experienced continuous instruction during the extended closures, they might make only 70 percent of their reading progress compared to a normal year. The numbers are worse in math, where students in some grades could return to school with less than 50 percent of their typical learning gains.

As of publication of this piece, Ohio schools are physically closed through May 1. No one is quite sure what will happen after that, but given that twenty-three states have ordered or recommended school building closures for the rest of the year, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Ohio follow suit. For school leaders and parents, the loss of learning time should be causing a lot of heartburn. What to do to get kids back on track?

One possibility is to ditch the traditional summer break and replace it with some type of instruction. Prominent education advocates and several districts in other states have started to consider such a possibility. Furthermore, the $489 million dollars headed to Ohio’s K–12 schools via the federal stimulus package explicitly allows funds to be used for summer instruction.

It goes without saying that if it’s unsafe to reopen schools, then state leaders should keep them closed. As a recent piece in The Atlantic points out, it’s important for folks to recognize that “snapping back to business as usual” rather than slowly and judiciously easing restrictions “could be catastrophic.” Governor DeWine recently noted that we must be “deliberate, careful and thoughtful” about getting things back to normal. Even if schools do reopen soon, a typical school day may look very different and might require social distancing measures. The health and safety of students should always be our primary concern.

But if there’s one thing that the past few weeks have made clear, it’s that we must be ready to adapt to any situation. It’s important for state leaders to be prepared for all possibilities, and that includes reopening schools and addressing learning loss. With that thought in mind, here are three summer school options that local leaders could consider, along with their pros and cons.

Option 1: Extend the 2019–20 school year into the summer months

If by some miracle Ohio sees a drastic and consistent drop in new COVID-19 cases over the next two weeks, and health officials give DeWine the all clear, it’s possible (but not probable) he could allow schools to reopen for the remainder of the year. If they do reopen, many of them will have a month or two of instructional time remaining before their scheduled summer breaks. Since they’ll be up and running already, they could choose to add another month to the end of the year. For example, instead of Columbus City Schools closing its doors on May 28, it could extend the school year for another month and offer instruction through June 26.

Such a decision would likely have to be made at the local level. The governor could use the bully pulpit to call for schools to stay open, but he likely can’t force them to do so. Obviously, the primary benefit of having schools stay open into the summer months would be extra instructional time. Teachers and staff would have an opportunity to remediate learning losses that occurred during the closures and prevent an unprecedented summer slide. They could offer enrichment for students who are on track or ahead. And the extra time would give schools an opportunity to gather data that could help them plan more efficiently and effectively for the fall.

But the complexities of this option are significant. For starters, it’s doubtful that schools will get the all clear to safely reopen so soon. There’s also a significant amount of funding issues. Keeping schools open and running for an extra month will take money. Schools haven’t technically been out of session for the past month. The governor closed their physical locations, but they were ordered to continue providing some type of instruction. That means that, although teachers have been working in different ways over the last few weeks, they have indeed still been working and getting paid. Any money districts “saved” in operational costs is unlikely to be much. In addition, teachers unions have been clear that one of their primary concerns surrounding summer school is amending this year’s collective bargaining agreements to accommodate the additional hours. Such negotiations can drag on for months, and may make a quick turnaround impossible.

There are also additional costs to consider. Earlier this year, schools in Columbus closed when high temperatures and a lack of air conditioning made conditions inside schools unbearable. Extending the school year into June might require some schools to spend a considerable amount of money to purchase or update air conditioning systems and run them consistently.

Overall, given the current state of the economy and the impending budget crunch, adding another month to the 2019–20 school year is highly unlikely.

Option 2: End the 2019–20 school year on May 1, and bring schools back a month early

Governor Mike DeWine could give Ohio schools the option to close—not just physically but operationally—on May 1 under the condition that they reopen a month early for the 2020–21 school year. For example, rather than opening on August 24, Cincinnati Public Schools could open its doors around July 27. The benefits of this are similar to what was discussed above: making up for lost instructional time, an opportunity to provide remediation, and extra time to gauge where students are and adjust curricula and instruction accordingly.  

Starting the next school year early, rather than dragging out the current year, could ease some of the concerns around collective bargaining and staffing. If districts end the 2019–20 school year early—an actual closure, with no distance learning—teachers and staff would still get a break. They would end up working the same amount of time overall, just on a different type of calendar. This would also give districts and unions far more time to negotiate any needed changes to employee contracts. Additionally, an early end to this challenging school year could allay concerns brought about the quick pivot to distance learning. For every charter school, STEM school, or district whose previous experience or extensive planning allowed for a smooth transition, there are many who struggled for weeks with ramping up meaningful learning opportunities. Not to mention the concerns of special needs families.

