The United States has a math crisis—and it’s not just the students. It extends to those choosing how to spend federal pandemic relief dollars. Even when they choose the best prescriptions to make up for the pandemic’s learning losses, they are using the wrong dosage. It’s a multiplication problem.

The average student in the U.S. lost the equivalent of half a year of math instruction and a quarter of a year in reading. Many urban school districts that were closed for much of 2020-21, such as St. Louis and New Haven, lost one and a half years, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s start with the national average of half a year.

Let’s complete a math exercise together, focusing on four interventions proven to help students catch up: high-dosage tutoring, an extra period of math instruction, six weeks of summer school, and an extended school year. Pre-pandemic research suggests that the first three types of interventions generate the equivalent of one year, half a year, and a quarter of the typical year’s growth in math, respectively. Let’s assume that students receive the same amount of instruction in each additional week of school as they do during the school year. As illustrated by the chart, if 10% of students in any given district received “high-impact” tutoring, 30% received double periods of math, 75% attended summer school, and 100% went to school for two and a half weeks longer, they would recover half a year of learning.

Challenging? Yes. But doable.

Inadequate responses

Unfortunately, I know of no district coming close to this level of intervention. Nationally, only 2% of students are receiving high-impact tutoring, where they are receiving about three hours a week of tutoring for 36 weeks, or about 108 hours total. Most districts are providing only 15-20 hours and only for a small percentage of students, nowhere near the 10% in my catch-up assumption.

Summer school attendance has been 15% or 20% in many urban districts, light years behind my assumed 75%.

I don’t have national data on the percentage of students receiving double doses of math, but I’m confident it is nowhere near 30%.

Further, very few school districts have extended their school year. The struggle in Richmond, Virginia illustrates the challenge. According to the Education Recovery Scorecard, students in third through eighth grade lost the equivalent of one and a half years of math and reading achievement between 2019 and 2022, more than any other district in Virginia. Starting in the spring of 2021, while schools were still closed, Superintendent Jason Kamras proposed a year-round calendar to help students catch up. Students would have one month off in the summer and four two-week breaks during the school year. Most students would still have 180 school days a year, but the district would select 5,000 students to receive up to 40 days of extra instruction during the breaks. His school board turned him down. Instead, they allowed him to pilot a longer school year in just two of the city’s 54 schools. The two schools started this summer, and student attendance has been strong.

Leadership counts

As illustrated in Richmond, part of the challenge has been the absence of political leadership. To undertake the major reforms that would be required to help students catch up, school district leaders need political air cover.

As a U.S. senator, Lamar Alexander helped push through the latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 2015, which defined the federal role in K-12 education, returning significant power to the states. But states have largely declined the opportunity to lead, and the education reform effort in the U.S. has been rudderless. We’re a long way from the era when governors such as Bill Clinton (Arkansas), Jim Hunt (North Carolina), brothers George W. Bush (Texas) and Jeb Bush (Florida), as well as Alexander himself (who then led Tennessee) used a combination of the bully pulpit, funding, and policies to push an unprecedented wave of state-led reforms in the 1980s and 1990s.

Only recently have leaders such as Governor Jared Polis in Colorado and Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia begun to make improving students’ outcomes a centerpiece of their agendas, and not just a stage for culture wars.

There are some modest bright spots. Under Commissioner of Education Mike Morath’s leadership, Texas required districts to provide an additional 30 hours a week of small-group instruction to students in the lowest achievement category. It’s unlikely to be enough for many students, but it’s a lot more than what other states are providing.

Many states, such as Tennessee and Colorado, have launched tutoring initiatives—again, a laudable move—but none of these programs have the dosage levels that will produce a meaningful impact.

The federal government provided billions of additional dollars of pandemic-related support. When the American Rescue Plan passed in March of 2021, no one knew how large the achievement losses would be. And, wanting to preserve district flexibility, Congress only required districts to spend 20% of the money on academic catch-up (with a loose definition of what could count). The result was predictable. Much of the funding has gone to salary increases, HVAC systems, or additional school counselors. In the worst cases, states have allowed communities to use the federal funds to replace local tax revenues—a shell game that will help exactly zero children. In the end, only a small share of federal aid has been used to replace what students lost during the pandemic: instructional time.

Looking ahead

With a legal deadline to commit the funds by September 2024, school districts have one more year to spend their federal relief dollars. Given that budgets have been set and the 2023-24 school year is about to begin, it will be difficult for districts to scale up their plans for the coming school year. However, there is still time for districts to plan a major scale-up of summer learning for the summer of 2024. There’s even some hope of continuing the effort beyond next summer. Although the American Rescue Plan law requires districts to commit the funds by next September, the federal Department of Education has the authority to allow districts to spend down those funds over the following year (the legal term is “liquidate”), as long as the contracts are signed and the funds are obligated by the deadline. The Biden administration should prioritize extending the spending deadline for programs that increase students’ instructional time—tutoring programs, summer learning, after-school programs, school vacation academies, and salary increases associated with an extended school year.

Although there’s still hope that districts will help younger students catch up, we cannot forget that four high school graduating classes—roughly 12 million students—have already started their postsecondary careers. The data suggest it’s been a rough start. According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, community college enrollment declined by a staggering 20% between spring 2019 and spring 2023. The number of students seeking bachelor’s degrees at public and private colleges declined by 6%.

We know remarkably little about what has driven the declines in postsecondary enrollment. Many have speculated that the hot labor market was to blame. However, there’s little concrete evidence to confirm this. It is also possible that the decline was connected to the learning losses in K-12. For instance, especially in areas that spent much of the 2020-21 school year in remote instruction, the high school graduating classes of 2020 and 2021 would have had a hard time meeting with their college counselors to explore their postsecondary options and get help with financial aid.

Moreover, students who fell behind in math or reading in eighth through 10th grades may not have had time to complete the advanced high school coursework expected of many science and engineering majors. According to the College Board, the number of students taking Advanced Placement exams in biology and calculus (both AB and BC) fell by 9% and 12%, respectively, while the number of students taking the chemistry exam declined by 21%. Even if college enrollment rates recover, such trends do not bode well for what may happen to the number of college students pursuing STEM degrees in the coming years.

State leadership need

To resolve this question, we need more research on the relationship between achievement losses, school closures, and changes in postsecondary enrollment by high school. The answer is of more than academic interest as the pace of recovery in the postsecondary sector may well depend on recovery in elementary and secondary schools.

Because many students will not have caught up by the time the federal relief dollars are spent, we must begin discussing additional policies to continue the recovery following September 2024. Anything requiring a school board vote or state legislative action will take time to enact.

For one, states and cities should set aside resources for reaching out to recent high school graduates who never enrolled in college and offer assistance in exploring postsecondary options and applying for federal financial aid. It would be foolish to allow them to fall through the cracks, as the nation’s future workforce needs will depend on their continued training and development.

In addition, states should ensure that future graduating classes have what they need before leaving high school. For instance, students who do not achieve proficiency on state tests at the end of eighth grade should receive additional help during ninth grade to ensure that they are on track for college and a career. States might consider offering students the option of a fifth year in high school or free tuition for their first year in community college, giving them a chance to fill in gaps in coursework they missed in high school as a result of pandemic achievement losses.

The academic recovery effort following the pandemic has been undersized from the beginning. Although the research community and federal and state regulators encouraged districts to focus on “evidence-based” solutions such as high-dosage tutoring and summer learning, districts were never given clear guidance on the dosages required or the share of students they should be serving. Moreover, the guidance that was provided—specifically, the 20% minimum spending on “academic recovery”—was downright misleading.

The future consequence for students—and for the nation’s economy—if students fail to catch up will be dire. A conservative estimate of the loss in future earnings for those enrolled in public K-12 education during the 2020-21 school year is $900 billion. As the federal relief dollars are spent down, state and local leaders must step up. Today, there are two or three candidates seeking the mantle of “education governor.” We need 50 of them.

July, 2024 Update: I wrote this essay late last summer, while the evidence was at its bleakest: districts were struggling to implement recovery efforts and researchers were reporting disappointing results for specific recovery efforts. Subsequently, the prospects of recovery brightened somewhat. In January 2024, our Harvard/Stanford team of researchers . In June 2024, we . We found that the federal relief did have an impact on the recovery. Even though the impact per dollar spent was much smaller than if the funding had been spent solely on tutoring or learning, the estimated impact was nevertheless in line with pre-pandemic research on the effect of general revenue increases. The projected earnings impact from the improvement was sufficient to justify the expenditure.

ESSER relief was like the first stage of a rocket: powerful, but unfocused and likely insufficient to get us all the way back to 2019 levels of achievement. After the 2024 NAEP is released in January 2025, we expect to update the Education Recovery Scorecard with district recovery through 2024. Soon after, we expect to write a second report on the impact of ESSER spending during 2023-24. We hope we are wrong, but our results thus far imply that many districts will remain behind 2019 levels when the federal money runs out. 

It is alarming, then, that so many states have not even begun to discuss what they will do to continue the recovery after September 2024. Rather than provide additional general revenue as with ESSER, we hope states consider targeting aid at specific evidence-based solutions, such as tutoring or summer learning, especially in the districts which will remain behind. Otherwise, we will be forcing children to pay the price for the pandemic.

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

As I look at the impact of the pandemic on adolescents, two very different sets of data stand out. First, we have seen huge declines in teenagers’ mental health. In October 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health, pointing to soaring rates of depression, anxiety, trauma, loneliness, and suicidal thoughts. In March 2022, the Centers for Disease Control that more than 40 percent teenagers are “persistently sad or lonely;” a follow-up in February 2023 found that number rises to 57% among teenage girls. 

Meanwhile, and are up. In addition, an estimated 22% of students have been (missing more than 10% of school) since the pandemic, while one to two million students have not returned to school at all, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Not surprisingly, the situation is worse for students who have been historically marginalized and underserved. 

Second, and much more encouragingly, we have seen a huge surge in international interest in social and emotional learning (SEL), which supports students’ academic achievement and mental wellness, according to an extensive . While some U.S. politicians play politics with this issue, restricting what can be taught in American classrooms, other nations are coming to us for advice on the practices and policies that will help advance their students’ overall wellbeing. Indeed, countries such as Australia, Israel, Portugal, and Spain are making SEL a national priority. 

Strong business, family and educator support

Fortunately, a growing number of U.S. corporate leaders also get it. They tell us repeatedly that, while they can find employees with the right technical skills, many of these potential hires lack the key social and emotional skills that will help them thrive as team players in the workplace. Indeed, of surveyed executives say skills such as problemsolving and communicating clearly are equally or more important than technical skills. One corporate leader told me his response to policymakers in a state that is eliminating culturally responsive teaching and other SEL-related efforts: “If you don’t want SEL in your schools, you don’t want my business in your state.” 

