The ups & downs: Schooling during a pandemic Parents are making the best of sudden upheaval and are embracing the COVID-era education experience with their K-12 students. Second: focus on things that are within your control, and make sure education has space within the government’s crisis planning. For example: Other state legislation directly addresses the learning loss phenomenon to mitigate the educational impacts of the pandemic. They need to know that you are planning forward, even if there are uncertainties and the specifics are not in view. During the beginning of the pandemic, a COVID‐19 patient rounding team was established including ID physicians and ID pharmacists to discuss management of patients and create COVID‐19 protocols. What will you do to ensure the health, safety, and wellbeing of your staff during the crisis? In addition, concerns about absenteeism and “lost” students have been rising. This blog has benefited enormously from a recent series by Harvard’s Matt Andrews, in the Building State Capability blog. As this school year began, major news reports documented the struggles low-income students faced when trying to complete remote work or even attend class. On Dec. 22, 2020, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) updated its recommendations for vaccine distribution: frontline workers, including school staff, are included in group “1B,” along with individuals 75 and older. Explore our core themes and topics to learn more about our work. So nag-take kami ng risk … According to CRPE, about half of states tied reopening decisions to identifiable public health criteria, such as COVID-19 test positivity or local case counts. With more than 50 million school age children in the U.S, K-12 education policy has rarely been more pertinent and contentious. Beyond didactic education, which will play a pivotal role in resident education during this pandemic, surgical education must also continue where possible. Enacted legislation includes: Since the beginning of the pandemic, public health officials have emphasized that widespread testing and contact tracing are necessary to limit caseloads and return institutions—including schools—to normal operation. Waiving attendance requirements and using the previous year attendance figures for accreditation and funding allocation (. The effects of a pandemic can be lessened if preparations are made ahead of time. In many states, statute ties school funding to schools meeting certain requirements for “seat time” for each student. Everyone from ministerial staff down to district leaders and school heads, teachers, children, and parents has something to contribute, and together they will provide crucial insights to help you plan your response. We have limited information about the likely path of the pandemic. Annual assessments are not only used to evaluate teachers and schools, but they are also vital sources of data regarding student growth and knowledge. The latest on how the pandemic is reshaping education. With 22 participating states, STAT aims to institute rapid testing in schools and other essential settings and to improve states’ logistical testing and contact tracing capacities to facilitate reopening. Maintaining the standard instructional time requirement during distance learning (e.g. Engaging directly with children is an emerging innovation in crisis communications. Although many school systems announced initial closures of 2-4 weeks, recent announcements in the United States and in Canada, for example, suggest closures may last upwards of three months. State approaches to instructional time include: State approaches to attendance collection and requirements for accountability systems include: State legislatures have also addressed attendance and instructional time through legislation. In an effort to contain the spread of COVID-19, many cities have temporarily housed people experiencing homelessness in hotels for the first time ever. States including Colorado, Connecticut and Louisiana identified school staff and students as priority populations for surveillance testing in order to identify outbreaks and curb the spread of COVID-19. NCSL Magazine: New Resources Track School Reopening Guidance, Requirements, NCSL Magazine: States Act to Give Schools COVID-19 Liability Protection, NCSL Health Program – State COVID-19 Actions, NCSL Health Program – COVID-19 Health Policy Snapshots, NCSL Webinar – State Planning for Distribution and Allocation of COVID-19 Vaccine, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) – COVID-19 Testing Plans by State and Jurisdiction, Council of State Governments – State Vaccination Plans, National Academy for State Health Policy – Review of State Vaccination Plans, Kaiser Family Foundation – State Plans for COVID-19 Vaccination Prioritization. Offering seat time waivers to districts to account for school closures (e.g. NCSL Magazine: Will the Pandemic Change the Way We Deliver K-12 Education? UNICEF has issued guidance that provides a checklist with detailed information about how to preserve the safety of teachers and school leaders when calling them into active service. Maintaining standard attendance requirements in remote learning (e.g. However, widespread school closures indicate more robust testing and contact tracing may be needed to curb the spread of COVID-19 in schools and return students to the classroom. We will see many experiments in coming months. This is close to 80% of the world’s enrolled students. The federal E-Rate program supports broadband connectivity and other digital learning infrastructure for schools and libraries, and during the COVID-19 crisis schools can purchase additional bandwidth to improve remote learning. This website uses cookies to analyze traffic and for other purposes. According to a review by the National Academy for State Health Policy, 38 states plan to vaccinate teachers and school staff in Phase One. Teachers and upper-level students can be called on to act as virtual tutors using simple SMS platforms to enhance the effectiveness of online and broadcast programs. As Fernando Reimers and his collaborators note in their book Letters to A New Minister of Education, your job as an education minister is now to “make sense of the mess”—to turn a series of interrelated challenges into a series of organized and prioritized problems and then into a strategy for action. Migration, Displacement, and Humanitarian Policy, Co-Director of Education Policy and Senior Policy Fellow. For many U.S. students, the last two school semesters have brought constant change and whiplash—and the spring looks to provide more of the same. Among states that have established their phase 1B and 1C vaccination plans, approaches include: States also acted to develop testing plans, submitted to the CDC. Managing Children’s Education During COVID-19 Pandemic ... the real physical classroom teaching/learning process. There has been application surge amid the pandemic, with medical school applicants up more than 15%, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). Ministers, educators, communities, families, and learners will all have to make decisions in a context of “radical uncertainty.” To assist decision-making during the pandemic, we highlight six things that you as a minister of education should consider as you plan. Scott Cowen, a university president in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, argues, “the importance of actively creating a sense of community beyond living and learning in close proximity cannot be overstated.”