But many of the logistical problems remain. As was the case with extending the current year, the governor can’t order schools to do this. It would be a local decision, and it would take a lot of work to get districts and unions to reach agreements by August. Contracts for food services, transportation, and other necessities would need to be adjusted. Some schools will still need to solve the air conditioning problem. And many curricula and instructional materials are designed for a nine-month year, not a ten-month one. Schools would need to get creative and come up with an extra month of learning materials that will address the remediation needs of students.

The upshot? This is a far better option than extending the current school year, as it solves some of the financial barriers. But it will still take a lot of work to pull it off.

Option 3: Offer summer school to students who choose to enroll

The third and final option is to offer beefed-up summer school. Unlike current versions, which are typically reserved for a small percentage of students, this new version would be available to any student who wishes to enroll. Schools could hold a brief enrollment period in the waning days of May, and then get schools up and running for the summer months.

Unlike the previous two options, which are extensions of an actual school year, focusing on summer school programs would sidestep some logistical difficulties. For instance, most schools already have summer programs and procedures in place. That means collective bargaining, contracts for food service and transportation, and other logistical details have already been negotiated. Obviously additional negotiations and adjustments will need to take place, since this version of summer school will be much bigger and broader than previous years. But such adjustments will be occurring from already-in-place plans rather than from scratch.

Another benefit of offering summer school rather than extending the traditional year is that districts could be strategic about which buildings they open. Even if they provide a summer school option to all their students, it’s unlikely that all of them will enroll. Once district leaders know how many students to expect and where they live, they can select centralized locations to offer programming, much like they did with food services during coronavirus closures. School leaders could also leverage philanthropies and nonprofits the same way they do during traditional summer school timelines. Science centers, zoos, and museums that have been closed for weeks could get back in gear by teaming up with schools to offer programming. This type of community involvement is clearly aligned with the #InThisTogetherOhio mentality encouraged by state leaders over these last few weeks. And with many traditional summer camps and recreation center programs likely to be cancelled or scaled back, parents will be looking for productive ways for their kids to occupy themselves.

But there are some drawbacks, too. Offering summer school to students who choose to enroll, rather than mandating it for everyone, could result in thousands of kids falling through the cracks. Districts would need to be very intentional about making sure disadvantaged and at-risk students are aware of the opportunity and have every chance to enroll. Some districts may also struggle to find enough teachers and staff to work through the summer. Overall, though, this seems like the least disruptive option.

***

When it comes to addressing learning loss brought about by the coronavirus, summer school is a solid option. It takes advantage of time that students traditionally have off, can be partially funded through the federal stimulus package, and could give schools a head start on remediation efforts in the fall. But along with these benefits, each implementation option has some downsides. Ohio leaders should carefully consider the pros and cons of each opportunity before deciding on the path that’s best for Ohio’s students.  

These are unprecedented times. COVID-19 has greatly altered or paused much of what we do on a daily basis, including education. Governor DeWine has suspended in-person classes in K–12 schools statewide from March 17 until at least May 1. While most schools are attempting to offer some type of distance learning, it’s decidedly not business as usual.

In response to the pandemic, the legislature passed much-needed emergency legislation, HB 197, on March 25. The bill includes a variety of education provisions that essentially put school accountability on hold. This includes waiving state testing for 2020, suspending state report cards, permitting on-track seniors to graduate without completing all requirements, allowing local schools to determine whether third graders read sufficiently to advance to fourth grade, and making teacher evaluations optional.

In a normal year, these changes would be a big deal, especially as some violate federal education law. Nevertheless, pressing pause on accountability is absolutely the right thing to do. The governor and General Assembly deserve credit for taking this action.

Given that Fordham is a staunch advocate of school accountability, our support for this pause merits an explanation. There are three main reasons this was a good idea.

First, state tests are, at their core, designed to measure a student’s academic achievement. Did Suzie learn what fourth graders are supposed to learn? This year, schools stopped in-person instruction after about 75 percent of the year. It stands to reason that there are a number of concepts in both math and reading there just wasn’t time to cover. Suzie would inevitably—through no fault of her own—perform worse than she otherwise could have.