The business support is not surprising, given the close alignment between employability skills and the : self-awareness (understanding one’s strengths and weaknesses); selfmanagement (including organizational skills, self-discipline, initiative); social awareness (listening, empathy, understanding others’ perspectives); relationship-building (communications, resolving conflict, teamwork); and responsible decision-making (problem-solving, analyzing the pros and cons of various choices).

Although we have heard some divisive narratives in media and politics, the data shows that the vast majority of students, families, and educators strongly support SEL: say it’s at least somewhat important to them that their children’s schools teach them to develop these life skills. Further, say they emphasize SEL in the classroom, 83% say it improves academic outcomes, and 84% say it boosts skills like collaboration, communication, and critical thinking. 

What schools are doing

Educators are building on this strong support—not just to recover from the pandemic but to redesign education. Optimally, they’re taking a systems approach to SEL, teaching it not just as a one-off course in sixth period, but instead integrating it into everything they do. They are strengthening school culture and climate by prioritizing the relationships among students and between students and adults (from teachers to custodians). They are focusing on the well-being of staff, who have suffered as well. They are integrating SEL with academics, so that students are learning teamwork during math class discussions and better understanding various perspectives when studying everything from the American Revolution to Shakespeare, among many examples. 

For example, , serving high school students in the Pilsen community of Chicago, has committed to prioritizing both student and adult SEL and well-being. They’ve implemented a competency-based instructional model that gives staff time not only to focus on the academic progress of students but also their social and emotional development. Students have the opportunity to put their SEL into practice when they share insights and perspectives through student committees. The school has also used staff-wide professional learning time to focus on adult SEL, and partnered with families to create a series of parent and caregiver discussions on SEL.

Going forward, we should continue discussing academic loss, but we must also talk about the impact of relationship loss. This is true for all grades, but is particularly important now in high schools, where students’ perception of teacher connection has declined to a new low, according to a survey by the nonprofit YouthTruth: less than a quarter of students say their teachers try to understand their lives outside of school, and less than half say there’s an adult at school who they can talk to when they’re having problems or feeling upset and stressed. 

Unless we strengthen relationships, we won’t close the learning gaps. SEL is not a distraction from academics, but a tool that can help us build relationships so we can get to academic recovery and success. Hundreds of independent studies confirm that SEL positively impacts academic achievement. And recent found that fostering ninth graders’ social and emotional development had a nearly identical impact on their academics as focusing specifically Taking a systems approach to SEL, teaching it not just as a one-off course in sixth period, but instead integrating it into everything they do. THE STATE OF THE AMERICAN STUDENT: FALL 2023 on test-score growth did. When students have social and emotional skills paired with positive relationships that make them feel like part of a community, they want to come to school and learn.

Schools also are strengthening their partnerships with parents and families, a natural outcome of families being more actively engaged in their children’s day-to-day learning during the pandemic. I experienced these challenges firsthand during the past two years, helping my middle schooler and eight-year-old navigate a changing world increasingly powered by digital media. And here comes artificial intelligence—the challenge of separating fact from fiction, good from bad, and making good choices just got a lot harder. Parents and teachers must help educate the next generation for digital citizenship.

Policymakers also have an important role to play. Out of the media glare, strong bipartisan support continues for evidence-based efforts to strengthen students’ well-being—socially, emotionally, and academically. in SEL as part of COVID recovery efforts, and 27 states across the country have adopted SEL standards or competencies to guide pre-K-12 instruction. At the federal level, SEL is being embedded into key legislation, from the federal American Rescue Plan to the Safer Communities Act and bills addressing everything from mental health to opioid addiction. The long-term outcome: more students will succeed not only in school, but at work and in life as well. 

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

The impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic are likely to be profound and long-lasting. We have already seen substantial short-term effects on young people’s educational experiences, particularly for those from less advantaged backgrounds. It is vital that we fully understand these impacts, including the burden on ethnic minorities and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

Amid the pandemic, a team across UCL and the Sutton Trust (a think tank with 25 years’ experience researching social mobility), established the COVID Social Mobility and Opportunities study (COSMO for short) to play this vital role for England. Our aim is to build the evidence base to understand the pandemic’s long-term effects on educational and career trajectories.

The study focuses on the experiences of a cohort of young people (those aged 14–15 at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic) for whom the disruption had a particularly acute impact at a crucial moment in their educations—with minimal time for catch-up before graduating from secondary school. In addition, this group’s national age-16 examinations (known as GCSEs) were replaced with purely teacher-assessed grades, throwing their usual post-16 transition into further uncertainty.

COSMO has recruited a representative sample of over 13,000 young people in 500 schools across England, over-sampling disadvantaged and ethnic minority groups and targeting other hard-to-reach groups. Young person and parent questionnaires—enhanced with educational administrative data—have collected rich data on young people’s experiences of education and well-being in the aftermath of the pandemic, along with information on their post-16 education transitions. Key findings include:

Young people’s educational experiences during Covid-19 lockdowns varied considerably.

To take one example, we looked at live online lessons, perhaps emblematic of schooling during this period—but certainly not experienced universally. In the early pandemic, the most dramatic differences were between the state and private sectors. State schools with more advantaged students caught up with the amount of live online lessons provided by private schools in the early 2021 lockdown. But schools with poorer students continued to lag, likely because they were tackling important welfare needs.

Young people from less advantaged homes were more likely to report barriers to learning at home.

They were less likely to have a quiet space to focus on learning and more likely to use a mobile device or to share devices to carry out online activities. We also confirmed that those affected by these issues did indeed report spending less time on schoolwork during lockdowns.

The impacts on learning are widespread—and recognized.

Four in five young people told us that their educational progress suffered due to the pandemic. Almost half said that they had not caught up with the learning they lost. Over a third felt they had fallen behind their classmates. This rises to almost half for those who attended schools with the most disadvantaged students.

Efforts to help students catch up have not reached as many as we might hope.

This is perhaps unsurprising given that England’s catch-up spending plans were estimated to be worth around £310 per pupil, vs. £1,830 in the United States. Almost half of young people in the cohort reported that they had received no specific catch-up learning at all. Despite the efforts of the government’s National Tutoring Programme, which aimed to put one-on-one and small group tutoring at the heart of catch-up plans, only 27% of the sample reported receiving this type of assistance.

On a more positive note, there is encouraging evidence that those who did receive small group tutoring were more likely to be from less advantaged backgrounds.

Those who took up tutoring also performed better in their teacher-assessed age-16 examinations, compared to similar individuals who were offered tutoring but did not take it.

We are not the only study across the world aiming to track the long-term implications of the Covid-19 pandemic for young people’s life chances. For example, Generations, led by the Australian National University, is taking a similar approach to ours, tailored to their own context. Other researchers likely are working with similar aims, again with variations depending upon differences in their national contexts and education systems.

Hopefully, we are only at the start of the journey for COSMO. We plan to follow young people as they continue their transition into adult lives, checking in every couple of years or so. This builds on the UK’s existing cohort studies, some of which are now following their members into retirement. About half of our cohort will make this transition via university, starting in autumn 2023. We will seek to learn about their academic preparation for higher education and how they are managing financially against a difficult economic backdrop, among other priorities. Our longer-term follow-ups will focus on experiences in the labor market, family formation, and all other aspects of adult life. Crucially, our research will allow us to understand how these experiences differ depending upon their experiences of the pandemic—and how this has mediated preexisting inequalities.

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

CRPE’s in-depth interviews with students and educators across six high schools in New England yielded a resounding message: the primary purpose of high school is not to prepare every student for college. 

Instead, parents and students in wide-ranging circumstances describe happiness, fulfillment, and a “good life” as their priorities. “I just hope that she’s happy, [that she finds] something that she enjoys doing and that she can just find her place,” said a parent of a student in credit recovery. A parent of a straight-A student taking multiple AP courses said, “I want her to just pursue whatever makes her happy, honestly.” A rural student said, “How I measure success isn’t exactly in scores or numbers. It’s more of, do I enjoy where I’m at in life, and is this where I saw myself going, and where can I go from here?”

Underneath these desires hum a host of economic and social pressures. “Success would mean for me that I am not living a paycheck-to-paycheck life, or I’m not struggling to provide for me and the others around me,” said one student. A parent added, “Honestly, I think it’s really hard for kids to settle on what they want to do right out of high school right now, given the state of our environment and our world and everything that’s happening.”

What leads to happiness and stability? Some students have told us about college plans, convinced that college is the path to “being my best self and earning my own money and doing a job that I enjoy.” But others aren’t so convinced that college will lead to success on their own terms. The reasons are varied: young people don’t want to do more school; they’d prefer to avoid high-stakes tests and applications; they’re concerned about finances; or, they would simply prefer to start earning money in a job they know rather than make a big bet on future opportunities they can’t access yet.

Administrators in our study are also noticing a trend away from college as the agreed-upon best path out of high school. “At one point, people defined success by college,” said an assistant superintendent. “And I think that people have come to realize now that that’s not the ultimate measure of success.” 

Letting go of ‘college for all’ …

Our study’s findings aren’t an anomaly. Since the pandemic, Americans as a whole have college prep as a key function for high schools. 

In many ways, this shift is a good thing. Present and future workforce needs are changing rapidly, demanding continuous waves of learning. Meanwhile, college graduates even now aren’t reliably showing proficiency in skills that employers value. CRPE and others have argued for years that the old “4+4” equation—four years of high school and four years of college—is increasingly outdated. That’s especially true when for a four year degree top $35,000 and student debt is crushing across income levels, with few solutions in sight. Over the past decade, Gallup surveys that three in four Americans do not believe college is affordable for everyone who needs it.

… Without exacerbating inequities

The challenge for high schools is how to make the shift beyond college for all without reverting back to fundamentally inequitable patterns. While historically underrepresented groups have made notable gains in and over the past decades, disparities persist along the lines of race and income. Those inequalities are cause for concern because evidence still that college can be a powerful engine of economic mobility. Students from low-income and high-income families who attend the same college, especially selective colleges, end up having similar earnings in adulthood. But students from families in the top 1% of income distribution are 77 times more likely to attend elite colleges than students from the poorest families. Taking into account persistent racial wealth gaps, this means that , and learners face multiple structural barriers to economic mobility.