. How can you unlock the capacity of your staff, communities, and partners to keep education moving? Students in rural communities face particularly severe challenges in accessing the internet for schoolwork. It includes recruiting and application tracking systems, HR and benefits, learning management, time and attendance, payroll and tax, and reporting and analytics. Can schools remain open for specific services, as is the case in recent UK guidance? The pandemic's impact on homeless shelters has highlighted the connection between housing and public health. Risk management, to most, conjures up images of risks from hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, terrorism. Public broadcasting and social media can help amplify your messages. Requiring some level of in-person instruction, while allowing districts to obtain a waiver based on high levels of local COVID-19 transmission (e.g. Minister, you may want to be wary of the rapid, aggressive upswing in marketing of educational software by commercial vendors—as is presently happening in the United States. Many education systems are organized around high-stakes examinations and credentialing. However, remote learning has not been deployed uniformly. A protective response is to allow for automatic promotion (in K-12 education) while ensuring earmarked places and remediation for disadvantaged populations in future admissions processes. Such exams heighten stress among learners, and are risky during COVID-19 because they rely on face-to-face proctoring. These divergences raise concerns that income- and race-based achievement gaps will grow during the pandemic: low-income students and students of color are more likely than their peers to lack broadband and these students uniquely benefit from in-person interaction with educators. Citing the disruption to students’ lives and the difficulty of rapidly shifting to online instruction, state leaders advocated for exemptions from federal requirements for high-stakes testing. Thus far, most testing and quarantine protocols have focused on identified and symptomatic cases in the school community and their close contacts. 7700 East First Place Tying the method of instruction that districts may use to coded levels of infection, without specifying the metrics used to determine those levels (e.g. This Viewpoint essay examines public sector labor relations during the pandemic and describes the impact bargaining process that is used to protect public employees. The education landscape has changed, just as society has changed. Exams across West Africa were cancelled last week in response to the pandemic. Can they be used as crisis hubs for the community? By the end of March 2020, the U.S. Department of Education had offered a waiver from testing requirements in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), and all 50 states, along with the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, had cancelled their state exams. Many governments have ordered institutions to cease face-to-face instruction for most of their students, requiring them to switch, almost overnight, to online teaching and virtual education. Spring projections suggested that students may have returned this school year with less than two-thirds their normal annual learning gains. Most importantly, because it is highly contagious, COVID-19 requires “social distancing,” which prohibits traditional forms of face-to-face coordination and service delivery. Federal officials indicated in the summer that states should anticipate administering tests in the spring so policymakers avoid going two years without this information. The reasons behind that spike are varied, but there’s no denying that more applications mean more competition.. The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute recommended major investments in staff training for digital instruction, broadband and device access, and social-emotional needs for students learning from home. CGD blog posts reflect the views of the authors, drawing on prior research and experience in their areas of expertise. As of March 23, more than 124 countries have closed their education systems either in full or in specific regions, and closures now affect more than 1.25 billion learners worldwide. Another study found inconclusive effects of school reopening on COVID-19 in communities with high rates of transmission. The literature on crisis leadership emphasizes the importance of explaining your situation, plans, hopes, and concerns, openly and often. Reducing required instructional time (e.g. In addition, fall “count days” have long served as key moments in determining the amount of funding each school receives based on the number of students present on a statutorily determined-date. Clearly define the role of school leaders in crisis response. First, and foremost: even though you cannot stick to your existing plans, it would be wise to keep a steady focus on your mission, goals, and principles. Prior to the pandemic, research suggested that students learning online failed to match their peers’ assessment performance or graduation rates. In Spring of 2020, governors and state education agencies developed plans that lay out requirements or recommendations for the safe operation of schools. To build out testing infrastructure in local communities, the Rockefeller Foundation has worked with state leaders to form the State and Territory Alliance for Testing (STAT). Experts in student attendance and absenteeism argue that effective data collection and early intervention are crucial to combating the negative impacts of student absenteeism. School year at the state faces critical decisions — yet the worsening health crisis inhibits both accessing the internet schoolwork! 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