That’s only half the story, though. It’s easy to focus on the pandemic-forced changes in education, like the difference between in-person and online learning. But that’s shortsighted. With 22 million Americans and more than 850,000 Ohioans joining the ranks of the unemployed in just the last four weeks, the impact on family life will be significant. Such abrupt changes, combined with concerns about the virus itself, are extremely likely to increase fear and uncertainty at an unparalleled scale for a significant number of students. And we know from many years of data that students facing these types of challenges are likely to perform more poorly on state assessments. It will tell us little about a school or district’s academic achievement when an abrupt shock to the system—like this pandemic—occurs. This doesn’t diminish the importance and value of testing. It just isn’t important or particularly useful given our current context.

Second, accountability systems are supposed to be fair. This is a key principle for advocates on both sides of the accountability debate. We may disagree—and often do—as to whether a particular report card component is calculated properly or is important to measure, but we don’t disagree that fairness is imperative. Even if it were possible to administer state assessments this year—and there are some arguments as to why it might not be a bad idea—it simply wouldn’t be fair to pretend that it was a typical year.

The issue of fairness goes beyond the district and school ratings captured by state report cards. The legislature was smart to recognize that students and teachers are also impacted. Third grade students missed out on important opportunities to strengthen their reading skills and meet the state’s threshold for promotion to fourth grade. Seniors, in addition to missing prom and spring sports, also missed the chance to take or retake end of course exams and demonstrate they’ve met the state’s graduation requirements. Similarly, to the extent teacher evaluations are still using student learning as a factor, there’s no reasonable way to assign a rating. And that’s OK. These measures, while intended to incentivize and prioritize student achievement, should be placed on hold.

Finally, the governor and legislature rightfully limited the pause to just one school year. This is especially important given the ongoing discussions around how to improve the state report card. Lawmakers could have opportunistically attempted to pause accountability for an extended number of years or even pressed stop. They didn’t and deserve credit for this. That doesn’t mean lawmakers won’t be discussing report cards and accountability later this year. Fordham has been recommending ways to improve state report cards for more than two years now, and the debate is most certainly going to continue. But now, lawmakers will also need to have important conversations about how to restart the accountability system after a year without testing. 

This pandemic has been tough for everyone. Ohio, thanks to strong leadership and a little luck, has weathered the storm much better than many places. The storm clouds will pass, and we’ll eventually get back to some measure of normalcy. When we do, we’ll need to assess the damage, see where we are, and decide how to move forward. But for now, Ohio was right to pause accountability.

In these uncertain days, with many brick-and-mortar schools shuttered indefinitely, one of Idaho’s leaders in online education has moved in a deliberate and intelligent fashion to transition its brick-and-mortar-based students to online learning.

That’s because the leaders of Gem Prep, a growing network of three (soon to be four) physical charter schools and a statewide online charter school, collectively serving about 1,800 students, understand that there are key fundamental differences between learning online and learning in person within the four walls of a classroom.

Gem Prep, which operates on a college preparatory model, is sharing its online expertise with other charter schools across the nation. Laurie Wolfe, the network’s Chief Academic Officer, said in a recent interview with Bluum that she has connected to other charters schools through the New Schools Venture Fund and the Charter School Growth Fund, two national organizations that fund and support charter school growth and innovation.

Gem’s advice has ranged from the logistical—how to take attendance online, or help families connect to resources for discounted Internet—to the nuts and bolts of online learning—how to manage and deliver a lesson via the Zoom video platform.

“It’s a very different thing to sit in a Zoom meeting than to use it to actually teach students,” Laurie said. “Because we trained our online teachers over the years, we knew how to do that.”

In a recent post on the website Medium, Gem Prep CEO Jason Bransford and Wolfe shared some tips on how to prepare teachers and students alike for the transition to home-based online learning. It’s well worth a read.

There are a couple of main takeaways, though, that embody Gem Prep’s overall approach to learning, be it digital, blended, or physical-classroom-based. First, educators need specific training to teach effectively online. Second, parents who make the choice to enroll their students in online schools know they will play a major role in their children’s education. Under current circumstances, not all parents will be prepared to take on this role, especially if they’re working from home full-time as well.

The bottom line, Laurie said, is that teachers and parents alike need to scale back expectations and slow down. “You won’t get through the same amount of curriculum or be able to do as many activities. It’s a scaled back version of school,” she said.

It’s also important that schools, teachers, and parents are clear about top priorities. For Gem Prep, literacy remains the major focus. Beyond that, helping ensure that kids don’t backslide is key. “We want our students to maintain or gain on skills. But we have to balance that against the fact that parents are working from home, or maybe lost a job, or they’re sick. So, we have to have a lot of grace for everyone.”