The push for K-12 schools to prepare all students to enroll in a four-year university represented a laudable effort to address this staggering inequality, but the problem hasn’t been solved. In 2022, Black, Hispanic/Latino, and Asian Americans all college prep as a much higher priority for high schools than White Americans did. In our study, one teacher from a Title I high school said, “I worry for every single student that leaves us, that they’ll have the tools to make a real life for themselves, with choices.” Could leaving “college for all” behind mean giving up on a commitment to equity? 

The way through this conundrum is to reject the between going to college or not. If the options are either “college” or “no college,” then inevitably only some students—mainly those already advantaged—will get support toward a college degree. But if the options include many paths to family-sustaining careers, with further education and credentials at multiple points on each path, then many choices can be good choices. 

High schools that internalize this mantra won’t be any less committed to college readiness for all students, and they won’t divide their students between kids who are college-bound and others who prefer to “work with their hands.” Instead, they’ll help every young person be ready for the adult world of work, aware of the trade-offs of choices they make, and academically prepared for higher education—when they choose it or need it.

What high schools are learning

No school we’ve studied has fully solved how to move beyond the traditional mindset while still avoiding the harm of low expectations, especially for historically underserved students. But some schools are approaching it in deliberate, thoughtful ways from which that others can learn.

At Nokomis Regional High School in rural Maine, educators believe that a wide range of college and non-degree options requires students to develop self-knowledge and articulate their own personal life values. Nokomis starting in ninth grade and develop a concrete plan by senior year. A critical new step is an interdisciplinary course called “The Good Life,” which helps, according to one student, to define “your version of the good life and how are you going to achieve it.” She also noted that comparing visions can help students expand their thinking about options. At Nokomis, as well as several other schools in our study, educators describe success as a viable postsecondary plan for every student, whether or not four-year college is part of it.

KIPP Academy Lynn Collegiate in Massachusetts was founded with the KIPP network’s commitment to guarantee college access and success for underrepresented communities, especially students of color. The school has long focused on college prep courses, robust college counseling for every student, and for students through their college years. But now, administrators are listening to students who don’t yet feel ready to commit to college, and others who have dreams of entrepreneurship, beauty school, performance arts, and beyond. The school is expanding its own postsecondary counseling services to support a wider range of options, while staying committed to rigorous academic preparation so every student is at least college ready, if not college-going.

The high school every student deserves

In these and other high schools across the country, the work ahead will be difficult. High schools have proven remarkably resistant to change, and past efforts to transform them have seen limited results at best. 

Most critically, schools will need to maintain a laser focus on setting and maintaining high expectations for every student, even if the endgame for those expectations—traditionally, a bachelor’s degree—is shifting. Students who don’t choose college right away cannot be given an “easier” high school experience; they need a challenging one that maximizes their potential. 

Doing this well means listening seriously to families about their goals and priorities, not telling them what’s best. It also means exposing students to a far more diverse range of education, training, and work opportunities. Every student will need information and adult mentors to help them learn about their options, think through the trade-offs, and make an informed decision. They’ll also need relationships with a diverse range of adults to gain a foothold in their careers. Schools can’t do this alone: they will need help from employers and community partners. They also need their states to redesign policies on credit and seat time, since existing policies allow precious little flexibility for learning through internships and outside of school walls.

Skeptics who are hesitant to let go of the college-focused reform agenda need only think about the vibrant individuality of young people in their lives. In our study, one academically ambitious student dreams of being an opera singer, another student with a history of truancy aims to be a judge, and a third from a family of educators just wants to start working. They need their high schools to take them seriously. They each deserve an education that helps them to set and pursue goals that matter to them—and to adjust course when their interests or circumstances change.

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Tutoring—an old education practice that historically was only available to affluent kids—raced to the forefront of public consciousness in the last two years as a way to catch all kids up after the pandemic’s learning disruptions.

There’s strong evidence behind an intervention now called “high-impact tutoring,” defined as individualized or small- group instruction during the school day, in alignment with core curriculum, for a substantial amount of time, several days a week, with a built-in mechanism for monitoring student progress. This kind of tutoring is delivering real results for students, especially when led by teachers or paraprofessionals, for students in the earliest grades, and for programs conducted in school (see sidebar on page 43).

The challenge is that high-impact tutoring is difficult to deliver at the scale and the pace that we need. Generous estimates suggest only about 1 in 10 of all U.S. students are getting effective tutoring support, while the real number is likely even lower. It is also especially difficult to reach high school students, who arguably should be our top priority given how little time they have to recover pandemic learning losses before graduation.

But there’s reason for optimism: a growing number of tutoring providers are innovating new models, conducting research, and delivering results.

Overcoming Implementation Hurdles

For districts committed to developing their own programs, it is difficult to find and train qualified tutors; ensure the curricula are aligned; coordinate the communications between tutors and classroom teachers; and manage the program overall, especially in systems that already are stretched thin. Meanwhile, districts seeking to partner with providers have trouble finding those with both a strong evidence base and the capacity to reach all the kids in

the district who could benefit—often thousands or tens of thousands. Historically, providers that offer tutoring at scale are essentially providing 24/7 homework help, which is not the same as high-impact tutoring.

Indeed, scaling quality programs is the biggest challenge, and the millions of students who are behind today can’t wait decades for us to get it right. In order to solve it, we need to figure out how to get more tutors into schools, how to align tutoring curricula with core curricula, how to help districts solve school-day scheduling challenges, and how to ensure costs are sustainable.

That’s why we started Accelerate, a nonprofit determined to make high-impact tutoring a standard feature of American schools by:

• Identifying and funding innovative, scalable tutoring models, including those that use technology and AI to reach more students.
• Funding rigorous evaluations of these models to gauge effectiveness of the programs.
• Supporting state departments of education in creating regulatory frameworks to encourage effective in-school tutoring. This could include creating preferred provider lists, statewide procurement for strong tutoring providers, and mandatory statewide data collection and analysis of tutoring in schools.
  

Our ultimate goal is to embed tutoring into the regular school day, which is the most effective way to ensure all students from every background get the individualized support they need.

Successful Innovations At All Levels, Including High School

Saga Education’s longstanding math tutoring partnership with Chicago Public Schools provides a great example of what is possible. Saga offers tutoring as part of a credit- bearing class, and the school system recognizes that tutoring offers as much or more value than the classes it replaces. The research supports this choice: A randomized control trial of 2,633 ninth and tenth graders, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2021, found the program improved students’ math test scores and grades in math and non-math courses.

Early literacy is a priority, too, and scaling tutoring in early literacy has great potential. On Your Mark, an Accelerate grantee, offers synchronous tutoring via computer using high-quality instruction materials based on the science of reading. Using noise-canceling headphones, students get extra doses of phonics and other instruction without leaving their desks. In California, Accelerate is supporting Amira, a company that equips high school and college students with a AI-powered platform to tutor younger students in foundational literacy.

Impact of AI

Tutoring models that use artificial intelligence are already here, and within a year or two we expect AI to become a useful tool to support—not replace—skilled educators in giving tutors feedback and helping to pinpoint individual students’ learning gaps. Before now, it was difficult and costly to have supervisors watch tutoring sessions and provide feedback to tutors. But video and transcript crawls via AI could mean a significant improvement in the quality of feedback to tutors. Groups like Schoolhouse, Carnegie Mellon, and Saga are already working on AI models for giving tutors feedback.

To address learning gaps, AI-enabled technologies can
help tutors triangulate what students are learning in core classroom instruction, where an individual student has learning gaps, and what an appropriate tutoring intervention looks like. AI could dramatically reduce tutors’ prep time for individual tutoring sessions, and lower the cost for school districts.

The high cost of tutoring is a key barrier for many school districts, and it’s why Accelerate is also funding five states (Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Louisiana, and Ohio) that have embraced tutoring as a statewide priority, in the hopes that they will become models for other states to follow. Over the 2023-2024 school year, Accelerate will support each of these states in implementing evidence-based tutoring programs statewide, measuring their impacts on student outcomes, and develop plans for long-term sustainability.

States across the country are making strides toward ensuring all students have access to high-impact tutoring during the school day. There are so many reasons to be hopeful that this intervention can permanently change the American school system.

If anything keeps me up at night, it is the concern that the education field, in our eagerness to move on to the next big thing—especially when federal Covid-19 relief funding runs out—will give up on tutoring before it has a chance to scale up and deliver the kinds of results we all want. The key is to respond quickly to what works, and treat tutoring as an evidence-based, long-term solution. Tutoring is not a post-pandemic extra, but an evergreen must-have that should be a central part of today’s American school day.

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

The American high school is broken. The pandemic underscored just how broken. American teens are—as a September 2023 Gallup poll shows—disengaged, stressed, and questioning the value of high school and college. At the same time, they are hungry to make a difference in the world and to use new technologies and ideas toward that end. 

In 2013, Ted Sizer wrote a book called The New American High School. Large national foundations invested in smaller, more personalized high schools. The pandemic made clear it’s past time to finally remake high school, but with an eye toward the future. 

Rather than seek to provide a comprehensive set of learning experiences under one roof, the new American high school would connect students to meaningful work in their communities and to expert knowledge around the globe.

Rather than dumb down concepts or activities to make them easier for teenagers, it would support young people to do meaningful work that makes real contributions and leads to credentials that hold weight in the adult world.

Rather than sort students into tracks or marshaling all of them toward a single objective, it would provide every student adult guidance and technological support to understand their own conception of a good life, and provide them with the support, connections, knowledge, and skills to pursue that life—and to change course where necessary. 

Rather than focus on a centuries-old curriculum and memorization, it would recognize the transformative forces of AI technology, climate change, and geopolitics and prepare students to thrive, collaborate, and innovate in a rapidly changing world. Yes, students would still study Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Newton, but in a more relevant, contemporary context. 

Arizona State University’s Michael Crow conceived something similar for the postsecondary world—the New American University. These institutions would be designed for access rather than exclusivity, and would develop knowledge that could improve student’s communities and address global challenges. 

New career and technical education (CTE) programs popping up across the country provide a great starting point. They’re building tighter integrations between high school and postsecondary education, delivering industry-recognized credentials on the way to graduation, resourcing students through college via learn-and-earn programs, and developing students’ social capital to strengthen their support circles and professional networks. 

Seamless and permeable pathways

It is key that the New American High School does not place students into tracks or find them in dead-ends. Instead of “tracks,” there should be a seamless and permeable set of pathways between high school, college, and career. 

