For close to 10 months now, the coronavirus pandemic has forced K12 schools to do business like they’ve never done before. Obviously the pandemic has dramatically affected just about everyone in our society, but schools may be among the institutions most impacted by the airborne virus which thrives in cramped, indoor spaces like the traditional classroom. There’s little doubt that this generation of students will be defined by this time, rivaling how previous generations were defined by World War II and the Vietnam War. My generation, the younger side of Millennials, was similarly influenced by 9/11 and the Great Recession, which both pale in comparison to the loss of life and harm done to the economy by this pandemic.
It’s a dark time for students and schools right now. As 2020 turns into 2021, decision-makers will feel even more pressure to “fix” schools. Improvements can be made no doubt. But it will bring more harm than good if decision-makers try to fix schools top-down with little attention to nuance. The most important fix we can make for schools and students in this new year is recommitting to equity at all levels of decision-making, from federal policy to state, district, and school policy to the decisions teachers make for their students.
I am far from the first proponent for education equity. Unfortunately, equity has become a buzzword in education circles and in some ways lost its meaning and impact. To me, equity means every student gets what they need to thrive and demonstrate success in school. Discussions to “reopen” schools have generally lacked any mention of equity, assuming all students need the same plan for in-person learning.
(Sidebar: I put reopen in quotation marks because while much of teaching and learning is happening remotely right now, it is happening and the business of schooling has not closed. Teachers will also be the first to inform you that much of our work even before the pandemic happens outside of school buildings. Just because Google’s buildings are shuttered right now, no one would say Google is “closed.” If you’re going to make this argument, a more appropriate phrasing is resuming in-person learning rather than reopening schools.)
Some of these arguments for resuming in-person learning are made in good faith citing the “learning loss” and other mental and physical health harms associated with remote schooling. The issue here is that this laser focus on “reopening” schools will lead policy-makers to enact policies forcing as many students and teachers back in buildings with little attention to nuance or equity. Such plans could actually backfire and do more harm than good.
Here’s what equity for the rest of the school year could and should look like:
There is a huge difference between what elementary and secondary students need. This difference is often missing from the debate between journalists, pundits, and policy-makers. Because elementary age students for the most part learn under the direction of one or maybe two adults, it is much more feasible to have those students learn in small cohorts. That combined with how important these years are for students implies that efforts to have students learning in person should start with the K-5 age groups. Middle and high schoolers on the other hand learn from a great variety of adults (think of your different history, science, english, and math teachers you had in middle and high school). So it’s much more difficult to learn in small cohorts while still meeting the needs of each individual student. Because of this, while schooling remotely may not be as effective as the schooling systems we used before the pandemic, school for middle and high schoolers may actually be more effective remotely than in-person where interactions and instructional time will be limited.
We need to target support and resources for the students who need it most. Instead of bringing small cohorts of students back into school buildings with no attention to their learning needs, we need to reach out to and support families and students who are struggling the most with remote learning. Start with students who are not attending their classes online. Then students who are not passing their classes. And continue to expand as capacity allows. Until we reach “herd immunity” (60-75 percent of the population are vaccinated), it is a disservice to all students to force each student back into the school building for standardized amounts of time (We also did this before the pandemic and it didn’t make sense then either!). Furthermore, there will be a sizable amount of students and families who will prefer remote learning until the very real health threats of the pandemic diminish. One way or another, schools will need to continue offering remote learning programs until most people in the population can be vaccinated. Until then, in-person learning should be reserved for the students who need it most.
Resources and funding need to be distributed to schools equitably. The capacity of schools to provide extra support to students as well as the sheer level of need is going to vary community to community. I saw a picture the other day of a high school classroom in the wealthy suburb I grew up next to. There were 6-8 students and 1 teacher, all masked-up, plexiglass dividers installed. Meanwhile in Deep East Oakland where I teach, I have only seen a couple of my students face-to-face as I handed some baked goods to them on their porches. We know the most disadvantaged students are more likely to be learning remotely right now. That in and of itself is not necessarily a problem. The problem is that students who gain the most from school in terms of social mobility, are not receiving an equitable amount of resources and quality instruction right now to ensure that they’re learning just as much as their more advantaged peers. Federal and state policy needs to address this. Among other failures, I predict it will be long seen that the Trump administration and Secretary DeVos’s largest failure was to never create a plan to ensure that students across the country received an equitable education and advocate for the funding to support the plan. I only hope that the Biden administration and the nominee for Secretary of Ed, Miguel Cardona can move quickly to develop an equity-focused plan and work with states so that students across socioeconomic backgrounds are receiving an equitable education as we finish this school year and head into the next one.
What could an equity-focused plan look like at the school-level? Let’s look at my school, LPS Oakland R&D. Like most Oakland middle and high schools, our students learned remotely this past fall semester. We adjusted our school schedule for this year so that students would take semester-long classes instead of year-long classes so students would have fewer classes to navigate (3 or 4 instead of the normal 6), thinking quality over quantity. I’ll be teaching a few new classes of students this coming semester, but the same Geometry content that I taught last semester. In their end of the semester feedback surveys, many of my students remarked that they were surprised by how much they learned this past semester. And I have no doubt that I’ll be able to teach even more effectively this semester in my second round of teaching the same content remotely. That’s all assuming that Oakland middle and high schools continue with remote learning this semester. If our school was forced to resume in-person learning for all students as some have floated in the California legislature, we would be back to square one, redesigning our courses all over again. Of course instructional quality would greatly diminish and students would learn even less. Policies to resume in-person learning for all students with little attention to nuance and equity will make matters worse than they are already. Alternatively, resources should be spent to re-engage students who are not attending or passing their classes using in-person support at the school building as one of many methods for re-engagement.
Remote learning has not been as effective as learning before the pandemic. Teachers will be the first to admit that. Most if not all businesses have faced enormous challenges with the “pandemic pivot.” But while this pandemic continues to rage, top-down policy that forces all students back into school buildings with little regard for their needs will likely do more harm. Students need schools that will be responsive to their different levels of need; they need equity. Governor Gavin Newsom’s recently released plan for California is a promising start. It focuses on resuming in-person learning for the youngest and most disadvantaged students while providing funding for safety measures like testing, PPE, and vaccines. I remain hopeful because (1) the students are resilient and (2) the adults working with students are some of the most committed people I know. Society and federal and state policy need to have our back as we try to ensure all students have an equitable education that will allow them to live prosperous lives.
My empty classroom March 2020