Teachers whose experience has been exclusively in brick-and-mortar schools quickly come to appreciate how different it is to teach online, Laurie said. “You can’t walk around the classroom and check on student work. You have to check for understanding in different ways. These are big shifts from a face-to-face teaching environment. It’s a big challenge, learning all this new tech and leveraging it in a high-quality way to reach kids socioemotionally and academically.”

This kind of deliberate, well-thought-out approach is what has helped Gem Prep stand out since its first school launched—online—in 2004. It’s what led the charter network to venture into physical schools beginning in 2014 in Pocatello. Since then, schools have launched in Nampa in 2016, and in Meridian last year. A new school, Meridian North, will open next fall, to take some pressure off the 500-student waiting list for the first Meridian campus. Beyond that, Gem Prep plans to open two additional new schools within the next five years.

All Gem Prep schools will eventually be K–12. Currently, only the online school operates a high school, and the other schools are K–8. But schools will be launching ninth grade next year and adding a grade per year.

Despite its online roots, Gem Prep deemphasizes online learning for its youngest brick-and-mortar students. As kids move into middle school, Gem Prep takes advantage of rich online classes available through the Idaho Digital Learning Academy to offer electives that most small, rural schools don’t have the resources to run.

For example, a student interested in digital photography can’t take that in a physical Gem Prep school, but can take a high-quality, state-approved elective online digital photography course. The same goes for some “really advanced courses, like high-level math,” CEO Jason Bransford said.

Gem Prep wants its brick-and-mortar school populations to mirror the demographics of the communities where they are located. Across the physical schools, Jason said, about 50 percent of students qualify for subsidized school lunches. About 20 percent are students of color, and 10 percent qualify for special education services.

One major emphasis of Gem Prep schools is preparing students for college, especially the 77 percent of the network’s students who fall into one or more of the state’s designated high-risk categories: low-income, minority, special education, and parents who didn't attend college.

“There is a lot of research that shows those factors can be barriers to success in college,” Jason said. “So we identify the needs of those kids and work closely with them to help break down those success barriers.”

The results are striking. At Gem Prep’s online schools, 92.5 percent of students are on track to graduate. That’s well above the overall state average, and even further above other virtual schools. One reason for the success, Jason said, is that more than half of Gem Prep middle school students take high school-level courses online. This means that they can start to take dual-credit college courses early in their high school years.

Gem Prep wants 60 percent of its brick-and-mortar high school students to graduate with an associate degree, as well as a high school diploma. This, Jason said, will set them up financially for an affordable college education, if they choose to continue toward a bachelor’s.

Gem Prep parent Nicole Hagman has had her three children—a son in seventh grade, a daughter in fifth, and a son in second—in the Meridian school since the fall of 2018. The family moved to Idaho from Kansas City, and after a year in the local district schools, decided Gem Prep was a better fit.

Small middle school class sizes were one major draw, Nicole said. But even more important, “Gem Prep focuses on educating each child where they are. If any are behind, getting them up to grade level or beyond, and if they’re beyond grade level, just letting them go at their own pace, as fast and far as they can.”

Nicole also substitute teaches at Gem Prep on average four days each month. She said the rock-solid system and curriculum make it easy for her to come into a classroom and plug in seamlessly. Because students know how to direct their own learning, “I can add to it or answer questions students have. But mostly I can just let them go at their own pace.”

This is not the new normal.

“Remote learning” will not be the primary way most American children are educated for very long, certainly not any time soon. Neither have we transformed ourselves into a nation of homeschoolers or “unschoolers” any more than passengers thrown from a sinking ship into lifeboats can be said to have taken up rowing.

Kids will go back to brick-and-mortar schools—yes, even “government schools”—at the earliest possible moment. Most of them want to go. Their parents mostly want it even more strongly. The act of sending our kids every morning to a place called a school is a cultural habit formed over many generations. It persists because we value it, not for want of a better idea or a more efficient delivery mechanism for education. Except at the margins, such as the 4 percent or so of U.S. kids who were already being home-schooled, Covid-19 changes none of that. The old normal will be back, and in some places sooner than we think. So let’s think about what that will look like, and whether we will be ready.

Start with the obvious: To throw all or even most of our efforts into remote learning is “shoe bomber” planning, responding to the last attack instead of anticipating the next one. Twenty-one states have already closed schools for the remainder of the year. It is a fantasy to believe that we can stem the effects of months without real school by ginning up instructional capacity on the fly in unfamiliar forms in the midst of a public health crisis. By all means, distribute devices and attack the digital divide. Signal to apprehensive students and parents that education must go on, keep kids attached, and strive for normalcy. Schools that have found ways to continue high-value instruction deserve attention and praise. But let’s not gull ourselves into thinking this is some sort of durable solution. It’s an emergency response, nothing more.