To provide a few examples:

• Colorado’s Homegrown Talent Initiative is a grant-funded program designed to help rural districts create career-relevant learning experiences aligned to the needs and aspirations of their local economies. Participating districts have redefined student graduation requirements, designed new courses, integrated career exploration into existing classes, and created new learning opportunities via internships with local industry and dual enrollment in local higher education institutions. 

• Seckinger High School in Gwinnett County, Georgia, is the district’s first artificial intelligence themed high school and is part of a broader district vision to foster excellence and a sense of belonging in every school. Once the school opens, students will receive a college preparatory curriculum that is taught through the lens of artificial intelligence. Students will also be able to pursue an education in developing artificial intelligence. 

• Indiana’s Purdue Polytechnic High School is a public charter school network designed to prepare students for careers in the STEM fields. The school implements hands-on and project-based learning, industry and higher ed partnerships, and a flexible and personalized approach. Students leave high school with college credit, in-demand industry credentials, as well as preferred admission to nine out of the 10 colleges at Purdue University. 

• Another Indiana charter school, GEO Academies, offers a College Immersion Program, a hyper personalized dual enrollment program where high school students take college classes on the college campus of their choice beginning as early as the ninth grade. GEO pays for everything and provides the academic, social, and emotional supports so that kids learn real-life skills and grow the confidence necessary to earn college degrees—and a path to escaping poverty—before they graduate from high school. When they are on the high school campus, GEO students can engage in direct, teacher-led instruction, independent learning and practice, and teacher-assisted small group instruction. 

• At the state level, Colorado, Delaware, Indiana, Louisiana, and Virginia are moving toward more coherent state-wide career pathways, using federal funds and industry partnerships to create a more permeable path between high school, college, and career. (Colorado Governor Jared Polis and Virginia Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera elaborate on their states’ work in essays on pages 76 and 39, respectively.)

There is plenty of evidence that the current American high school is outdated and irrelevant. The best source of data is coming from students themselves. Adolescents report feeling isolated, bored, and disengaged in school. In this volume, we report plenty of evidence that they are calling for change and they are voting with their feet by failing to attend school or dropping out to get a job in larger numbers than ever. 

Despite the very obvious need to update and refresh secondary education, high schools are notoriously resistant to change. Shifting existing curriculum, coursework, instructional strategies, counseling, industry partnerships, and teacher expertise are all onerous prospects. What’s more, the old model of high school is hard-wired: core graduation course requirements are geared toward a “college for all” mentality. Do students intent on pursuing a career in music, for instance, really need to take calculus? Schedules do not easily shift to accommodate a student who must leave during the day for an apprenticeship. If a student wants to take an online pre engineering course in place of a course offered by their high school, they must pay for it themselves. 

Much of schools’ inability to change stems from outdated state policy. State teacher licensing laws often prevent would-be teachers with industry expertise from teaching credit-earning classes. State graduation requirements often do not allow students to count industry credentials toward graduation. Funding models are outdated and assume high school students will receive all of their education in one building. 

A New National Initiative

To overcome these and many other barriers, we need a new national initiative for the New American High School. We need more states to follow the lead of vanguard states such as Colorado and Virginia—and for these states to continue to push for lasting changes to the core aims and structures of their schools. 

The growing movement to add or update career and technical education is a good start, but ultimately, career focus needs to grow rapidly from small, peripheral programs to a widespread, core element of all secondary education. 

As the other essays in this report suggest, we need to start thinking, talking, and acting bigger. Career preparation in high school is essential for every student. At the very least, students should leave high school with a guarantee that they have mastered the core skills the business and nonprofit sectors say they will need for the middle-class jobs of the future.

We can do this, but the business community, philanthropies, governors, and state school chiefs must lead. Here are some first steps that could make a real difference:

• Create a national council on the New American High School to set national goals and guide federal and state funding strategies 
• Support more state- and district-level initiatives for business-education partnerships like Colorado, Louisiana, and Virginia have done 
• Incentivize every state to collect data across states on long-term outcomes like Indiana has done
• Build a global network of schools and school districts that are committed to the New American High School
• Create a national research center on the New American High School to amass evidence on innovations, best practices, and policies to support schools and states that want to re-tool their high schools 

Tinkering around the edges of American high schools won’t ensure that every student graduates on a viable pathway to a family-sustaining career. We don’t need to remake career and technical education—we need to remake high school. 

Skeptics will understandably ask: how is this possible when school systems are struggling just to keep their heads above water, grappling with record levels of mental health and behavior challenges and declining achievement? 

My response to the skeptics: high schools across the country began this transformation before or even during the pandemic. They did so because they know there is no alternative but to shift toward the future. They know they must catch kids up, but they also know that the best way to do so is to engage them in deep, meaningful, and relevant ways. With the right help from the federal government, states, businesses, and philanthropies, this is doable. 

But the first step on any road to recovery is to admit that there’s a problem. Given the reality of the past few years, can anyone really argue that the American high school has not reached its bottom?

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

I’ve always believed that education is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet for life success. A quality education leads to greater personal earnings, better health outcomes, a stronger economy, and lower community crime rates, among many other benefits. For example, bachelor’s and associate degree holders take home median weekly earnings of $1,334 and $963, respectively, compared to $809 for their peers with only a high school degree, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But as the global economy rapidly evolves, we must rethink the way we educate students and our workforce. A fragmented approach—where high schools, postsecondary institutions, and employers all work in their own silos— shortchanges everyone.

We need to create more seamless pathways from school to careers. In Colorado, for example, 91.4% of jobs that can support a family of three require postsecondary education or some form of training or certification in high school beyond diploma requirements. Conventional four-year degrees alone cannot solve this problem, as more and more jobs value skills over a formal college diploma.

Blurring the Lines

In Colorado, we refer to breaking down silos as “blurring.” Advanced degrees and credentials are now table stakes to participate in the modern economy, but accessing them usually requires students to persist through four years of high school work that often doesn’t feel relevant to their futures. Then they proceed to postsecondary programs where they must take on debt, pay tuition, or forgo work while they pursue credentials. Blurring can make high school more relevant and credentials more attainable for all students.

While Colorado has seen one of the strongest economic recoveries in the country following the pandemic, employers across our state still struggle to find the right talent for their available jobs. One factor: we have historically asked students to make choices about their careers after leaving high school, often without the appropriate data needed to identify industry-specific needs or what kind of return on investment a particular pathway will afford.

That’s why we have been laser-focused on blurring the lines between high school, higher education, and the workforce. Students and young professionals deserve more opportunities to gain skills.
By increasing those opportunities, we can save people time and money, create a better-trained workforce, and better support our businesses.

Today, roughly 53% of high school graduates in Colorado earn college credit or industry credentials through dual and concurrent enrollment while in high school, saving them an estimated $53 million annually on tuition costs. A growing number also participate in apprenticeship and “learn while you earn” models.

Innovative intermediaries, such as CareerWise Colorado, are working between education and business to provide youth apprenticeship opportunities in industries such as banking, finance, health care, insurance and advanced manufacturing.

Additionally, Pathways in Technology Early College High School models (PTECH) provide students the opportunity to learn on the job while in high school, earn an associate degree and be first in line for those jobs following graduation.

However, more students can and should be participating in these opportunities. Our vision is that every student will graduate with a diploma in one hand and a certificate, degree, or meaningful job experience in the other.

That’s why the Colorado Legislature created a task force that brought together partners from schools, postsecondary pathways, and industry. Its mission was to “develop and recommend policies, laws, and rules to support the equitable and sustainable expansion and alignment of programs that integrate secondary, postsecondary, and work-based learning opportunities.”

This past year, the task force identified several impediments to the various pathways available to students: lack of awareness, confusion about program goals, affordability, and inadequate data on outcomes. Schools are already working to better target and maximize their resources, and the task force will present a final report with clear recommendations on how to scale this work by the end of 2023.

A Skills-Based Ecosystem

The four-year degree is still a great choice for many students, but we must also create opportunities for those who choose a different path. That’s why we are creating a skills-based ecosystem, where people of all ages can get the skills they need to fill jobs that will earn them a good living and support their families.

To lead by example, we implemented skills-based hiring practices for our state workforce, and we expanded apprenticeship opportunities within state government, implementing best practices already in place at many major employers in the state.

Colorado has removed or provided flexibility on degree requirements for most state jobs, such as entry-level positions, project management, IT and supervisory roles, replacing them with the opportunity to show experience and transferable skills. In the private sector, companies such as Google and Slalom Consulting now list degrees as optional for most positions in Colorado.

To ensure all students have access to these various pathways, Colorado has created a zero-cost credential program, making it completely free to pursue a number of healthcare certifications at any of our community and technical colleges. More than 1,000 students have taken advantage of this program, and we are working to expand it to other in- demand industries, such as early childhood and education, law enforcement, fire and forestry, skilled trades and green jobs. We also created a new state scholarship program that will provide eligible students who graduate in 2023-24 with $1,500 each to pursue higher education or postsecondary training.

We have also implemented a series of programs that help ensure our agencies, schools, and industry partners work together to break down silos and integrate our “blurring the lines” vision at a statewide level. In recent years, we’ve created other programs that encourage agencies, schools and businesses to collaborate in ways that offer students more opportunities to pursue credits and degrees. Those include expanded state apprenticeships, more scholarships for students in high-needs fields, and an $85 million grant program that helps businesses work with schools to grow their own talent.

All of this work creates a more integrated talent pipeline that serves students, professionals, and businesses alike. Blurring the lines means creating new opportunities, taking a bold new approach to training the workforce of tomorrow, and meeting Coloradans where they are—to help everyone achieve a successful future in a career that they love.

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

Parents have been kept in the dark about how far behind their kids are in school. The latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are devastating for our students, including many who are just starting high school and don’t have time to waste. 

We all agree the stakes have never been higher. The COVID-19 pandemic widened educational and economic inequality.

As the mother of five boys who struggled during school closures, and as we continue to navigate today’s education system, worries about their future trajectories are never far from my mind. As the president of the National Parents Union (NPU), I spent the last three years in constant communication with families nationwide. Parents are sending a message loud and clear: we want better, more accurate information about our kids.

about their children’s educational and life experiences and what it means for them long-term. 

The more parents learn about the state of education, the more concerned they become and for good reason: the kids are not alright. Parents widely agree that America’s education system is in despair.

• label it a major problem that students are still behind academically, according to the Nation’s Report Card, including 34% who say it’s a crisis.
• agree the mental health challenges among children is a major problem, including 34% who say it’s a crisis. 
• believe America’s education system needs to be overhauled.

