When it comes to recovering school losses caused by COVID-19, leaders want to find wise answers and make sure recovery dollars are spent where and how they will do maximum good. Figuring out how we can get each and every K-12 student back on track means looking for the numbers and scholars of the assembly where they are today.
As Director of Education for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a nonpartisan charitable foundation, Kent McGuire understands the importance of goals to student success. As past president and CEO of the Southern Education Foundation, dean of Temple University’s College of Education, and undersecretary of the U. S. Department of Education, he has been the dean of the College of Education. A U. S. citizen, McGuire has spent his career as a public education warrior, and sees this unprecedented moment as the time to move on to lasting positive change.
As you told me recently on the Route K-12 podcast, which focuses on resuming schooling across the country, if there’s only one silver lining to the pandemic, it’s that educators and principals are motivated like never before to do things and better.
McGuire believes we want to pay conscientious attention to the considerations of academics as part of the process of rebuilding their education. It publishes student survey effects from Youth Truth, a national nonprofit, showing that scholars have faced significant tension and anxiety in recent years. . McGuire says helping academics feel safer and less worried is one component to getting out of the pandemic disruption.
The same goes for helping students recover academically. To do this, educators will want data on what students will be informed about during the year, not just at the end. “These year-round tests, as described, give us a greater real-time concept of who is informed what and where we can have specific demanding situations that we want to combine to solve,” he says. For a broader comparative picture, McGuire believes the state’s end-of-year tests and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) remain a must-have measure—that is, to track progress over time.
Of course, addressing missed learning opportunities will be challenging if students aren’t in school, and McGuire is particularly involved in student retention. Many districts report that they are working hard to get all of their students back. And that, in turn, may eventually have an effect on startup rates.
While emerging knowledge assessed by the Brookings Institution shows that higher education startup rates have slightly increased the covid pandemic, the explanation for why is not to brag. “The slight increase and overall stability in the startup rate is likely due to states having lowered their criteria. Essentially, each and every state lowered the criteria without delay after the pandemic,” Brookings found.
Despite the statistical “improvement” as a result of the pandemic, many states are suffering greatly to keep young people in school. In fact, Education Week reported last summer that its review of recent peak knowledge showed that “at least 31 states saw a decline in graduation rates for 2021 elegance overall, more than double last year. “McGuire sees that academics now have competing interests: “Especially for the best academics . . . $18 an hour on Amazon, suddenly, you know, it seems pretty smart if the choice is rarely very, very interesting,” he says.
While he would like to see more knowledge about what can motivate and have students interact, McGuire believes that the component of this complex equation is to detect that not all learning happens in school and that it is time to find tactics to give credit to students outside of school studies. Another component is to detect the price of encouraging cultural competence in educators to ensure that the retrospective experience is positive. audacity, here we are. “
One solution for youth to interact has been the Hewlett Foundation’s partnership with Baltimore City Public Schools. Hewlett’s help enables schools to have academics who interact in the design and delivery of virtual and blended learning opportunities. As McGuire explained to me, this initiative has allowed professional teachers to peak in the formula to succeed in even more academics by retaining and editing some of the blended learning designs that followed the pandemic.
Despite the demanding situations ahead, McGuire remains optimistic. “What encourages me the most is that there is a genuine spirit, a genuine feeling in the short ecosystem to do things in new and other tactics than before COVID,” he says.