The availability of online learning, whether organized by schools or independently by engaged and motivated parents, will mitigate some of the worst effects of months without real school. But as Paul von Hippel of the University of Texas at Austin noted, parents “are even more unequal than technology.” The child spending these weeks sequestered at home with two college-educated parents with flexible work schedules and the bandwidth to supervise and contribute to learning will get more help and enrichment than a single parent with three children and a high-school education. “We’ve known since the 1966 Coleman Report that families are much more unequal than schools,” von Hippel wrote in Education Next. “We’re about to see what happens when we turn up the volume on families and turn it down on schools.”

What will happen is foreseeable. A report last week from the Northwest Evaluation Association’s (NWEA) Collaborative for Student Growth Research Center estimates that students will return to school in Fall 2020 with “roughly 70 percent of the learning gains in reading relative to a typical school year.” In math, the Covid-19 slide will be even greater. School children are likely to return with “less than 50 percent of the learning gains and in some grades, nearly a full year behind what we would observe in normal conditions,” according to Beth Tarasawa and Megan Kuhfeld, the report’s authors.

Local conditions will dictate local responses, but a few common themes seem certain. The youngest children are the most likely to be seriously harmed by extended school closures. Kindergarten through second grade are the most critical years in a child’s formal education, and very young children are least likely to get any value from remote learning without an active and engaged parent or caregiver working directly and extensively with them. Their social development will also suffer. As one veteran early childhood educator put it, “First grade is going to feel a lot like kindergarten.”

The first priority for forward-thinking district superintendents planning for the resumption of school is staffing. “If I was in a district, I would be asking, ‘Who has their teaching credential in the district office and can teach for the first six weeks of next year?’” says Chris Minnich, CEO of NWEA. “Anyone who has the expertise should be in the classroom because making sure that kids, especially in the early grades, get targeted instruction in the beginning of the year is essential.”

At least at the elementary and middle school levels, where the effects of lost learning time will be acute, “we have to think differently about the first six to eight weeks of school,” Minnich adds. “I’d let the experts tell us how long that should go on for, but it needs to be a fairly focused period of time, primarily focused on the previous grade standards.”

Candice McQueen, the former commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Education who now leads the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET) expects one of three possibilities for next year, depending on the district. “We’re back in brick and mortar; we are fully virtual for some period of time; or we’re in some hybrid approach. Leaders need to take a blank sheet of paper now and say, ‘What would we do in each of these scenarios?’” she counsels. Echoing Minnich, she stresses human capital. “Let’s staff and hire differently for what we think we will need. And let’s give people the right job description, training, and support for what we need them to do.”

Some district superintendents are already thinking ahead. In the first days of the crisis, Clark County (Nevada) Superintendent Jesus Jara’s first priority, as with many of his counterparts, was to “get the students engaged. Obviously take care of their social, emotional [needs].” But with digital devices in the hands of fewer than two-thirds of the district’s 325,000 students, Jara’s attention turned almost immediately to preparing for school to resume. Digital learning is “enrichment only.” De-emphasizing what can be done to advance learning right now have brought howls of derision in some quarters, particularly when the perception exists that districts would prefer no learning to inequitable instruction. But the decision is more sensible and defensible when considering how little can be reasonably accomplished under emergency circumstances versus the prodigious foreseeable challenges that lie ahead.

“I said to the team, ‘Guys, we’ve got to get ready.’ We’ve got to keep everybody calm, but our focus is moving into what is school going to look like when we return,” Jara told me. The gaps are going to be “larger for our students of color, our free and reduced lunch, our English language learners, our special ed students,” and for the 7 percent of Native American children in the district, the nation’s fifth largest. “We have to accelerate and start planning the return.”

Plans to make up for lost time require urgency, but should avoid complexity and stay well within the talents and capacity of existing staff. Adding complexity to a teacher’s job and stealing time away from the urgent task of remediation should be set aside. One idea worth considering is stepped-up use of assessment-driven ability grouping, at least in the younger grades and for the concentrated period of time suggested by Minnich. This would allow for targeted instruction with minimal differentiation. The district’s strongest teachers should be in front of the students who have fallen the furthest behind. Top-down district control of curriculum and planning may also be necessary for a time, so that classroom teachers can focus exclusively on assessment and remediation. “Teacher leaders and master teachers will be key in design and implementation,” McQueen says.

While this is no time for “moonshots” and grandiose schemes, with massive unemployment looming and a terrible job market for new college grads, there may be an opportunity to press non-professionals into emergency service for several weeks or months of targeted, high-dosage tutoring in high-needs schools.