We want policymakers to acknowledge the pandemic’s impact on our children’s learning and development, and comprehensively address the challenges facing our education system to ensure students fully recover with pathways to economic mobility. Elected leaders and education decision makers must move past culture wars, rhetoric, and finger pointing with legislation and policies that reflect the reimagined experience parents want for their kids.

Policymakers can contribute to a more equitable, resilient education system with some practical solutions. These proposals are based on over decades and innovative approaches developed during the pandemic. They are aligned with what parents want for their children. 

First, give parents a seat at the table

Parents should be partners with schools from the beginning: participating in strategic planning, budgeting, leadership changes, and contract negotiations. It’s not enough to ask them for permission after decisions have already been made. Only collaboratively can we create a path forward. 

After our heroic leadership as facilitators of our own children’s educations and powerful partners in school reopening and recovery, we expect to continue to be involved in decision making and want a say in how education will be reimagined. Over the past few years, we established greater transparency and communication with policymakers about strategies for addressing today’s challenges. We must continue to deepen these efforts.

As the clock runs down on billions in financial aid, we need to examine what is working and what isn’t. We’re looking at an abrupt funding stop and deep cuts beginning in the 2024- 25 school year and our most vulnerable students will suffer when the fiscal cliff hits. This is the moment to rethink how we teach and finance education.

Parents want , as well as additional educational and mental health support.

Enter a new age of honesty and transparency

Policymakers and educators need to welcome a new age of honesty and transparency with parents, families, and communities. Assessment data plays a critical role in driving student progress by providing educators with a clear picture of learning and identifying areas for additional interventions and investments. 

• would like their child’s teachers to discuss their child’s performance and progress with them more often.

Data helps teachers individualize instruction and ensure all students reach their full potential. Tracking student progress over time allows educators to identify patterns in student learning and adjust instructional strategies as needed. We must also be flexible to change when plans do not yield the results our children deserve. 

Offer diverse pathways

With all of its complex challenges, the pandemic also provided the opportunity to create more flexibility in the education system. It highlighted the limitations of traditional classroom-based learning and the need for alternative approaches. Now we are hungry for more options for remote learning, hybrid learning models, and other approaches that will accommodate the diverse needs of children and families.

• want to have a personalized pathway plan for their child, outlining classes they could take in K-12 to help them achieve their individual career or college goals.

Any expectation that families will continue to conform to an outdated school model holds us all back. The path forward is clear for parents. 

• said K-12 schools should change the way they teach students reading and math to line up with what the newest research says is best practice.
• say schools should do more to have school schedules and calendars reflect research on how and when kids learn best.
• say schools should do more to provide opportunities for additional learning time, such as after-school or summer academic programs.

Urgent support for teens

Our teens need more support to ensure they aren’t simply pushed out before we’ve adequately prepared them to launch. 

• say schools should do more to ensure college-bound students and students who choose different pathways have equally good opportunities to prepare for their future while in high school.

Many of our youth have lost out on important opportunities including internships, job shadowing, or other career-related experiences over the last several years. They struggle with depleted family resources and basic needs, preventing them from pursuing postsecondary education and training opportunities. 

• support student loan relief as a tactic for economic mobility.

Will families still be willing to take on unending debt to pay for tuition in our colleges and universities as a good investment for our children in the future? Multiple recent surveys suggest they won’t.

Increased access to alternative opportunities for students to gain valuable career experience— including virtual internships, work-based and skills-based learning opportunities, adult education programs, vocational training, and more—will help prepare students for the future.

Prioritize mental health

In addition to academic support, parents want policymakers to prioritize students’ mental health and social-emotional well-being.

• believe policymakers need to prioritize addressing their children’s mental health needs. 

The pandemic took a toll on our students’ mental health, increasing rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns. We want to see more funding and long-term investments in school based mental health and social-emotional resources.

Needed: Transformational change

We must put an end to petty political fights, institutional racism, an antiquated status quo, and policies that prioritize adults over kids and instead collaboratively address the transformational changes our children and families need. NPU will continue to work with lawmakers on key priorities to improve the quality of life for families across the country. Now is the moment for elected leaders and education decision-makers to act with bold urgency and a renewed commitment to courageous conversations about how our nation’s schools can truly change—systematically and thoroughly. Parents will be watching.

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

It’s time to bring back the coffee cups!

 When I first attended the annual meeting of the Education Commission of the States in the early 1990s, they were handing out coffee cups with an exhortation that “all kids can learn.” I remember thinking, duh, of course they can. The standards movement was in full bloom at the time, and the statement seemed like a no-brainer. 

No longer. The pandemic merely illuminated and exacerbated what has been happening in American education for years: the systematic dismantling of a culture of high expectations. Rather than continuing to work together to help all children meet these high standards, which had been the national focus for a few decades, too many state leaders have settled for moving the goalposts, , and pretending that everything was okay. It isn’t.

Combating historic declines with a commitment to excellence, opportunity and innovation

On the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Virginia had a 13-point drop in fourth-grade reading since 2017 (the largest reading decline in the nation) and a 12-point drop in fourth-grade math (tied with Maryland as the largest math decline). Both declines are nearly three times the national average in learning loss, and they began before the pandemic as previous administrations lowered expectations across the board. The pandemic worsened everything, of course. As a result, we’re on the verge of losing an entire generation of students.

This tragic reality has fueled our sense of urgency and commitment to change in Virginia. Nothing but boldness will suffice. We know that Virginia has excellent schools, but not every student and family has access to that excellence. We are relying on a much broader set of innovative solutions, and tapping into the expertise of educators and community partners to ensure that every student can attend a school that prepares them for success in life.

For example, 19 (and counting) partnerships have applied to take advantage of the $100 million we have earmarked for , which will stimulate innovative approaches to teaching and learning; encourage greater collaboration among K-12, postsecondary, business and other community partners; and develop model programs that can be replicated. In Southwest Virginia, public schools, community colleges, and local hospitals are collaborating to develop a school to prepare students for careers in health care, which will help support these traditionally underserved communities. On the eastern shore, NASA, Virginia Space, the local community college, and aerospace companies are working with K-12 school districts to launch an aerospace-focused school as part of the goal to make the area the “space hub of the east coast.” Efforts like these are breaking down the walls between education and work, blowing up the one-size-fits-all approach to education, and providing students, especially those who have been marginalized in the past, exposure to the careers of the future.

To help support and accelerate efforts such as these, we’ve created an Office of Innovation within the Virginia Department of Education. This office will not only catalog innovative approaches throughout Virginia, but also network and learn from them so we can replicate success in every corner of the commonwealth. Together with education stakeholders, we will continue to dive into the important and tough questions such as:

•  Why doesn’t the commonwealth have more Thomas Jefferson High Schools, the highly acclaimed STEM school, when the waiting list shows huge demand for many more?

• Why are colleges lowering admissions standards at the end of students’ K-12 journeys, when it is much more effective (and fair) to focus on challenging them and preparing them from their earliest years? That’s why we are rethinking gifted/talented and similar programs to provide historically underrepresented kids access to educational opportunities that some children have always had. In addition, the is revamping how we teach all students to read—ensuring that all instructional materials, professional development, licensure, and teacher prep are based in the science of reading by the 2024-25 school year.
• What can we learn from the new tutoring and mentoring partnerships among K-12, the Urban League, and historically Black colleges and universities in the Petersburg and Hampton Roads areas that can be scaled statewide and nationally?

Empowering families

Parents matter. They deserve to not only have a seat at the table, but to be at the head. We are proactively empowering parents with more actionable information and greater options for their child to access excellence. 

Parents have inflated perceptions of student achievement. National research documents that 90% of parents believe their child is at or above grade level in reading and math. In reality, only 37% of students nationally perform at or above grade level in reading and math—a 53% gap between parent perception and reality. This is largely due to a lack of transparency around student proficiency and a dearth of effective communication with parents. 

Therefore, Virginia is preparing data reports that tell the truth about where every student and school stands. This year, for the first time ever, schools sent every parent and teacher the same understandable, actionable academic proficiency report, showing a clear picture of how their students were performing and offering discussion topics to support student success. The Virginia Department of Education has also created a complementary online portal, , which includes easy-to-read charts and tables showing a student’s performance compared to their peers. 

Thanks to a work group created in our latest legislative session, we are developing an online parent portal that will give parents quality information so they are informed champions and partners in their children’s education. The State Board of Education is also revising our school accreditation system so that there is clear, easy-to-digest information about the academic proficiency and progress of students in every K-12 school in the commonwealth. 

We are using data as a flashlight, not a hammer, to inform better decisions at kitchen tables, classrooms, school boards, and the State Capitol. A professional learning community of 25 school districts is helping us develop tools and supports to use this data effectively. Our goal is for every off-track student to have a personalized learning plan with a set of actions to address learning gaps. These plans will be developed and implemented in partnership with teachers, parents, and students.  We’ll also train teachers on how to communicate with parents and students about the steps to get a student to grade-level proficiency. 

To combat the drastic impact of COVID-19 school closures on students’ educational progress and address the earlier decline in proficiency, we provided $63 million in grants to help families access tutoring services this summer. We have also been increasing awareness of the Education Improvement Scholarship Tax Credit so that more families can afford to send their children to schools that can better meet their academic needs. In all this work, we are empowering parents—with better information and, when possible, financial support, while always ensuring that they are at the head of the table.

Breaking down silos to provide multiple pathways to success for all Virginia learners

We must also increase exposure, experience, and expertise in the world of work in high school and postsecondary education. To achieve this, Governor Youngkin has vowed to further blur the lines and increase coordination between K-12, higher education, and the workplace. Our goal is that every high school student graduates with an industry-recognized credential and/or an associate degree. We will do this by expanding career and technical education, launching lab schools, and accelerating dual enrollment partnerships between high schools and community colleges. 

Our colleges have an equally urgent focus on connecting learning with working. The business community, higher education, administration, and General Assembly are all committed to the Virginia Talent & Opportunity Program, which aims to ensure a paid work experience for every college student while in school. Fast Forward, a short-term workforce credential and training program in Virginia’s community colleges, provides affordable opportunities for students to receive training and credentialing in high-demand industries like information technology, skilled trades, infrastructure, and healthcare. The Virginia Community College Board voted this past year to allow high school students to take advantage of this program as well. Additionally, our G3 program, a tuition assistance program for Virginia students, is aiding community college students in high-demand industries.

Virginia, like every other state in the country and every other country in the world, is competing for talent. Quality schools are the foundation and door-opener. The good news is that we know how to improve student success: with high expectations, great instruction, transparency, accountability, and a commitment to innovation. Given the setbacks of the past several years, however, we’re now in an all-hands-on-deck moment in Virginia. By law, Governor Youngkin is limited to a single four-year term. We’re not wasting a minute.