Keep it simple. Keep it focused, intense, achievable, and time-limited. The most attention should be on those who have fallen the furthest behind. If we aren’t planning for the resumption of schools, and for the foreseeable conditions we will face, we will be caught flat-footed a second time.

Amid the plague that surrounds us, essential attention is properly getting paid to the education challenges of out-of-school kids: What can their parents, their schools, and their districts do to compensate for missed classroom time and the learning loss that’s bound to occur between now and the resumption of something resembling normalcy.

Within that universal concern, there’s been special focus on the educational needs of children with disabilities and those who were already lagging before their schools closed. All necessary, all important, all good.

Yet the plague also highlights—albeit indirectly—another set of students that’s so far receiving no special attention that I can spot: gifted and talented youngsters and their need for acceleration, enrichment and advancement designed to make the most of their abilities.

What’s the connection? Look at the population of adults we’re counting on to get us out of this mess: scientists, doctors, bio-statisticians, microbiologists, demographers, inventors, industrial leaders and economists, not to mention government leaders with the intellect and training (and discipline) to see beyond their immediate political interests.

Where are tomorrow’s Dr. Faucis to come from? The infectious disease expert that The New Yorker dubbed “America’s Doctor” grew up in southwest Brooklyn, then attended a top-flight, selective-admission (but free) Jesuit high school, which propelled him on to Holy Cross and Cornell Medical School, where he was first in his class.

But it’s not just Tony Fauci. What about all the researchers now hard at work on better tests, vaccines, and therapies? How about the brilliant team at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, our foremost source of the intricate “modelling” that enables everyone else to plan around forecasts—and constantly-revised forecasts—of what lies ahead? (You can glimpse the “credentials” of those folks here.) Not to mention the next generation of medical practitioners such as those now struggling to save thousands of lives?

Nor is it just COVID-19. It’s also the next pandemic. Climate change. Bold new technologies. Inventive social policies. Fantastic musical and literary works. And much else, including—while I’m at it—far better strategies for educating children. 

Isn’t it obvious that the more of these folks we have the better? And the more diverse they are the better? Yet to oversimplify just a bit, it’s today’s smart kids from every sort of background who are by far the strongest candidates to play those roles tomorrow. But will they—enough of them, from across enough of the demographic and socioeconomic boards—be well-prepared to succeed in those roles with the levels of expertise, knowledge, and skills to generate the breakthroughs that we’ll need?

That depends in large measure on how well we educate them today—while they’re out of school—and next year when (we hope) they’re back in school, and the year after that, and on into the future.

It may be counterintuitive, but the present situation actually poses an unusual opportunity to serve these kids better than many have been served in regular classrooms. They could be learning more right now when they’re not twiddling their cognitive thumbs sitting through lessons pitched too low for them and enduring painful efforts by regular teachers to differentiate instruction in ways that benefit them as well as the strugglers.

If America’s fate thirty years from now ends up relying on the small population of mostly-privileged smart kids whose parents can get them into elite public and private schools and supply auxiliary programs and opportunities that challenge and fulfill them intellectually, we won’t have nearly enough of the experts that we’ll need—and those we have won’t much “look like America.” 

So let’s keep all those other smart out-of-school kids in the forefront of today’s education concerns, too. Or you can be sure we won’t be ready for what’s coming.

With the COVID-19 crisis upon us, many of the rhythms of regular life have been paused. But not for high school seniors, most of whom are still making plans to head to college in the fall. And along with azaleas and allergies, early April still brings news about acceptances and rejections from selective schools.

And if you know someone with a stellar academic record, loads of extra-curriculars, and sky-high SAT or ACT scores who nevertheless didn’t get into his or her number-one pick, you are not alone. The conventional wisdom is that it’s now much harder to be accepted into highly selective colleges and universities than it was a generation ago. But is it true?

To find out, earlier this year we identified the median SAT scores (math plus verbal) of most of the one hundred top national universities and fifty top liberal arts colleges, as determined by the 2020 U.S. News and World Report college rankings, for the incoming freshmen classes of 1985 and 2016. The 1985 data came from the 1986 edition of Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges, tracked down at the Library of Congress. The 2016 data were found in the 2018 edition of Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges. Since the SAT was re-normed in 1995 and again in 2016, but after the time period for our data, we used a concordance table published by the College Board to adjust the 1985 scores accordingly. Of the 150 institutions examined, median SAT scores were available in both years for ninety-five of them.

We used SAT scores as our measure of selectivity rather than acceptance rates because those rates have plummeted for most institutions in recent years, due to changes in the application process itself. For example, the “common app” makes it relatively easy and affordable for students to apply to larger numbers of schools. More and more students, particularly those gunning for the big-name institutions, are doing so. Given that the college ranking lists give a lot of weight to rejection rates, colleges face strong incentives to push those rates as high as possible by doing things such as generating large numbers of applications from students unlikely to be accepted, much less attend. In contrast, median SAT scores give us a better measure of the academic quality of an institution’s freshman class.

To be sure, SAT scores aren’t perfect. They don’t, for example, account for the many students who took and submitted ACT scores over this time period. The scores themselves can be inflated by test prep, which is much more common now—which can give an advantage to more affluent students—or by various machinations of the colleges, such as encouraging otherwise well qualified applicants with lower test scores to show up for the spring semester of freshman year rather than in the fall. The schools in our sample look at much more than test scores, so “selectivity” goes far beyond the SAT. All that said, they do tell us something about the difficulty of getting into a given college today versus a generation ago.

What did we learn? For once, the conventional wisdom has it about right. With just a few exceptions, median SAT scores for the most selective institutions have risen significantly over the past generation, meaning, by that measure, it really is harder to get into such schools today than thirty years ago.

Among the institutions in our sample, the average median SAT score for the incoming freshman class increased by 93 points, to 1309 from 1216.

Fourteen institutions saw increases of 150 points or more:

• Elon College, to 1192 from 952, an increase of 240 points
• University of Chicago, to 1520 from 1331, an increase of 189 points
• Ohio State, to 1280 from 1100, an increase of 180 points
• Pitzer College, to 1293 from 1116, an increase of 177 points
• UCLA, to 1320 from 1143, an increase of 177 points
• UC-San Diego, to 1337 from 1160, an increase of 177 points
• Boston College, to 1360 from 1190, an increase of 170 points
• SUNY at Stony Brook, to 1290 from 1120, an increase of 170 points
• University of Pittsburgh, to 1280 from 1112, an increase of 168 points
• Georgia Tech, to 1410 from 1243, an increase of 167 points
• Case Western, to 1410 from 1247, an increase of 163 points
• Brown University, to 1490 from 1335, an increase of 155 points
• UNC-Chapel Hill, to 1263 from 1110, an increase of 153 points
• Notre Dame, to 1440 from 1290, an increase of 150 points

(View these data for all institutions in our sample here.)

Another way to understand this shift is hold median SAT scores constant, instead of holding institutions constant. For example:

• NYU’s median SAT scores today are roughly the same as Columbia’s median SAT scores a generation ago.
• Georgia Tech and Case Western have median SAT scores today that are roughly the same as Yale’s a generation ago.
• Tulane’s median SAT scores today are one point higher than Duke’s a generation ago.

Other SAT score “twins” include:

• UC-San Diego (today) and Georgetown (then)
• University of Richmond (today) and Carleton College (then)
• University of Miami (today) and Northwestern (then)
• UNC-Chapel Hill (today) and Notre Dame (then)
• SUNY at Stony Brook (today) and Middlebury College (then)
• Virginia Tech (today) and Wake Forest (then)
• Penn State (today) and Boston College (then)

(View more “twins” here.)

What might explain these trends?

First, the U.S. population has increased almost 50 percent over this time. But places like Yale aren’t admitting 50 percent more students than they were in 1980. Plus, there are more international students fighting for these slots as well.

Second, America is a richer and better-educated country than it was a generation ago. The upper-middle-class and above has grown significantly as a share of the population, and these are the families most likely to aspire to highly selective institutions for their children. And given the cost of attending these top-tier schools, they are also the families who can most afford them.

Third, as Caroline Hoxby found in a 2009 study, much of this stems from the increased mobility of America’s top students. Simply put, students with high SAT scores are more likely to travel to highly selective institutions than they were in the past, when a large proportion of high-scoring youngsters would have stayed close to home and attended less selective regional colleges and universities. As a result, such students are self-sorting into fewer, and more selective, schools.

So what are the implications?

First, parents and students should keep these trends in mind, especially if they just got bad news from the admissions offices of highly selective colleges and universities. It really is harder to get into a highly selective school today, and families should set their expectations accordingly. Even if junior is every bit as smart and hardworking as dad, his beloved alma mater may be out of reach.

Second, to the extent that employers use college selectivity as an indication of applicant quality (not that they should, but many do), they need to increase their list of colleges and universities by which they are impressed. For example, if they used to recruit from Duke, they should start recruiting from Tulane as well. (The same might apply to singles who are “shopping” for a partner from a prestigious school!)