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

Kesar Gaba, a rising sophomore at Queens College, was in high school when the pandemic hit. 

“All I saw for two years was black screens on Zoom. It affected my mental health, it affected my relationships within my family, and it really overall affected the way I see the world.” 

Arshia Papari, a rising freshman at the University of Texas at Austin, had a slightly different attitude toward online schooling compared to Kesar. 

“What the pandemic did for me was that it really opened me up to a new opportunity in schooling, but it also took away the ability for me to do any sort of in-person connections and have a real high school experience. But I think it’s been a trade-off between the experiences you have during high school and also the convenience of online schooling.”

Many students had similar experiences during the pandemic. Whether they enjoyed online schooling or not, these stories have been published dozens of times in varying news outlets and reflected in student surveys. But older students in particular had less time to catch up before leaving the school system, creating concerns as to whether they had ample support emerging from the pandemic. 

We at CRPE were interested in learning about these students’ current hopes, fears, and ideas for how to strengthen the U.S. education system. To that end, we spoke with 10 older youth— that is, high schoolers nearing graduation or students who have already graduated—to get their perspective on the data in our report as well as on life as an American teenager, their take on rising mental illness rates among peers their age, and what it would take to change the current education system.

Why the kids are not all right

“If the world around you is giving you stimuli that the world is falling apart or the world’s on fire, and that repeats every day on TikTok or on YouTube … I think that’s what’s leading to the [rising mental health problems] trend of going up, up, up, and up.” –Arshia Papari, rising freshman, The University of Texas at Austin

By now, it is common knowledge that students’ mental illness rates are, and have been, worsening. The pandemic is often blamed. In reality, the pandemic is just part of a bigger picture. Students had concerns around their well-being and safety—both inside and outside of schools—long before Covid-19. The pandemic just created an opportunity to bring these issues to light.

“I feel like the pandemic gave us this gateway to just talk about [feelings of helplessness and depression] in a more normalized setting. This has been a problem for some time, but I don’t think that it’s just because the pandemic happened.” –Abigail Singh, rising freshman, Bennington College, Vermont

Students had a lot to say about what they believe is contributing to these rising trends. 

First and foremost, these students are concerned about their safety and security in schools, physically and emotionally. They named political and cultural tensions — Title IX scandals, bans on Pride flags, anti-trans legislation, and reckless gun violence, among others — as harmful to their wellbeing. Even if these events were not happening in their schools or didn’t affect them directly, these issues still impact the mental health of the COVID generation. 

Lazuli Clark, a transgender female student, remarked on how difficult it can be to focus on school when some policymakers are passing laws against her identity.

“Going to school is the least of people’s concerns at this point for a lot of people. There are days where I’m like, oh yeah, I have to worry about my AP U.S. history project and yesterday another state basically made it so that I can never exist in that state. And it’s like, how’s anyone supposed to think about anything at all when there’s all of that going on? Even if you’re not directly impacted by it. Most people in my generation know somebody who’s impacted in one way or the other.”

Other students felt vulnerable in their own communities. Liv Birnstad, a recent graduate from a public charter school in Washington, D.C., explained how school resource officers (SROs) were meant to be replaced with mental health professionals in school buildings:

“But what ended up happening is they took [SROs] away and then didn’t replace them [with mental health professionals]. And so now they’re putting [SROs] back into schools because they thought that the problem was that we didn’t have SROs. But the real problem is that we didn’t have inter-community support. At my school we have school resource officers, but we also have a lot of police. And so a lot of students feel really uncomfortable receiving support at school because it feels like a really kind of carceral space.”

Liv is not alone. Arivumani Srivastava, who attended a high school in rural Kentucky, described a similar initiative in his state as a “give-and-take” bill. After the Marshall County High School shooting, the bill mandated a mental health professional be present in schools, but also required a certain number of police officers on campuses. Similarly, Abigail Singh, a graduate of a charter school in Brooklyn, New York, described how it felt to go through scanners at school meant to check for weapons: “It just makes us all feel villainized.”

The students made it clear that in-school mental health supports are not enough to improve their well-being. First, they need to feel safe enough to use these supports.

“If students aren’t able to freely explore themselves in a safe and supported way in schools, then all they’re doing is looking at a future where they’ll have less guidance and probably equal, if not more scrutiny. And so it makes sense for me that they would be hopeless or sad.” –Jaylen Adams, rising freshman, Columbia University, New York

“I feel like mental health is something that we’re still growing in society. We’re advocating on [it] because it is a really big issue that students face. And if it’s not tackled, it just keeps becoming an issue and it could lead to more severe factors on a student’s life. It’s just something that needs to continue to be touched upon in a school setting.” –Alejandro Blanco, rising sophomore, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign

Social media: A double-edged sword

We cannot underestimate the influence social media platforms and apps have on youth. For instance, Georgia’s Brady Phan benefited from school closures. He used the free time during lockdown to reflect on his goals and double down on his academic aspirations. But he also saw how school closures adversely affected many of his peers, especially those who were drawn to influential people on social media.

“A lot of these entrepreneurs [on social media] are saying that you should not go to college, that there’s a lot of easier ways to make money. And especially during the pandemic where they’re the most vulnerable–that’s where I see them influence [youth] a lot. And that would maybe change [my peers’] minds about pursuing or excelling in an academic career.” –Brady Phan, rising senior, DeKalb County School District, Georgia

“We saw a lot more people who were more radicalized [during the pandemic]. They’d fallen down certain rabbit holes because they were just like locked up on their own. And they also lost a lot of empathy because, well, we gain empathy by talking to people who are different from us. But if you’re just alone for a year, a year and a half, two years, then you do tend to lose that sense of compassion for people who are different than you.” –Maya Murali, rising senior, Lewisville Independent School District, Texas

While there is ample evidence of the harmful effects of social media, including the spread of misinformation, the students also highlighted the opportunities these platforms provide. Abigail Singh, for example, has an interest in social justice and wants to pursue a career in journalism. In her eyes, social media is a powerful tool for advocacy.

“Being someone with so many intersectional identities, it’s hard to find a community where I feel represented and exist. And so social media is definitely somewhere where I feel like I’ve been given the platform to help other students like me.” –Abigail Singh, rising freshman, Bennington College, Vermont

Liv sees a similar opportunity. As someone who attended a small school and identifies as Jewish and queer, she praised social media for helping connect her to like-minded peers. It is a “reminder that there’s life outside of [school] … social media can kind of help you find your niche group when you don’t have access at a school.” 

While there is cause to be wary of harmful users who can influence youth negatively, the benefits social media bestows are also notable. For teenagers like Abigail, Liv, and others who use these platforms to connect to one another and find community where they may not otherwise have the opportunity to do so, social media can be enlightening.

“I definitely think that social media helps in addition to the ways it harms. It definitely is harmful and I don’t want to understate that, but I also really feel like that the way social media is reported about overshadows the good that it can do.” –Arivumani Srivastava, rising sophomore, Pomona College, California

Ideas for the future of education

Although youth have serious concerns about deteriorating mental health and social conflicts, they are also optimistic about how schooling can be improved. They are especially intrigued about the potential of AI and peer mentoring.

Similar to social media, students acknowledge how AI can be harmful for those that rely too much on technology like ChatGPT. Rather than dwelling on these concerns, however, students were more excited to share the possibilities it can offer.

“I think the education system as a whole is concerned more about how [ChatGPT] can be used for cheating and not really seeing it for what it can be, which is a really powerful tool.” –Maya Murali, rising senior, Lewisville Independent School District, Texas

“I hope that things like ChatGPT and text-to-speech [tools] can continue to advance in a way that provides more accessibility for people. As someone who is not neurotypical, a lot of times I do benefit from different approaches to how lessons are taught, and it can be a lot of work for a teacher to have to create multiple different ways for something to be taught. So if we can find a way for artificial intelligence to be used in terms of accessibility, it’ll be a lot less work on the behalf of the teacher and the student.” –Lazuli Clark, rising senior, KIPP Academy Lynn Collegiate, Massachusetts

Other students also commented on how they use ChatGPT to compare their own writing to it, or as a jumping-off point for assignments. But they warned that AI cannot be the end-all be-all. As one student put it, “You still need to know what you’re doing. You need to be able to think critically and be able to edit essays or whatever it’s generating for you.”

Students also want schools to provide more mentoring support and help navigating college and career pathways.

“[Having] a set structure in schools to just have one-on-one talks with each student: see where they’re at, see how they’re feeling, what they want to pursue. Just have that intensive nature to each student to make sure they’re feeling heard, they’re feeling shown attention. And I feel like that’s really helpful, especially in a high school setting where there’s a lot of kids and being heard goes a long way.” –Alejandro Blanco, rising sophomore, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois

When we asked students what they found to be most helpful in considering postsecondary options, nearly all of them mentioned talking with an older peer or adult. For instance, Jaylen will be attending Columbia University this fall on a full scholarship. But she was no expert at the college application process. Instead, she relied on help from various college readiness programs to research the application, financial aid, and negotiation processes. Brady, who wants to study computer science at Georgia Tech, has been getting advice about the admissions process from his football coach (an alumni) and his uncle (a current student).

Continuing the conversation

The students also spoke of the increasing external pressure they feel for their generation to attend college, rectify key issues like climate change, and generally “do well.” If we put expectations like these onto youth, it’s only fair that we also provide the necessary supports for them to succeed.

Bottom line: educators must listen to students now more than ever. As they are currently navigating the educational system, they have the best understanding of its strengths, and more importantly, what it still lacks. Older youth who were forced out of the education system during a global health crisis were especially vulnerable to its flaws. They deserve better. They want to be heard. And they expect adults to act on their advice.

“I’m on the DC State Board of Education, and they were so excited to have student members of the board. My first term, we couldn’t get anything done. I’d ask [for help] at public meetings and instead of even saying no, they just would not respond. Everyone would just go silent for a minute and move on. I give 10 hours a week, I’m on two committees of the board, and they can’t even listen to me.” –Liv Birnstad, rising freshman, Harvard University, Massachusetts

“It feels like a lot more people want to hear what [students] say, but even though they hear what we say, that doesn’t mean they take it into account at all. It really feels like they just said, ‘Oh we listened to the kids but they’re young, they’re stupid, they don’t know.’ So we’ll just add it as an appendix to what we’re doing and then move on with what we think. And I guess that’s just really infuriating to me because I feel like I’d rather just not be listened to than to be tokenized.” –Arivumani Srivastava, rising sophomore, Pomona College, California

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

The United States has an education problem—low and declining test scores, disengaged students, and growing teacher shortages, among other challenges. In Indiana, fewer high school students are pursuing postsecondary education or completing a credential or degree. This decline in postsecondary enrollment and educational attainment is sharpest for Black and Hispanic/Latino students, especially males. 