Finally, if there’s anything the current COVID-19 crisis is teaching us, it’s that we should keep everything in perspective. Even if students got disappointing news in their in-boxes over the past few weeks, they and their families should remember that America is blessed with hundreds of world-class colleges and universities. Now let’s hope that they can open their doors again come September.

Editor’s note: This article was first published by Education Next. Mike Petrilli also discussed it with Martin West, Education Next’s editor-in-chief, on the EdNext Podcast.

Work-based learning (WBL) refers to career preparation and training that occurs within a job setting, connects to classroom and academic experiences, and involves supervision and mentoring. Recent federal efforts like the Community College Apprenticeships initiative and state-driven programs like Pathways in Delaware have increased awareness of WBL and solidified it as a critical method for preparing students for high-wage, high-demand jobs. In general, there are four main models: apprenticeships, internships, cooperative education (co-ops), and practica and clinical experiences.

Despite recent expansion efforts, WBL programs in most places still lack clear frameworks for measuring student participation and outcomes. A new report from the Urban Institute sheds some much needed light on the WBL landscape and on-the-ground implementation efforts. The analysis focuses on community colleges, as they enroll millions of students in credit-bearing courses and noncredit workforce programs, have diverse student populations, and provide career-focused degree and certificate programs that require close collaboration with employers.

To understand the broader WBL picture, the authors examined existing research and national data sources such as the Adult Training and Education Survey and the Registered Apprenticeship Partners Information System. They also conducted interviews with national experts and state agencies. Overall, the data indicate that WBL opportunities are growing in number. Unfortunately, data also indicate that disparities in access, participation, and outcomes exist across WBL models for traditionally underrepresented groups such as women and people of color.

At the community college level, there are very few nationally representative data sources that focus on WBL. Research on outcomes—such as persistence toward degrees and certifications, post-WBL employment outcomes, retention rates, and wages—is limited. Registered apprenticeships have a stronger evidence base because they are tracked by the federal government. Results show that enrollees have higher earnings. In the ninth year after program enrollment, they earned on average almost $6,000 more a year than they would have if they hadn’t participated in an apprenticeship. Results for co-op programs, which alternate classroom learning with learning on the job, are varied. Some studies show they lead to impacts such as reduced time to finding employment and higher starting salaries, while others suggest these impacts fade over time. Internships, meanwhile, have very little research associated with their impact despite being extremely popular. One study found that longer-term, paid internship programs were associated with better outcomes than short-term, unpaid programs.

To better understand how WBL works on the ground, the authors interviewed representatives from six community colleges about their experiences implementing and measuring it. By and large, these schools offer WBL on a continuum that ranges from low-involvement career awareness activities to more intensive programs aimed at career preparation and training. Opportunities are usually linked to college credit and academic or instructional components. For example, one college offers an online WBL course that requires students to submit writing assignments throughout their experience. Several colleges have dedicated staff, such as a WBL coordinator, who is responsible for managing relationships with employers.

In terms of implementation, a persistent concern for all respondents was the structure of WBL for students who have full- and part-time jobs. If a student’s job is related to their program of study, colleges reported that they attempted to make accommodations to align the job with WBL recognized by the college. When that wasn’t possible, they attempted to be flexible in other ways, such as allowing students to complete their WBL experience over a longer period of time.

Unfortunately, gathering employment and outcome data seems to be mostly aspirational for these colleges. Some are able to access state wage records, but others are limited by privacy laws and other roadblocks. They typically rely on course codes to track how many students participate in WBL each semester. Tracking WBL outside of course credits is far more difficult, though many colleges are actively working to improve their data collection efforts. Colleges also rely on student and employer feedback surveys to gauge program quality and outcomes. Low response rates and survey fatigue among both students and employers was cited as a challenge to obtaining consistent data from these efforts. Nearly all respondents mentioned that limited funding is a serious barrier to robust data collection.

The report closes with recommendations. Both federal and state governments should develop a common definition of WBL and identify data elements that should be tracked. States would be wise to incorporate WBL into their longitudinal data systems. Community colleges should consider incentivizing employers and students to complete surveys to get consistent and reliable data. And philanthropies should provide funding that can build capacity among government agencies, colleges, and employers to help track outcomes. Overall, identifying strategies to assess participation, progress toward diversity and equity goals, and outcomes is vitally important.

SOURCE: Shayne Spaulding, Ian Hecker, Emily Bramhall, “Expanding and Improving Work-Based Learning in Community Colleges,” Urban Institute (March 2020).