We also have a skills gap problem—not enough people with the skills to handle the jobs of the future—and the pandemic has accelerated this misalignment in supply and demand. In Indianapolis alone, at last count, we needed 215,000 people with job-ready credentials to close our skills gap. 

Traditional approaches aren’t working. Communities like ours must become much more innovative if we wish to ensure a future of inclusive economic prosperity. 

A continuum of career-connected learning

EmployIndy, a quasi-governmental intermediary organization, is doing what we can. We work closely with businesses, K-12, postsecondary and higher education, city and state agencies, and philanthropic organizations to ensure all local residents earn a livable wage and that local employers have the skilled talent they need to grow. In order to make our vision a reality, we invest in what works: good jobs, talent connections, coaching and training, and career-connected learning. 

We leverage a continuum of career-connected learning to ensure Indy’s youth and young adults are positioned to meet the future needs of the local economy. This continuum includes a broad array of exploration, engagement, and experience opportunities. As part of this learning continuum, one of our most ambitious initiatives is a reinvented approach to apprenticeship, a job training model that dates back to the Middle Ages. Through the Modern Apprenticeship Program, which we operate with a sister intermediary, Ascend Indiana, we’re preparing high school students for the jobs of the future. By blurring the lines between education and work, we’re making learning more relevant for students. We’re giving businesses a fresh approach to a time-tested model. And we’re creating more pathways to prosperity for all students, with a particular focus on the underserved, underrepresented, and underprivileged in our community. By blurring the lines between education and work, we’re making learning more relevant for students. We’re giving businesses a fresh approach to a timetested model. And we’re creating more pathways to prosperity for all students. 

More than 40 participating local employers and 14 high schools have come together to co-develop talent, offering apprenticeships across seven industries with the highest student interest: 

• Healthcare services 

• Information technology

• Business operations 

• Advanced manufacturing 

• Construction 

• Education 

• Financial services 

Specific jobs range from project coordinators and staff accountants to maintenance technicians and IT support. 

High school students earn while they learn. As juniors, they spend two days a week on the job, which increases to three days as seniors. One year after graduation, young adults have earned a high school diploma, college credits, and industry credentials. They have built a professional network. And they have a choice for their next step—college, postsecondary training, or work. What parent wouldn’t want that for their 18-year-old? 

We’re having an impact. We’re helping diversify our workforce: about 88% of current apprentices are students of color, 60% are female, and one-third come from low-income households, doing jobs such as IT and accounting that historically have been dominated by white men. We’re reducing employer turnover: 94% of Indiana employees say they would stay with their companies longer if they invested in learning. And we’re having a positive return on investment: every $1 invested in apprenticeship returns $1.47.

Scaling what works

Our primary challenge now is to expand what’s working. We’ve incubated success. Now we must scale it. Doing so will require all parties to adjust how they do business in the 21st century.

Employers need to play a much bigger, more well-defined role in this new system. They must cocreate learning opportunities, advise on occupations and curriculum, become training companies for apprentices, and invest more time and treasure to ensure education and government partners are providing the most comprehensive education possible to young people. They need to engage their future workforce early, starting in middle school, and not wait until unprepared graduates fill out a job application. 

High schools must continue to become more flexible, offering students more choices and pathways. They must work with their community partners to ensure all students are receiving the career-coaching support needed to make important decisions about their future. Graduation day must be seen as the starting line, not the endpoint. 

Colleges and universities must become more adaptable, awarding credits for prior learning (including on the job) and working more closely with local employers on teaching applied skills. Clearly, there is a continued role for elite postsecondary programs, but we are equally committed to working with innovative community-focused institutions. 

Government agencies must continue to broaden their measures of accountability to track not just high school graduation rates, college-going rates, or completion data, but more longitudinal and actionable data that allow institutions to make informed and equitable decisions about the needs of their constituents. 

Young people themselves must step up and benefit from the growing opportunities to take charge of their own learning. Of course, they need to learn math, science, and reading. But just as important, they need a career plan. And they need to master durable skills such as problem solving, teamwork, and conflict resolution that will help them in school–and in life. 

Apprenticeships are just one of the gateways we’re providing to young people to build skills and become future-ready. Working with multiple partners, we also support dropout prevention and recovery programs, administer career coaching and job training programs, and deliver a curriculum for young adults to learn durable skills in mindsets, self management, learning strategies, social skills, workplace skills, and launching a career. 

Thanks to the leadership of Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett, we’re also able to award college scholarships, provide completion grants, and connect teens to summer jobs, among other efforts. The City of Indianapolis has dedicated millions of dollars annually over the last five years to Indy Achieves, which works to ensure that every Indianapolis resident can pursue and complete a postsecondary credential or degree program. We empower residents to pursue careers that put them on a pathway to the middle class by removing barriers and providing a debt-free pathway to a better future. Mayor Hogsett also launched Project Indy as a critical first step in helping young people explore job opportunities and gain valuable experience and skills toward a future career. We’ve connected thousands of in-school and out-of-school youth in Marion County to summer jobs and work-based learning experiences. 

One of our most innovative programs, YES Indy, invites out-of-school youth to play basketball at reengagement centers (RECs) as a first step in building the trust needed for them to reengage with school and work. The Indianapolis area has more than 30,000 such young people. It costs us about $12,500 each to reengage with them—a smart investment, considering it costs society three times more if they continue to stay out of school or work. As an intermediary working with many stakeholders, we’re a catalyst, a translator, and a funding go between. We’ve made hopeful progress since our founding in 1983. Our real success, however, will be when we’re not needed anymore, when businesses and institutions are working together as a matter of course, and routinely engaging students with real-world, hands-on, and creative assignments that help them become the lifelong learners every community needs.

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

Countless words have been written about the tragedy of COVID-19: the millions of lives lost, the steep declines in student learning, the trauma of extended isolation, and much more. All true. 

But equally true is that the pandemic had at least one silver lining. If nothing else, it taught us that long-intractable institutions—like universities and public school systems—can change. Immediately, if necessary. 

For years, advocates have been begging institutions to do things differently. The invariable response: “We can’t. It’s too hard. Be patient. Give us time.” Then came COVID-19, and within 24 hours, everything changed. For example, online learning and work, long deemed challenging, became ubiquitous. 

The secret was out. Even the most tradition-bound institutions could change when they had to. Let’s make sure to take advantage of the best of these emergency measures and make them the new normal. It is a choice. 

From a deficit model to an asset model

Consider my institution, New York University. By listening to the disability community, we are working to change how we educate autistic and other neurodivergent students. We are trying to move from a deficit model to an asset-based model that is neurodiversity-affirming. We have a new Office of Disability Inclusive Culture that now works closely with our Moses Center for Student Accessibility, which provides accommodations and works to provide equal access to learning for students. The office is charged with looking beyond medical- or accommodations-based models toward faculty development, pedagogy, and organizational culture. 

“Disability-inclusive culture” means that the work is community work. How do we impact and shift the attitudes of faculty, staff, and students? Instead of organizing our work around what students cannot do, we are working closely with staff and student self-advocates to show what students can do if we design universally for access and reduce stigma. We are collaborating so that our neurodivergent students can use their strengths and abilities on a path to future employment. 

No one builds lives on their remediated weaknesses. We build our lives based on passions and strengths. Our job as educators is to make those journeys as joyous and productive as possible. 

The old, and often still current, approach assumed autistic students needed to be “fixed.” Students registered with offices of disability services for accommodations deemed reasonable. Often these accommodations were implemented universally during the pandemic. Lectures were taped or recorded for all. Students had to have these reasonable accommodations to succeed in the classroom, but that was the minimum. 

Looking ahead, how can universities go beyond the minimum to make access universal? How can they see students for who they are, work with them to identify their strengths, and use those as the foundation for continued learning? What if universities adopted a posture that said, “You don’t have to change. This is who you are. You are more than enough. How can we best support what you need to continue growing?”

A systemic approach

To that end, a group of NYU students, faculty, and staff from units across the university—from IT to instruction to campus safety—is meeting to systematically solve problems facing students, faculty, and staff. A starting place is making physical spaces more accessible, so our libraries now have sensory rooms that ensure quiet environments for studying. We are intentionally focusing on inclusive pedagogy and, in my former role as vice dean of academic affairs at NYU Steinhardt, have added mini-sessions at each monthly schoolwide meeting to reach as many faculty as possible. 

I teach a course on inclusion and access for undergraduates that gives students the option to attend in person, online, or fully asynchronously. Many neurodiverse students preferred learning online during the pandemic; we must respect that, even if hybrid teaching is much more challenging for educators. It won’t be easy to figure out how to increase access, but the pandemic has taught us that it is possible. I can’t very well teach my radical inclusion and disability justice course and insist that all my students show up in person. 

In addition to having multiple means to engage with the material, students in this course have myriad ways to show what they know, including written assignments, oral presentations or works, artistic and musical expression, and multimedia demonstrations. These universally designed assignments capitalize on students’ strengths and interests. 

Small steps can make an impact

Many faculty members are thinking about access and their own teaching and policies. Even the simplest fixes can have a major impact. For instance, faculty wonder why few students show up when we post a notice: “Office hours, 9-10 a.m., Mondays and Thursdays.” Not surprisingly, many students would ask, “What’s an office hour? Am I in trouble?” Now, I’m careful to reframe the offer: “I care about you. I want to understand you better. What issues is this class bringing up for you? 

Please come see me. I’m in my office from 9:00-10:00 every Monday and Thursday. Or set up an appointment online.” I use this language in my syllabus, the contract I have with students. I also start each class by letting students know they can move and do what they need to do to regulate their own attention. 

We are taking advantage of more autistic peer-to-peer mentoring and support, which research finds is more valid and valuable (; ). This includes a new where I serve as co-principal investigator, through which several of our autistic college students at NYU are mentoring their autistic high school peers on STEM interests and pathways to college. This project just started, but already our autistic university mentors are enjoying being in leadership positions. They are using their strengths and abilities to guide their autistic peers and have indicated how they would have benefited from this type of mentorship as they struggled in the transition to college.

All of this work at NYU began a few years before COVID-19. But it gained momentum in the past few years and will continue to evolve. There is much work to do as universities think about access as well as student development. What it takes is the willingness to center the voice and expertise of students. Advocates can partner with institutions to identify innovative solutions and should be in more leadership positions to impact the change that needs to happen. But we must listen—students are the real experts in their own learning. 

And universities must be bold. If COVID-19 taught higher education anything, it’s that we must be willing to take risks and do what was once considered unthinkable. The payoff is worth it: students will thrive and flourish as institutions make these changes. 

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

Higher education is under increased pressure to prove its value, and the pandemic presented us with an opportunity to reexamine outdated assumptions and approaches.

Opinion surveys capture part of the challenge. While the majority of Americans continue to trust in the value of higher education, the belief that colleges and universities have a positive effect on the country and local communities dropped from 69% in 2020 to 55% in 2022. This declining public trust, attributable to such factors as student debt and costs of attendance, underscores the work ahead. Here at ASU, as the New American University and a National Service University, we have centered the changing needs of students and their families as the pandemic pushed those needs to a new level.

We’re Responding to the Pandemic in Several Important Ways

Adjusting student support. The enforced isolation of the pandemic has delayed developmental milestones for many of our traditional-aged students, affecting their social development, emotional health, and cognitive readiness. Incoming students are displaying behavior we might expect of younger adolescents, with difficulties managing their daily responsibilities, challenges resolving interpersonal conflicts, and troubling incidents of violence, vandalism, and even vigilantism. Students who feel under-prepared for the learning environment may draw attention, albeit maladaptively, to their struggles.

We are testing several approaches to improve conduct, enhance safety, and promote success. In some of our residential settings, where we have noted an increase
in property destruction, our community assistants and community directors will ask students to set some of their own rules. Do you want quiet hours? If so, when? How should our common areas look? Do we establish a type of neighborhood watch? What happens to students who don’t abide by these expectations? Instead of rules imposed from above, students will be empowered to take the lead.

Another approach will be to increase the presence of our campus safety aides, students paid to circulate around campus and in the residential communities. They identify security risks (e.g., unlocked or propped doors, damage), and we have found their presence helps to deter problematic behavior. We are also moving toward the tightened access

controls that were more common during the pandemic, evaluating who needs access to what portions of the residential community or building.

To improve health, well-being, and student success, we are continuing some of the approaches
that the pandemic forced on us while expanding other supports. Notably, we will continue using technology to increase access to services, resources, and care at the times convenient for students. We expect to see continued use of Zoom advising appointments, telehealth, telecounseling, and texting. We are also expanding the use of our chatbot, Sunny, to deliver information and interact with students. Sunny has the ability to refer students to the appropriate resources and alert our teams to students in distress.

Expanding inclusive and compassionate learning practices. We are accelerating our efforts to redesign everything, from buildings to instruction, to serve the diverse range of students. Not only the nearly 10,000 students who receive disability resources or accommodations from us, but all students will benefit from increased flexibility in instruction and assessment. Instead of a test at the end of every course, what about allowing students to choose how to demonstrate mastery of material? Instead of insisting that all students come back to class now that the pandemic is over, how do we serve the students for whom remote learning was a godsend—those students who would rarely speak in class but were avid users of the chat function on Zoom?

Compassionate and inclusive learning strategies can benefit everyone, yet they have an especially marked effect on students with disabilities and others who were disproportionately affected during the pandemic. Requiring students to document a disability in order to receive accommodations favors those with means, access, and resources. Inclusive learning practices challenge us to deliver content in a variety of ways, allowing students to engage with the materials and express their comprehension through
various mechanisms. If we want more students to succeed, compassionate and inclusive design should become the norm; thus, we are working closely with faculty to implement these practices.

Blurring the lines between K-12 and higher ed. Another way that higher education can capitalize
on this moment is to blur our lines with K-12. When students can get a degree faster through dual enrollment or credits for passing scores on Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams, the financial and time investment may prove less daunting. Our ASU Preparatory Academy (ASU Prep; brick-and-mortar) and ASU Prep Digital offer ideal pathways for this kind of acceleration.

We can also move career exploration earlier in the educational journey, to middle school, helping students discover their interests and then mapping out possible choices and options. Knowing the relationship of a particular degree to a particular career will help connect the dots in meaningful ways. If students and their families understand that college increases the likelihood of a secure career, then we might have a chance to convince those critical of higher education that it still offers the most promising pathway for enhanced economic, social, physical, and emotional well-being.

This leap of faith requires that we address those students and their families who choose work over school for very immediate and understandable reasons. One solution that we offer students who tell us they need to work: “Come work for us. We have no shortage of jobs on campus, plus you’ll get a tuition benefit.” This is a win-win for us and for them.

Prioritizing access. Despite the selectivity that many colleges maintain in order to increase their rankings, we must shift our focus to providing both accessible and excellent learning environments. Higher education has long needed to reconsider its admission requirements and allow students
to demonstrate readiness in different ways—such as the test-optional admissions that increased significantly during the pandemic. Increased accessibility will help to ensure a diverse student population, contributing to a richer learning environment. We should also encourage and

empower the return of students who needed to step away from their studies during the pandemic. Furthermore, at ASU we have contemplated next steps for two other types of students: 1) those whose learning loss or disruptions during the pandemic may have kept them out of higher education institutions, and 2) those who may have long ago given up on the idea of a college degree. Opportunities like Earned Admission provide a reasonable and attainable pathway for entry into higher education.

Last year’s State of the American Student report observed, “A public education system built for rigidity and sameness collapsed in the face of uncertainty and highly varied needs.” A higher education system built upon the same principles encounters a similar dilemma. We must consider what subjects are best taught in what ways for what learners. Students shouldn’t feel forced to learn only in the ways that we find convenient but in ways they need, want, and can learn most effectively.

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

One of my favorite sayings is the Noah principle: “no more prizes for predicting rain; prizes only for building arks.” 

Given the catastrophic pandemic of the past few years, it would be easy to focus on the devastating floods that inundated our schools and communities. The huge learning losses were just one consequence. The connection losses were just as significant, if not more so. 

These losses were particularly severe for adolescents, for whom peer relationships are central to identity development. 

They lost everyday interactions with their peers and the connections strengthened by cooperative learning techniques, extracurriculars, and clubs. That isolation, coupled with the loss of treasured high school rituals such as prom and graduation, contributed to a mental health crisis from which students are still recovering—a crisis of connection and belonging. The is clear: trusting relationships with peers and teachers are key to learning, but students’ connections were largely confined to their nuclear families during the pandemic. 

Now it is up to us to help remedy the damage—not by looking backward at the flood but forward to the future. 

As we move from observing the rain to building the ark(s), we must resist the temptation to “boil the ocean”—to think we must solve huge, seemingly intractable problems all at once. Instead of getting paralyzed by “recover from the pandemic,” “improve graduation rates,” or “increase college success,” break the challenge into doable, bite-size pieces and make things work. Let’s start by focusing on elevating the human connections that drive all learning. For the Urban Assembly, a school support agency in New York City, that means the following: 

Rebuild caring student-adult relationships in schools

When children and young adults develop their social-emotional skills, experience positive environments in the classroom, and have high-quality interactions with adults and their peers, they learn how to be successful in life. Relationships are key to learning, whether that’s a relationship to the curriculum, to their teachers, or even to a vision of themselves in the future. 

These relationships can take many forms, from direct instruction of relationship skills to systems and structures that create a predictable and supportive school climate and culture. Whatever the form, it’s important to see it as a fluid and individualized process. You can’t assess a basketball team only by looking at the final score and skipping the game. Yes, the score is important, but if you want to understand how well the team plays, you’ve got to watch the game and all the dynamics of teamwork on display.

That’s what it takes to understand student learning. For example, our (used in over 1,500 schools in New York City and more than 20 communities across the country) builds schools’ understanding of the social-emotional processes that help support student success in school and beyond. It’s not just about student work, just like it’s not just about the box score. It’s about the process, and the program helps make that process more visible to students and educators. 

Help leaders connect

At the Urban Assembly, we know that the answer to challenging times is community. That’s why we created Principal Learning Communities, where school leaders share best practices around solving problems and mitigate the isolation of leadership. We are creating a causal cascade of care that extends from school leaders to teachers and school staff, and ultimately to students. 

Offer students multiple pathways to postsecondary success

Not college for all, but postsecondary success for all, with relevant options for the broad diversity of learners. Some graduates will go on to two-year programs, others to four year colleges, others straight into careers. Our vision is to offer meaningful choices and provide solid preparation that lets students take advantage of those opportunities.

To that end, we have radically reimagined postsecondary preparation. Our Early Career and College Awareness explicitly introduces ninth- and 10th-grade students to selfdiscovery exercises and helps them learn about and engage with various career opportunities and educational pathways. At the same time, our programs help school counselors to provide ongoing student support.

Make education more relevant and meaningful

It’s time to reimagine what it means to be well-educated. Yes, understanding the enduring themes in Shakespeare’s plays will always lend insight into the human condition. But now, more than ever, we must help students connect those insights to the real world. All of our 23 schools, which we support in partnership with the New York City Department of Education, are organized around themes and collaborations with dozens of public entities and private companies such as Cisco, Northwell, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Hands-on internships and apprenticeships are the norm. For example, students at the Urban Assembly School for Collaborative Healthcare can earn their medical assistant and EMT certifications by completing internships at Brookdale Hospital and St. Barnabas. One out of every five students graduates with an industry-recognized certification in addition to their high school diploma, and every student has a postsecondary plan that includes college.

At the Urban Assembly School for Design and Construction, every student is enrolled in an architecture or design pathway where they develop cutting-edge thinking and modeling skills that are in high demand from industries. Internships at the nonprofit and the create real-world opportunities for students to practice what they’ve learned. As a result, 100% of students who graduate have a postsecondary plan, and 75% of those plans involve opportunities in art, architecture, engineering, and construction. 

Urban Assembly schools, which serve all students, are designed to nurture students’ individual interests, build connections with mentors who work in fields they aspire to join, and give students access to the sense of purpose that will sustain them in school and in life. When students contribute to solving real-world problems, they can honestly say, “I, too, have something worthy to offer.”

Scale what works

Our social and emotional learning resources have been used in all public schools in New York City. Through , 1.2 million of the city’s students have access to DESSA, a strength-based social and emotional learning feedback tool. Plus, a guided intervention program helps educators provide targeted, highly responsive support to each individual student. 

As ark builders across the country help students recover from the pandemic, we need to embrace a bolder vision of schooling. School can be a central hub of our communities, a place of meaningful connections between students and adults, and a place that connects learning to the real world. That’s our vision, and that’s the future of learning.

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .