The reports, both the results of small, intensive gatherings of educators, policymakers, researchers, tech officials and students last year, share a common warning: AI in schools must serve human-centered learning that doesn’t simply push for more efficiency. To do anything else risks creating a generation of young people ill-equipped for the future.

The findings come as young people say they’re turning to generative AI more than ever: A Pew Research Center survey released last week found that more than half of teens ages 13 to 17 use chatbots to search for information or get help with schoolwork. About four in ten report using AI to summarize articles, books or videos or create or edit images or videos. And about one-in-five say they use chatbots to get news.

For the first report, a group of 18 people met in July in Phoenix. Brought together by , a training and policy organization, and , a digital curriculum company, the treats the question of how schools should view AI as a literal “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure” story: The authors lay out three possible scenarios in which educators in an imaginary school district make radically different decisions about the technology.

In the first scenario, the district retreats from AI altogether after a data breach, abandoning a previously created “Innovation Lab,” while teachers return to traditional instruction and testing.

The restrictions soon backfire. Students continue using AI at home, but without guidance, take shortcuts on homework, developing a kind of survival mechanism they privately call “school brain.” Seeing how irrelevant most lessons are, they do just enough to get by, offloading thinking to AI tools. When tested, they show shallow understanding and poor foundational skills.

Test scores plummet, college acceptances drop and 40% of graduates land on academic probation. Employers report that graduates can neither work independently nor collaborate effectively with AI. Teachers begin departing in waves.

Retreating from AI, the authors find, creates “the worst of both worlds” — students who can neither think independently nor use AI effectively.

In the second scenario, the district, facing competition from AI-driven private schools, goes all-in, adopting a comprehensive, district-wide AI platform for automated instruction. The platform promises greater efficiency via AI tutors, automated grading and behavioral monitoring. And while it initially lowers costs and produces higher test scores, teachers find that students are soon gaming the algorithms rather than learning. The auto-grader penalizes valid but unconventional answers, while multilingual learners are unfairly penalized for non-standard answers on tests.

Teachers find themselves defending grades they didn’t assign and can’t fully explain, while families that challenge grades are stopped by “proprietary algorithms” that even administrators can’t review. The system delivers “a black box” that removes human judgment: “Students could feel the difference between being evaluated by an algorithm and being understood by a teacher.”

Before long, graduates struggle with collaboration, creativity and adaptability — skills employers and colleges increasingly value.

In the report’s third choice, the district, via its Innovation Lab, redesigns its offerings to prepare students for an AI-driven future while keeping a focus on “human-centered” education. Rather than focusing solely on technology, it develops a “graduate profile” that emphasizes critical thinking, ethical reasoning and human-AI collaboration, among other indicators.

The lab shifts to flexible, project-based learning, and students soon learn to use AI as a tool that supports but doesn’t replace their thinking. While the district continues to satisfy state accountability through testing, it also pursues federal innovation grants to fund portfolio-based assessment systems based on the graduate profile.

All is not rosy, though. The redesign is expensive and hard on teachers. Enrollment suffers as political resistance builds steam. But graduates soon demonstrate an ability to critically evaluate AI tools, adapt quickly to workplace changes and develop a “learn how to learn” mindset that serves them in the long term. 

Alumni soon report that their “robust” portfolios of work are a huge advantage in competitive job markets, and employers say they are the only new hires who critically evaluate AI’s recommendations, spotting hallucinations and biases.

Amanda Bickerstaff, AI for Education’s co-founder and CEO, said the first two scenarios are what educators at the July convening said they were seeing most often in schools.

“There was a strong recognition from everyone, including the students, the two high schoolers, that the traditional methods have not worked … for decades,” she said. “But it feels safer.”

As for going “all in” on AI, she said, that point of view is inevitable in many places, given current aggressive efforts of tech giants like Google who are “pushing into schools,” going direct to students.

“There’s this real pressure from both ed tech and AI itself, because it’s such a big market that’s never really been figured out,” she said.

What makes it worse is that few tech firms employ enough teachers to ensure that their products work well for students. “They don’t have hundreds of education people,” Bickerstaff said. Their education teams are “fractions of their headcount, working on tools that are instantly in students’ hands.”

The third path, in which the district redesigns its offerings, is “the most human” of the three, she said, and the most intentional. “The third path is the one that trusts humans and educators and students and families,” Bickerstaff said.

‘Explicitly ambidextrous’ schooling

by the , a think tank at Arizona State University, also calls for a new approach to schools’ decisions about AI, saying the technology “should be a catalyst for human-centered learning, not a replacement.”

The CRPE report, the result of another gathering in November, asserts that schools are at a pivotal moment. Their AI policies could go one of two ways: They can either entrench outdated educational models or help bring about a fundamental transformation of schooling.

“One of the big things that came out of those discussions was a strong feeling among the group that AI is currently being thought of as a productivity tool for the education system that we have, rather than a tool to radically improve teaching and learning and outcomes for kids,” said Robin Lake, CRPE’s executive director.

During its meeting, the group repeatedly discussed an “efficiency paradox” that could make schools faster and cheaper without addressing students’ actual needs. To protect against it, they call for a more coherent, human-centered approach that is “explicitly ambidextrous,” improving current practices while intentionally building toward new learning models.

The problem with AI, the report alleges, is that it could simply improve the efficiency of outdated educational models. It notes that the , a time-saving testing technology, for decades reinforced low-level standardized assessments, often at the expense of improved learning.

Instead of using AI as a new kind of Scantron, it says, AI could make way for several innovations, including new assessments that capture real-time performance as students work. It could even measure key non-academic indicators such as belonging, confidence, curiosity and relationship quality.

Lake said the report’s idea of an “ambidextrous” approach to AI came from an acknowledgement by the group that “we have to attend to the kids who are in our schools right now — and the teachers,” she said. “We have to use whatever technologies are available to make things better, but we also have to make investments in big, really different whole-school designs.”

Those could include not just better assessments but ways to help teachers provide “rigorous personalization grounded in the science of learning.”

Districts could create classrooms with multiple adults working in teams based on their expertise. And AI could enable schools to match students to internships and other experiences, handling administrative tasks so humans can focus on relationships.

Lake said the group that met in November kept coming back to one idea: Keeping an eye on both the future of school and the reality of the schools we already have.

“A lot of times when we have these conversations about AI and the future of schooling, it feels very floaty and abstract,” she said. “So I really appreciated that the fellows had a vision to connect the here-and-now to what kids need to know and [should] be able to do in the future. That feels really important for us all right now.”

The Center on Reinventing Public Education’s latest notes the number of teacher preparation program graduates ready to teach math fell by 36% from 2012 to 2020, dovetailing with a decline in student achievement. While the study released today did not prove causality, the link, researchers say, seems clear. 

“High-quality teachers matter,” CRPE director Robin Lake said. “It’s the most powerful in-school factor in kids’ learning experience and it’s something people are not talking about enough.” 

At the same time, a topic that has been widely discussed — the debate over whether explicit direct instruction trumps a more student-centered learning approach — has left some educators unsure of how to teach the subject, researchers found.

“The math wars are as old as education itself,” said CRPE senior fellow Alexander Kurz. “That debate is alive and well through the science of math. As an educator, you are caught in the crossfire.” 

The result: Nearly 4 in 10 eighth graders failed to achieve even the most basic level of math proficiency on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, such as calculating the area of a circle or multiplying fractions, the study notes. The most recent NAEP scores, released just last week, showed the nation’s 12th graders doing worse in math than any senior class of the past generation.

While those scores were the first to come out for seniors since COVID, the study’s authors say the problem long predates the pandemic. They note that math performance in U.S. public schools has been declining for more than a decade and achievement gaps are at historic highs.

Girls, low-income kids, Black and Hispanic students, children with disabilities and multilingual learners are struggling most, CRPE reports. Citing NAEP data, the report notes that since 1990, the gap between the highest- and lowest-scoring students has grown 18% wider among eighth graders and more than 8.5% wider among fourth graders.

In addition to the teacher shortage and instructional quagmire, CRPE cites a number of other factors it believes contribute to abysmal student performance pre- and post- pandemic, including that many states’ test scores are inflated, obscuring results, “especially for different student groups.”

The report, the fourth of its kind, found that in , for example, students’ average math grade point average jumped 0.34 points from 2019 to 2021, triple the increase of the prior eight years. 

In , the report notes, math proficiency dropped 11 points on state exams while A and B grades on local courses declined by only 3 points. 

“A national study from 2021 to 2023 found that 57% of grades didn’t align with student knowledge as measured by tests, and two-thirds of those misaligned grades were inflated, most often for underserved groups,” the CRPE report reads. “ACT data show rising GPAs, especially in math, despite falling test scores. By 2021, even students scoring in the 25th percentile were graduating with B averages or better.”

The study found, too, schools are overly rigid, tracking students and hindering their success in the subject.

“Middle school math-tracking acts as math predestination, putting some students on a track to take Algebra I in eighth grade or earlier,” the report reads. “Less-advantaged students are less likely to be placed in advanced math courses, even when they demonstrate readiness.”

Joel Rose, co-founder and chief executive officer of New Classrooms, a nonprofit that focuses on student-centered learning, called the report spot on, adding schools don’t account for children learning at different speeds. 

“There is really only one track, the grade-level track,” he said. “If you stay on it and never fall behind, you do fine. The problem is most kids fall behind for one reason or another and there are not any viable paths for them to catch back up.”

It’s because of this, he said, that math education is turning into “our nation’s social sorting machine.” Students who don’t catch on to the subject will find a whole series of career pathways closed off to them, he said. 

But all of these problems are solvable, CRPE contends, noting that states like and school districts like New Jersey’s and , have made replicable gains. 

Alabama is the only state where fourth graders scored higher in the subject than they did in 2019, prior to the pandemic. 

Karen Anderson, director of the state education department’s Office of Mathematics Improvement, said Alabama has worked hard to align classroom lessons with state standards and to use evidence-based practices and high-quality instructional materials to help all students — no matter their zip code or performance level.

“We want to make sure we are using instructional strategies that actually provide results,” Anderson said. “We also want to make sure we know what students know — and what they don’t know. And, when we see students who need help, we provide assistance immediately.”

CRPE recommends schools stop poo-pooing direct instruction — in which teachers demonstrate or explain procedures and concepts. Likewise, it concluded teachers need clear guidance on how to balance conceptual understanding with procedural fluency — in addition to real-time data to identify gaps and better structure their lessons.

Melodie Baker, founder and executive director of , which aims to use research to empower communities of color, has worked in mathematics for decades. She said robust teacher preparation at the elementary school level is critical for student success.

“The lack of emphasis on math in elementary is a big issue,” she said. “For example, teacher prep programs spend far more time on early literacy than math.”

But they are of equal importance, Baker said.  

CRPE concluded states should consider better pay, team-teaching models and math specialists as a means to address the math teacher shortage. 

In terms of improving the student experience, it advises schools to adopt “flexible pathways with multiple on-ramps, automatic acceleration, and no lower-track dead ends.”

Based on their conversations with students, CRPE concluded that schools need to better serve children who require more time to understand math concepts.

“One thing I don’t like is when I ask a teacher a question because I don’t understand it, and then they make me feel like I’m a bother and I really shouldn’t ask more questions,” an 11th grader from Connecticut told CRPE researchers in 2022. “And that prevents me from learning. And I hated that because I actually want to know.” 

The student’s claims correspond with what CRPE found: Schools are regularly missing opportunities to address academic problems head-on. 

And while the federal Every Student Succeeds Act explicitly requires states to develop a concise and easily understandable online report card, most don’t meet the standard. CRPE found just 18 break down math achievement and growth data by student subgroups “in a way that we thought was clear and understandable.”

Only Illinois, the report notes, earned the highest rating in this category by providing comprehensive math performance and opportunity data that CRPE thought most parents would be able to use and understand.

Only a handful of teacher training programs are moving quickly enough to equip new K-12 teachers with a grasp of AI fundamentals — and fewer still are helping future teachers grapple with larger issues of ethics and what students need to know to thrive in an economy dominated by the technology.

The , from the , a think tank at Arizona State University, tapped leaders at more than 500 U.S. education schools, asking how their faculty and preservice teachers are learning about AI. Through surveys and interviews, researchers found that just one in four institutions now incorporates training on innovative teaching methods that use AI. Most lack policies on using AI tools, suggesting that they probably won’t be ready to teach future educators about the intricacies of the field anytime soon.

What’s more, few teachers and college faculty say they feel confident using AI themselves, even as it reshapes education worldwide.

“All of this is so new, and it’s been happening so fast,” said Steven Weiner, a CRPE senior research analyst. A lot of coverage of AI in education, he said, “has rightly focused on what are schools and districts doing to support teachers … to get on board with AI?”

While teachers’ workplaces bear a measure of responsibility, he said, college programs should help out K-12 schools and districts. “I just think they should not have to have the whole burden of preparing teachers” to understand and work with AI.

Here are four key takeaways from the findings:

1. Most teachers college faculty are neither ready nor able to embrace AI.

Most teaching faculty are not interested in AI — and some actively avoid it. Just 10% of faculty members surveyed say they feel confident using AI, with many seeing it as a threat. Whether due to confusion or fear, they’re resistant to it, researchers found, limiting its possible integration into curricula and hampering educators’ ability to prepare preservice teachers for “AI-influenced classrooms.” 

Because so few are confident with AI, most don’t use it in their instruction or effectively integrate it into their instructional practices, researchers found.

A few say faculty members remain concerned that AI “might steal their personal data, their intellectual property, or even their jobs.” One education school leader said a lot of faculty are simply “paranoid,” believing that generative AI and other technologies will soon “replace them.” 

Even when faculty members are curious about AI, most are still in the early phases of learning about it. In an interview, Weiner said, “It’s up to people, I think, to learn about [AI] on their own. And if they’re the kind of people who are interested in technology, they might be into it. But the lack of any sort of systemic push for engaging with it has led to some folks just not quite understanding it.” 

2. Programs that integrate AI use it mostly to help teachers prevent plagiarism.

While nearly 59% of programs provide some AI-related instruction to preservice teachers, it mostly takes the form of coursework intended to help them prevent plagiarism. 

Preservice teachers, Weiner said, “are largely being taught about AI in light of the fear of them going into classrooms where students are going to cheat.” But training on plagiarism-detection software, he said, is “super problematic” because recent research has questioned its effectiveness.

Only about 25% of programs surveyed are providing training on ways AI can support new kinds of teaching. Fewer than half of respondents said content on AI bias is offered, either in other courses or on its own.

One education school dean said a lot of faculty resistance is due to “not understanding or being able to comprehend” exactly what AI is. “I think some may look at it as just a cheating tool.”

3. A few teacher training programs show promise in integrating AI into teacher prep. 

While most of the leaders surveyed couldn’t offer promising news about integrating AI into educator preparation, a few did. These institutions haven’t exactly transformed their training programs, but early efforts show promise, researchers found. 

Two programs were noteworthy, they said, and worth highlighting: and Arizona State University’s , which hosts CRPE.

Northern Iowa is developing curricula for an “AI for Educators” graduate certificate. And at ASU, administrators have engaged faculty through a set of voluntary committees and outreach efforts. Actually, CRPE co-leads one of these initiatives, a cross-departmental working group focused on exploring the challenges and opportunities of AI in higher education. ASU is also ChatGPT creator Open AI to bring the capabilities of an of the chatbot into higher education.

The report also notes that the Washington Education Association is incorporating AI into its special education teacher residency program, providing training on AI tools that help track student progress. The union is part of the Center for Innovation, Design, and Digital Learning , a network of higher education institutions pushing to leverage technology in their programs.

4. Teachers colleges need systemic, strategic investments in AI education.

Researchers concluded that the responsibility to integrate more content on AI can’t rest solely on the shoulders of “individual, self-motivated educators.” A fuller commitment to teaching about AI, they said, requires “a concerted effort and strategic action from all those involved in shaping the future of education.” To that end, schools of education should adjust their budgets to offer grants, teaching awards and other forms of recognition to “AI early adopter” faculty.

Education school deans and administrators should rely on AI experts from within their institutions, CRPE said, and look more closely at innovative work happening at other colleges and universities. They should also work with outside groups such as the to spread best practices and new ideas. 

They also urge state policymakers to set clear expectations for teachers’ AI proficiency by revising teaching certification standards to include new competencies.

And funders, they said, should invest in preservice programs that are “already ahead of the curve” on AI, allowing these programs to grow and offer their expertise more broadly. In the meantime, they should also consider alternative training programs such as residencies and micro-credentialing that can help preservice teachers develop AI competencies and specializations.

Alex Kotran, founder of , a nonprofit that offers a free AI literacy curriculum, said the survey is “a great data point that illustrates one of my big anxieties” about the future of the workforce: “How do we point students towards the jobs of the future? I think we need to talk more bluntly about the fact that four-year universities are going to be one of the weakest links in this whole strategy, in this whole process.”

He noted that teachers, as a group, are very unlikely to be replaced by AI in the near future — on par with “plumbers and therapists” in terms of the threat that technology plays in their future careers. So it makes sense that they’d be less than focused on it.

But he said the bigger challenge to new teachers will be to imagine how AI is going to force teacher pedagogy to evolve: “The work of being a teacher and the goals that you set for your kids is going to change, given what we understand about AI and the fact that it’s going to be so disruptive to skills and the workforce.”


The new survey, said CRPE’s Weiner, is just a first look, but he said teachers colleges appear “systemically not suited to shift as quickly as they would need — and not just to embrace AI, but to really get teachers prepared for both the challenges with AI and also the opportunities with it: to help teachers be really well prepared.”

Even if they do begin to take AI more seriously, he said, the technology is bound to change rapidly. “So what we’re really seeing is a moment where these institutions need to figure out how to become way more adaptive, way quicker.”

Teaching to a mythical average leaves far too many students bored and disengaged. No wonder has more than doubled to 30% since 2020.

The recently published third annual State of the American Student report from the Center for Reinventing Public Education made a convincing case for a more flexible approach. “Of course, there are few truly ‘average’ students. Every young person who was affected by the pandemic had a different pandemic experience and pandemic recovery support,” the report found. 

It urged: “The pandemic and the ensuing harm to academic progress for a vast swath of America’s students should force a broader reckoning with public education’s underlying systemic failure. In the current system, labeling some students as ‘exceptional’ implies that most students are not, shunts students with the greatest needs into silos where they are denied opportunities to excel, and places a counterproductive stigma on targeted support that many students require to address gaps in their learning.”

Instead, if educators start designing education for students on the margins — the special populations who were disproportionately harmed by the pandemic — all students will benefit.

Children vary in how they engage, make meaning of content and communicate their thinking. Because learner variability is the norm, educators need to start designing for it. What would that look like?

To start, instructional materials would be much more varied and accessible: print, digital, text-to-speech or audiobooks. Students would choose which they would use, and they could count on regular feedback about their work. 

Next, educators would clearly identify a learning goal (i.e. finding the theme of a text or the causes of the Civil War) and design curriculum and instruction to give students options for reaching that goal in multiple ways. For example, educators might use tools like word webs to help students draw on their prior knowledge; employ templates, graphic organizers and concept maps to aid them in taking notes; and design methods for assisting students in tracking their progress and understanding which tools and methods work best for them.

Scenarios such as these reflect the principles of , a framework for improving teaching and learning based on scientific insights. My organization, CAST, pioneered this approach in the 1980s and since has helped to spread it worldwide. Our set forth a roadmap to help educators, curriculum developers and others design for inclusion and reduce barriers to learning. 

Personalized instruction like this already is happening in some places.  

• Over the past seven years, CAST has trained more than 1,500 New Hampshire educators across 140 schools in Universal Design for Learning. Partnering with the state Department of Education, this multi-year initiative aims to transform teaching and learning across the state. Through a variety of techniques, including online learning and statewide workshops, educators worked to increase access and give students more power to direct their own learning by trying different methods and tools. Results are encouraging. Fifty-five percent of participants who responded to a 2022 survey reported that students have become more goal-directed, 47% noted an increase in students’ resourcefulness and 43% reported that their students were more motivated than they were before the teachers engaged in the training.

• Over the past six years, CAST has worked with California educators in 23 counties and 170 districts. We are equipping teachers and paraeducators with tools and strategies to give students with disabilities access to grade-level content standards in inclusive classrooms. Of teachers participating in a survey for evaluating the program, 57% reported increased observations of student motivation, engagement and ownership over their learning, and 70% reported higher inclusion rates of students with disabilities in general education classrooms than before they began using the design principles.

Making examples like these more of the norm will require overcoming inertia and resistance, including from traditional schools of education, which continue to have separate tracks for general and special education teachers. General education graduates of these programs are placed in untenable positions and, without the training or experience to do so, are told to deal with growing numbers of students who have individualized education plans. 

The emergence of artificial intelligence in schools can help, not just in aiding teachers with paperwork and other administrative tasks, but in customizing instruction and providing immediate feedback. When AI gathers, analyzes and reports data, teachers can spend more time planning engaging and relevant lessons and working directly with students to target instruction to their individual needs.

Children with disabilities will continue to receive services for their needs under the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, but when educators personalize learning for all, those special education services won’t create the segregation that occurs today. When teachers more routinely meet students where they are, all children will benefit, perhaps in unexpected ways. For example, many technologies designed for one population have now become ubiquitous, helping everyone. Think closed-captioned subtitles on videos or speech-to-text conversions on cellphones. Those with low vision, dyslexia or who are deaf and hard of hearing may have been the first beneficiaries of these innovations, but they are hardly the only ones these days. 

Imagine a similar approach in education. Design for the margins. Impact the world.  

The 2024 State of the American Student report, published by the Center on Reinventing Public Education, echoed findings from our: English learners were disproportionately impacted — often negatively — by the remote learning caused by pandemic school closures. The CRPE report also underscores the troubling reality that English learners are experiencing a much slower, if not stalled, recovery. And through CRPE’s focus on academic recovery as measured and defined by standardized assessments, the report illuminates the incomplete picture researchers and the general public have of English learner outcomes and learning opportunities.

Using standard English language arts assessment data, CRPE’s report shows proficiency rates ranging from a dismal 1% to 9% for students identified as English learners in four major urban districts. And while these numbers are alarming, they do not tell the whole story. 

First, the use of standardized assessments to measure English learners’ academic performance is fraught with, and data they produce should be interpreted with caution. As the report astutely mentions, English learner status is supposed to be temporary, and the composition of this subgroup changes annually as young students gain and shed the label. This constantly weeds out high scorers because, as language proficiency grows, these students not only, but get closer to leaving the group. And, as the report states, “longitudinal data generally does not include categories for students who were once classified as, but no longer are, English learners.” Thus, it is difficult to make assumptions about the potential and capabilities of linguistically diverse students on the whole. 

Secondly, the English learner subgroup used in data reporting and accountability treats all these students as if they are the same, with identical needs, backgrounds and academic capabilities. In reality, English learners are a diverse population. Some are U.S.-born, while others may have just arrived from abroad. Some may have been recently identified, while others may be considered long-term English learners because they have not been reclassified after a certain number of years — often six or seven. English learners’ needs also vary by age, grade and even language proficiency level. It is unrealistic to expect one data point to capture the wide range of linguistic and academic experiences these students have had. Doing so masks their outcomes and hinders educators from offering targeted and differentiated supports. 

Lastly, the academic challenges English learners face are only part of the picture. Their — a term that shifts the focus from student outcomes to systemic barriers — has also been disproportionately impacted since the pandemic began. 

As CRPE noted, chronic absenteeism has been rife among English learners, and staffing challenges have reduced the number of qualified teachers who specialize in bilingual education and/or English as a Second Language. The availability of these educators is a common opportunity to learn measures, and although English learner-specific indicators are unusual, they do exist. For example, a more complete picture of what opportunity to learn looks like for these students the number of long-term English learners; participation and successful completion of coursework; and school discipline data, such as expulsion rates and then number and length of in-school and out-of-school suspensions. by the Migration Policy Institute also explored how certain information about the instructional programs available for English learners could help refine the accountability systems used to monitor their success.

By looking beyond the average student and collecting nuanced data on English learners, state and local leaders can begin to fill in their incomplete and overly broad understanding. The work of pandemic recovery begins by unraveling this subgroup to shine a light on the diversity within it. Doing so is imperative for the long-term academic and personal growth success of English learners in America’s K-12 schools. 

For the nation’s homeless students and their families, the pandemic was truly catastrophic. While chronic student absenteeism nearly overall from 16% before the pandemic to nearly 30% by 2021-22 (the latest year for which data is available), the rate for homeless children — contributing to significant academic challenges. In 2021-22, the high school graduation rate for homeless students was 12 percentage points below that of other low-income children and nearly 18 points below the rate for all students.

As unimaginable as it might seem, the situation could get much worse — unless Congress steps up soon. Organizations such as the Center on Reinventing Public Education are raising the alarm through reports such as its recent third annual State of the American Student, which focuses on the experiences of special populations during the pandemic. Among these are students experiencing homelessness, who continue to face significant barriers to school attendance and success — barriers that could be reduced by increases in targeted funding.

But pervasive misconceptions about homelessness have stymied such efforts:

• It’s mainly an urban problem. It isn’t. Homelessness exists at similar rates in rural, suburban and urban communities.
  
• It’s mainly a housing problem. It isn’t. For children and youth, homelessness often amounts to school-lessness, and without a high school diploma, the odds greatly increase that they will continue to experience homelessness into adulthood.
  
• Schools can’t do much about it. The examples below, and many more, show that they can.

During the latter half of the pandemic, public schools received $800 million in federal support specifically for homeless students, thanks to a bipartisan amendment to the American Rescue Plan. Though that was a drop in the bucket compared with the overall $122 billion in emergency funds for K-12 education, that $800 million was eight times the regular federal appropriation for students experiencing homelessness. Before the pandemic, only 1 in 5 school districts received specific funding for homeless students. During the pandemic and early recovery, more than half did.

That money made a huge difference. It made it possible for to establish navigator positions to connect homeless students to a wide range of services, including transportation, early learning, reengagement and community building. Lafayette Parish Schools in Louisiana improved the of students experiencing homelessness by hiring dedicated specialists, and demonstrated what can be done when more funding is designated to support this work. Realizing that families and youth needed help navigating housing assistance and supportive services to stabilize their education and their lives, Michigan’s Kent Independent School District to pay for a family service coordinator, short-term motel stays and gas cards. (Additional bright spots can be found.)

But with the expiration of pandemic aid at the end of this month, that essential support will go away.

While some states, districts and schools may continue their innovative services for students experiencing homelessness, most will be unable to do so in the face of multiple funding challenges and a homelessness crisis that is worsening.

In response, Congress should match the $800 million in pandemic emergency funding in the annual appropriation for the McKinney-Vento Act’s Education for Homeless Children and Youth program. At its current level ($129 million a year), the program represents less than .3% of the federal pre-K-12 budget for a population that accounts for at least 3% of all students in those grades. An $800 million annual appropriation would constitute a mere 1.8% of the annual federal education budget and would allow schools to increase access, stability and success for millions more children.

Homelessness is a complex, multi-generational phenomenon. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. But for a mere fraction of the education budget, Congress can help prevent homelessness from disrupting the future of millions of students, and avoid the much greater expense of entrenched homelessness and other costly outcomes. Lack of a high school diploma or GED is the single greatest risk factor for homelessness later in life, so targeted educational support at adequate funding levels for these students now is an obvious immediate step that will help all students succeed in the long term.

The warning signs are unmistakable. Younger students, who were in their formative years when schools shut down, are not catching up as quickly as their older peers. Chronic absenteeism remains alarmingly high, creating a vicious cycle of missed learning and disengagement. Meanwhile, teachers are stretched to their limits, grappling with the dual pressures of addressing learning loss and managing their own burnout. These are not just temporary setbacks; they are harbingers of long-term consequences that could define a generation.

The situation is even more dire for students with disabilities, English learners and others facing unique challenges. The nation’s schools underserved these students even before the pandemic, and now the gaps have widened. Americans are witnessing a deepening of educational inequities that could have devastating effects if policymakers and educational leaders do not intervene.

Perhaps most concerning is that politicians and government agencies aren’t being open and honest with parents and advocates about these problems — or about potential solutions. In a recent analysis, CRPE found that only seven states made it easy for the average parent or website user to see the pre- and post-COVID educational data that every state is required to provide.

The path forward is clear: Educators must urgently expand the use of proven strategies that are already showing results, such as targeted tutoring, high-quality curricula and extended learning time. But these alone will not be enough. The pandemic has laid bare the fact that the nation’s education system was never designed to meet the needs of every student, particularly those with the most complex challenges. Truly supporting all students will mean reinventing the system itself.

This means moving beyond the traditional, one-size-fits-all model of education. Schools must become more flexible, adapting to students rather than forcing them to conform to outdated norms, such as a single teacher per classroom and ineffective special education programs. School superintendents and principals must embrace new staffing and scheduling approaches, such as team teaching, that allow for more personalized instruction and support. Further, schools must harness the power of technology, including artificial intelligence, to provide real-time insights into student progress and tailor learning experiences to each child’s individual needs.

Students who have fallen behind developmentally or academically during the pandemic are being placed at very high rates in special education or language programs that the parents we interviewed for our report described as rigid, unresponsive and fundamentally lacking in high expectations for their children. Students who do not fit neatly in programmatic boxes, such as “twice exceptional” children who are both academically gifted and in need of disability accommodations, exemplify why such boxes too often fail to meet individual needs. 

In the pandemic’s wake, it is critical for schools to abandon flawed and outdated approaches. This will mean redeploying staff and reconfiguring schedules to avoid pitting academic tutoring against special education services and supplemental pullout services against core instruction. It will also mean giving parents more options and power if their child is failing to thrive in the assigned program or school. 

But systemic change requires more than just innovative ideas — it takes political will and a commitment to evidence, equity, accountability and a relentless focus on innovation. Policymakers, advocates and philanthropists must work together to ensure that the most vulnerable students receive the targeted support they need. This includes providing honest, transparent data on academic performance so parents and educators can make informed decisions and ensuring that resources are directed where they are most needed.

The stakes could not be higher. If the current state of affairs continues, COVID-19 will leave its indelible mark on yet another cohort of students — young people whose potential will go unrealized and whose futures will be constrained by the failures of adults to act. The time for incremental change has passed. Those with the power to make these critical shifts must act with urgency, creativity and a deep sense of responsibility to all our students. The future of our society will be shaped by decisions and leadership actions in the coming year.

“The thing that really struck us as we looked across all of the data points … [is] there’s just a disproportionate impact for those [special populations of] students across the board,” said Robin Lake, director of the at Arizona State University.  “What I think really came through to us — especially in the parent interviews we conducted this year — was parents were experiencing a system that wasn’t functioning even before the pandemic effectively for them.”

At a press conference Tuesday, Lake called the report’s findings a “warning bell for systemic reform.” 

Disadvantaged students continue “bearing the brunt of slow and uneven recovery” from pandemic-era school closures, Lake said, and their struggles come at a time when their numbers are growing.

There was a surge of roughly 343,000 students identified for special education from the 2020–21 to the 2022–23 school years a trend which appears on track to continue. There are variations across states and student groups, with Black and Hispanic students being identified at higher rates.   

Lake said researchers are still trying to determine if this is just normal catch-up following under-identification during school closures, or if something more is going on.

The 2024 State of the American Student Report builds on two previous annual reports, which detailed the impact of COVID on students’ academic performance and well-being. Last year’s research focused on older students with little-to-no time left in the K-12 system, who saw what the organization described as “shocking declines” in college and career readiness. This year, CRPE interviewed parents and dug into data around particularly vulnerable student populations.

The academic impacts on students with disabilities and their rate of recovery varied from district to district, according to a CRPE-commissioned analysis by Georgia State professor Tim Sass. This, they believe, shows that what schools and districts did during and after the pandemic had real impact, but more research is needed to learn what kind of mitigation and recovery strategies proved most effective.

More than four years after COVID emerged, the average student who experienced school closures is still less than halfway to a , but Lake emphasized that averages can obscure particular students’ nuanced experiences. “Under the hood of average,” she said, she saw reason for both optimism and concern.

The good news: Students are bouncing back in some areas. The average student has recovered about of their pandemic-era learning losses in math and a quarter in reading.

Evidence-based practices, such as tutoring, high-quality curricula and extended learning time, are starting to get baked into school systems, she said, which she hopes will last beyond stimulus funds. 

Yet, many of these practices still aren’t reaching nearly enough students.

For example, across four major, urban public school systems in 2023, 8th graders with disabilities and English language learners continued to score significantly lower than their peers in English Language Arts. In New York City, 61% of all students demonstrated proficiency, while only 29% of students with disabilities and 9% of English learners did.

Chronic absenteeism also disproportionately plagues special populations, according to Sass’s analysis. And parents expressed frustration that during school closures their kids weren’t getting access to their legally required interventions. Simultaneously, they were concerned that expectations for their children were being lowered, while communication was dwindling.

“One of our researchers started referring to this as ghosting,” said Lake. “That the parents were being ghosted by their schools … [and] not getting information about how their kids were doing academically.” 

Ultimately, they felt blindsided when they found out just how far behind their children had fallen. As students have returned to school buildings, more have been flagged as having special learning needs and requiring special education, after a dip during the pandemic. 

Especially when looking at “COVID babies,” those who didn’t necessarily get access to preschool or typical socialization, Lake wondered, “Are they being funneled into special education as a solution or do they really have a disability that needs to be addressed in special education?” And, she added, “Is special education equipped to deal with this influx?”

CRPE’s analysis found that special education identification rates varied greatly across school districts in Massachusetts, which reports more detailed data than most other states. For example, the rate of identification in kindergarten in Boston grew from 14% to 18% between 2018 and 2024, while about an hour away in Worcester, the pre-K identification jumped far more, from 26% to 38%. Lake said this variation demonstrates that the approach to identification matters, but still “there are more questions than answers on this front.” 

Lake emphasized that while special populations may be struggling more acutely, many of the issues they face in the classroom are similar to those of their peers. 

“While we’re seeing a lot of kids moving into special education right now, maybe we need to flip the narrative and think about solving for the kids with the most complex needs,” she said. “And if we can figure out how to do that, making sure that all kids can be successful.”

When I partnered with the Center on Reinventing Public Education on a reviewing how transparent state report cards are in reflecting COVID-19 learning loss and recovery, I came in with an open mind. I expected they would contain most of the information we sought and would mostly be pretty usable. I was wrong. I think everyone on our team was incredibly disappointed by many of the state report card websites and their inability to answer our primary questions of interest about the effects of COVID on student outcomes.

Here are four questions from our five analysts about these sites, based on direct quotes from a written interview we all completed after we finished rating the report cards, that we think states should consider moving forward. 

Where Is the Data?

The high-level takeaway from our report: It is extremely difficult on most state report card websites to track longitudinal performance data at the school level going back to before COVID. There are a few exceptions — seven states (Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Tennessee) earned an A for having this data available.

But even in many of these better-performing states, there were problems. Many state report cards make it difficult to do things that should be easy. Parents should be able to use the report cards to compare schools they are considering for their children, but in too many places, that is impossible. Advocates should be able to understand, at minimum, the performance of federally mandated student groups, such as children with disabilities and English learners, but many states completely bury these data. Further, report cards often lack other kinds of data that parents might want about available services, like advanced coursework, counseling, even sports and the arts. Overall, the reviewers were disappointed and disheartened.   

Are There Really No Best Practices?

We were struck by the variation across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. One reviewer commented, “It was as if 51 different contractors designed these report cards without so much as a single best practice about how they’re supposed to look or function.” Some states leaned on graphs, others on tables. Some websites were easy to navigate, while others were befuddling. Some made subgroup data easy to find; others made it nearly impossible. Some report card websites couldn’t even easily be found through a Google search.

Our analysts also noted the difficulty of simply figuring out the basics of each site. “I was surprised with how different each state report card was and the amount of time it took to familiarize myself with it enough to find the data I was looking for,” one wrote. I felt this acutely as I examined all 51 report cards. It sometimes took two or three 10- to 15-minute visits to feel like I understood the layout of some of the sites. 

Overall, we felt that there surely must be some in reporting these kinds of data that states could draw on to improve their report cards. We all wanted easily navigable sites (i.e., that made it clear where to click to find what you wanted) where 1) measures were described in clear language and organized thematically, and 2) users could manipulate the data to answer their most important questions. No site met this bar, though some, such as Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma, were far better than others; Alaska, Louisiana, New York and Vermont

were among 11 states that earned the lowest grade for usability. There could be real value in researchers working with organizations like the Council of Chief State School Officers to lay out some explicit design principles. 

Who Is the Intended User?

State report cards are intended principally for parents. Realtors certainly think parents care about school quality; otherwise, they wouldn’t name local elementary schools in their listings. The popularity of sites like proves that at least some demand for school performance data exists. However, if parents are the main intended audience for these reports, it sure doesn’t seem that way. “I could see [parents] spending considerably more time on this compared to our research team,” said one of our researchers. Another described the situation for parents as “frustrating and disempowering,” echoing what the Data Quality Campaign found last year when it asked . 

We felt that the report cards were perhaps trying to serve too many audiences and, in the end, not serving any very well. States need to think clearly about whom they’re serving and redesign their report cards from the ground up, working with those groups to ensure usability. In particular, the language of the report cards needs to be clear for people who may not be experts in accountability terminology and education-related acronyms. Even with our levels of expertise, we were sometimes unclear about what different data points meant. 

Are State Reports Doomed to be a Compliance Exercise? 

A few reviewers thought some state report cards seem like a compliance exercise: States post them because the federal government requires them to, but, ultimately, they’re not concerned about whether these websites are usable. This is a somewhat cynical take, but it’s hard not to feel that way after reviewing some of these sites. 

But even if report card sites did start as compliance exercises, they can still serve a positive function in the long run. We don’t want to be Pollyannaish about their potential, but parents clearly care about the effectiveness of the schools they choose for their children, and states clearly can do better at communicating schools’ effectiveness.

We hope this review is a wake-up call for states to consider better reporting of school performance data. While private companies, like GreatSchools, can provide alternatives, states are missing an opportunity to shape parents’ thinking about what matters for school effectiveness, and why. The failure of states to provide high-quality, usable report cards raises a fifth question: Given the importance of effective public education and the apparent need and demand for the data, how can states justify doing such a lousy job at informing parents?

School closures are hardly new, but two factors make the current wave different. First, shifts to homeschooling and private schools during the pandemic exacerbated the trend of declining urban enrollment. Second, the loss of pandemic relief funds (the so-called fiscal cliff) finally forced districts to find ways to save money. 

As communities across the country grapple with this challenge, my research team at the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) and I urge them to follow a handful of proven, evidence-based guidelines. These will help minimize the pain and maximize the possibility that more children will get a better education — which should be the ultimate goal.

First, don’t duck the challenge. If enrollment and funding are cratering, district leaders have no choice but to act. Children in underenrolled schools lose when they are denied services and activities, from music and art to libraries and sports, that should be a normal part of their education. Propping up underenrolled schools hurts all the other students in the district.

For example, , facing a $391 million budget deficit, plans to add nine staff members at one high school, meaning there will be 31 adults for just 35 enrolled students. Propping up a school like this forces others to make cuts. Seattle, which is debating massive closures, is not considering teacher; because staff salaries are by far the biggest cost factor in the budget, its school closure plan will resolve less than half of the district’s $129 million annual deficit. 

Second, prioritize student well-being. Schools become underenrolled because families abandon them or their neighborhoods, and the remaining kids suffer. These children need much better options, not just a chance to move to a school that is slightly less underenrolled but is otherwise similar. In, the district created the Opportunity Ticket, which gave kids from closed schools in underserved communities priority enrollment in high-performing schools. Innovations like these should become the norm.

Third, be transparent, tell the truth and build trust. Closing decisions are fraught and require public trust to achieve the best possible outcome for all stakeholders. Recently, Boston to close up to half of its schools, citing a lack of public support. Leaders should use enrollment, financial and achievement data to make the case for and demonstrate what better choices could look like. They also need to involve parents and other stakeholders. To the greatest extent possible, leaders should push decisions down to the school level so those on the ground — like principals, teachers and other staffers — can make the best choices for students and resolve enrollment challenges, possibly by merging with other underenrolled schools. Baltimore, for example, has a tradition of school-based budgeting, which incentivizes this type of initiative at the school level. Principals and parent councils are in a better position  than to lead difficult conversations about possible closures and . (CRPE offers more detailed advice and.)

Fourth, use the inevitability of closures to develop more flexible, resilient school systems. CRPE has that too many 21^st century systems remain bound by 19^th century constraints. These include a nine-month agrarian calendar that ensures school buildings are empty all summer, every weekend and after 4 p.m. on weekdays; union contracts that enshrine the model of one teacher alone in a classroom, fix class sizes and mandate arbitrary pay scales regardless of enrollment realities; and funding models in which the money follows adults, not kids. 

A truly agile system would consider the reality that high school students should be learning in apprenticeships and taking college credits, not just sitting in a building all day. And school facilities should serve multiple community needs — from adult ed to libraries — and not be designed for part-time single uses. Teachers and students want more options when it comes to their schedules and prefer to work in team-based settings. A more dynamic approach to facilities planning can mitigate the pain of inevitable shifts in school-age populations and the resulting need to close some schools while expanding others.  

State and local policymakers should insist that districts facing closures restructure and retool to be more competitive and nimble for 21st century realities. 

The upcoming conversations will be painful. But they also can be productive — as long as closures help lead to something better for kids. In the end, communities that turn school closure conversations into discussions of school quality will benefit.

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 .

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 .

But nearly a year after most of us came face-to-face with the first of these tools, a that few states are offering educators substantial guidance on how to best use AI, let alone fairly and with appropriate privacy protections.

As of mid-October, just two states, California and , offered official guidance to schools on using AI, according to the Center for Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University. 

CRPE said 11 more states are developing guidance, but that another 21 states don’t plan to give schools guidelines on AI “in the foreseeable future.”

Seventeen states didn’t respond to CRPE’s survey and haven’t made official guidance publicly available.

As more schools experiment with AI, good policies and advice — or a lack thereof — will “drive the ways adults make decisions in school,” said Bree Dusseault, CRPE’s managing director. That will ripple out, dictating whether these new tools will be used properly and equitably.

“We’re not seeing a lot of movement in states getting ahead of this,” she said. 

The reality in schools is that AI is here. Edtech companies are pitching products and schools are buying them, even if state officials are still trying to figure it all out. 

“It doesn’t surprise me,” said Satya Nitta, CEO of , a generative AI company developing voice-activated assistants for teachers. “Normally the technology is well ahead of regulators and lawmakers. So they’re probably scrambling to figure out what their standard should be.”

Nitta said a lot of educators and officials this week are likely looking “very carefully” at Monday’s on AI “to figure out what next steps are.” 

The order requires, among other things, that AI developers share safety test results with the U.S. government and develop standards that ensure AI systems are “safe, secure, and trustworthy.” 

It follows five months after the U.S. Department of Education released a detailed, with recommendations on using AI in education.

Deferring to districts

The fact that 13 states are at least in the process of helping schools figure out AI is significant. Last summer, no states offered such help, CRPE found. Officials in New York, , Rhode Island and Wyoming said decisions about many issues related to AI, such as academic integrity and blocking websites or tools, are made on the local level.

Still, researchers said, it’s significant that the majority of states still don’t plan AI-specific strategies or guidance in the 2023-24 school year.

There are a few promising developments: North Carolina will soon require high school graduates to pass a computer science course. In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin in September on AI careers. And Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro in September to create a state governing board to guide use of generative AI, including developing training programs for state employees.

But educators need help understanding artificial intelligence, “while also trying to navigate its impact,” said Tara Nattrass, managing director of innovation strategy at the International Society for Technology in Education. “States can ensure educators have accurate and relevant guidance related to the opportunities and risks of AI so that they are able to spend less time filtering information and more time focused on their primary mission: teaching and learning.”

Beth Blumenstein, Oregon’s interim director of digital learning & well-rounded access, said AI is already being used in Oregon schools. And the state Department of Education has received requests from educators asking for support, guidance and professional development.

Generative AI is “a powerful tool that can support education practices and provide services to students that can greatly benefit their learning,” she said. “However, it is a highly complex tool that requires new learning, safety considerations, and human oversight.”

Three big issues she hears about are cheating, plagiarism and data privacy, including how not to run afoul of Oregon’s Student Information Protection Act or the federal Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act. 

‘Now I have to do AI?’

In August, CRPE conducted focus groups with 18 superintendents, principals and senior administrators in five states who said they were cautiously optimistic about AI’s potential, but many complained about navigating yet another new disruption.

“We just got through this COVID hybrid remote learning,” one leader told researchers. “Now I have to do AI?”

Nitta, Merlyn Mind’s CEO, said that syncs with his experience.

“Broadly, school districts are looking for some help, some guidance: ‘Should we use ChatGPT? Should we not use it? Should we use AI? Is it private? Are they in violation of regulations?’ It’s a complex topic. It’s full of all kinds of mines and landmines.” 

And the stakes are high, he said. No educator wants to appear in a newspaper story about her school using an AI chatbot that feeds inappropriate information to students. 

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say there’s a deer-caught-in-headlights moment here,” Nitta said, “but there’s certainly a lot of concern. And I do believe it’s the responsibility of authorities, of responsible regulators, to step in and say, ‘Here’s how to use AI safely and appropriately.’ ” 

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 .

As school and district administrators grapple with these rapid advances, they crave guidance on how to incorporate AI tools into teaching and learning, new research shows. 

In conducted in August by the Center on Reinventing Public Education with colleagues at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University, 18 superintendents, principals and senior administrators who collectively oversee nearly 70 schools in five states expressed cautious optimism about AI’s potential to enhance teaching and learning. 

But few are exploring how to provide AI training to staff. And many bemoaned having to navigate another new and major disruption to schooling, according to the focus group responses.

“We just got through this COVID hybrid remote learning,” one leader said. “Now I have to do AI?”

In general, the participants said they wanted more guidance from states, universities and even the industry on how to incorporate generative AI and establish policies to ensure staff and students use the tools ethically and responsibly. At the time the focus groups were conducted, no state departments of education had offered any guidance to help districts navigate the new landscape, CRPE research shows. The federal Department of Education’s technology office says it’s working to for AI-enabled education technology. And a new group of experts recently released an “” toolkit.

That attention at the national level reinforces some of the concerns that administrators voiced: that AI equity and access issues could open a new chasm in the digital divide. One high school leader who had collaborated with a student advisory board said some students didn’t understand ChatGPT at all, while others were highly knowledgeable and were already using paid versions. 

“The technology is bound to grow exponentially as more students become familiar with it,” the participant said — but it also raises troubling issues. “Who’s going to have access to what, and what are our responsibilities as a school district to provide access?”

Administrators’ perspectives on AI are important because they set the tone for learning priorities. As AI begins to disrupt conventional schooling habits and practices, their willingness to adapt, develop guidelines and encourage exploration has implications for student and teacher success.

Even in the short time that ChatGPT has been available to the public, districts nationwide have adopted divergent stances on its use (largely because of concerns about cheating), previous CRPE research found. Some districts quickly shifted from initially banning the technology to cautiously allowing it.

Despite the concerns over the pace of change, administrators who participated in the focus groups expressed a relatively high level of excitement about AI’s potential advantages and relatively little concern about issues such as student safety and data privacy. 

Some called for guidance from the tech industry.

“If you’re one of those people who creates this fantastic tool, then you need to also help educate around it,” one said.

Others hoped higher education would uncover best uses for AI and allow those tips to trickle down to the K-12 level. When administrators were asked what they would do to AI developments if they had a magic wand, one leader said: “Can we just slow it all down?”

Most administrators said they weren’t ready to create policies that specified appropriate uses for generative AI. 

“I refuse to do it because I don’t know what to put in it,” one leader said. 

Many believe their current plagiarism policies are sufficient to deal with today’s most salient concern over AI: student cheating.

Some hesitation is understandable given that educators are frequently pressured to adopt new technology. However, AI is not a fad, and it’s not going away anytime soon. These tools are rapidly being integrated into everyday life and cannot be banned or ignored.

Some education leaders said they’ve formed teacher or student advisory groups to continue exploring AI. Others are setting aside discussion time at staff meetings. Some said they’re listening to early adopters, such as technology directors or enthusiastic teachers. But none of the leaders said they are urging all staff to use the tools. And none had mapped out plans for staff training.

Helping students prepare to use AI in their professional and personal lives means schools must start investing in — and encouraging broader understanding of — AI technology among teachers and staff. State departments of education need to accelerate work in this area so they can help guide districts. Teachers need dedicated work time to play with the tools. 

And perhaps students who are adept at AI should be encouraged to share what they’re learning with adults.

“I do have a more formal workshop ready to go when that time is right,” one technology director said. “We are just stepping in slowly.”

, which relies largely on recent findings from outside research groups and the federal government, warns that on just about every indicator that matters — basic skills, college going, mental health and more — the pandemic has set older students back.

“Time is running out for these kids,” said Robin Lake, director of , a research organization at Arizona State University. “Many have already exited the K-12 system, either by graduating or essentially disappearing on us. Too many kids still are missing — we don’t know if they’ve dropped out or where they’ve gone.”

Outside researchers who study these students said the fears are justified. In response, Lake and others are proposing a raft of reforms, including extending “gap years” to any high school graduates who need time to catch up — as well as a new commitment to reforming high school so it works for more students. 

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona acknowledged the slow pace of academic turnaround, calling it “appalling and unacceptable.”

“It’s like as a country we’ve normalized those gaps,” he said in separate remarks to reporters Tuesday,

Cardona spoke just before the department unveiled new efforts to spur pandemic recovery, including $50 million in competitive grants for literacy and higher expectations on districts to track and reverse chronic absenteeism. The department also released new data showing that roughly 187,000 tutors and mentors have signed up through its National Partnership for Student Success — bringing it closer to its goal of recruiting 250,000 adults to help students get back on track by 2025.

‘Insidious and hidden’

As of this fall, researchers said, about 13.5 million students in four high school graduating classes have been affected by the pandemic.

CRPE first issued its “State of the American Student” report in September 2022, saying pandemic school closures in 2020 and 2021 led to “unprecedented academic setbacks” for American students that made pre-existing inequalities and the nation’s youth mental health crisis worse.

A year later, CRPE says, students are still struggling in many areas. They point to record-low math and reading scores on the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress for fourth- and eighth-grade students — in both grades, one in three can’t read at even the “basic” achievement level.

And missed more than 10% of school days during the 2021-22 school year, twice as many as in previous years. More than reported “stunted behavioral and social-emotional development” in students because of the pandemic, researchers note.

But they say schools should pay extra attention to older students, many of whom lost critical instruction time during the pandemic. 

The pandemic, Lake said, “is continuing to derail learning throughout K-12. But what we came away with was that the derailment is looking a little bit more insidious and hidden, in some ways. That is true especially for older students.”

The , for instance, needs 7.4 months of schooling to catch up to pre-pandemic levels in reading, and 9.1 months of schooling in math, according to recent assessments.

Last year’s NAEP scores showed that 30% of eighth graders performed “” in reading; 38% were in math. At the same time, just 2% of students received at school, which Lake called “a massive missed opportunity.” 

In a few places, researchers noted, the pandemic knocked older students off track, as in Washington state, where 14 percent of public high school students received at least during the 2020-2021 school year.

Even college-bound high school students are underperforming: The on the ACT college admission test last year was 19.8, they noted, the lowest since 1991.

Researchers also noted that, overall, college going is down: Between 2019 and 2023, the U.S. higher education system lost an estimated .

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday in advance of the report’s release, Lake said recent data on college are “extremely concerning.”

She called for the development of what she calls a “New American High School” that abandons academic tracking and standardized diplomas for a system that helps each student “understand their own conception of a good life” through knowledge and skills. It would also help them more easily change course if needed.

In the report, Lake noted several promising new models, including Colorado’s , designed to help rural districts create career-relevant learning experiences aligned to the needs and aspirations of local economies.

She also highlighted Seckinger High School in Gwinnett County, Georgia, a planned artificial intelligence-themed high school that will offer a college prep curriculum “taught through the lens of artificial intelligence.” Students will also be able to pursue an education in developing AI, she said. 

A gap year for struggling students

Lake proposed that high schools and community colleges consider a new kind of post-high school “gap year” designed to help struggling high school graduates get back on track academically and prepare for college and careers. 

“Gap years are oftentimes known for serving as a time for exploration for more advantaged kids,” she said. “Let’s change that.”

The idea is still in development, she said, but could be developed quickly.

“We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but we need to get going,” she said.

While high school graduation rates are rising, the researchers said, so is grade inflation — 90% of parents believe their child is actually above grade level in reading and math, according to a March 2023 , making it likely that many students are exiting the K-12 system unprepared for college and careers.

Outside experts who study education systems and secondary education said CRPE’s alarm over the data is justified.

“There’s going to be a long tail of the pandemic,” said Robert Balfanz, a scholar who studies high school as co-director of the at Johns Hopkins University.

He said a key problem from the pandemic is that many students were forced into virtual learning at key points in their education: while making the leap to more challenging reading, for instance, or diving into Algebra or calculus. “Kids that miss core transitional learning, I think, are almost hit twice,” he said. “They have that same amount of learning loss. But you could argue in some ways it was even more strategic of a loss because those are such key building blocks.”

He noted that the best predictor of whether a student will earn a college degree is if they earned “decent grades in challenging courses.” But if they don’t get access to these or don’t learn foundational material, “that’s a problem.”

Unequal access to such coursework, Balfanz said, can push students out of advanced classes. 

He is concerned that during the pandemic, many students who “officially took calculus” or other advanced courses virtually may not have gotten all of the material required. “And those kids are probably already in college.”

In the paper, researchers lamented that our K-12 system “leaves to chance” nearly every aspect of the transition from high school to college and careers, from students discovering their interests and talents to selecting a career pathway aligned to them. 

And few students ever get guidance on how to change careers and find new training or postsecondary opportunities when their interests and priorities shift.

Balfanz said the decline in “postsecondary momentum” could be the result of many factors, including the high cost of college, students who don’t feel well-prepared and a labor market that holds many opportunities for high wages without a college degree.

“I think a combination of those factors is going to push some kids to delay post-secondary,” he said. “And the more you delay it, the odds of success are less.”

Trying to go back to school at that point, he said, is “always challenging.” 

A new kind of report card

Dan Goldhaber, director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research () at the American Institutes for Research, said COVID recovery “has not fully happened” in many schools. 

“I’m not feeling super optimistic about pandemic recovery writ large right now,” he said. 

The new CRPE report, he said, demonstrates the “real conundrum” that schools face in communicating with parents: “I think that schools need to convey in more plain English where kids are at,” he said. 

But he said results from large-scale standardized exams “don’t resonate the way that information about their own students would resonate. What we need is for school systems to just be really clear with individual families about when their students are struggling. And I don’t think that school systems typically do that.”

Educators, he said, are typically optimistic about students’ chances of bouncing back — and fearful of being blamed for kids’ academic problems. 

“Schools don’t have a ton of incentive to communicate in ways that might negatively bounce back to them,” he said.

Lake, the CRPE director, said one good way to fix this problem is simply to rethink report cards.

“Parents look to report cards first,” she said. “And report cards need to be able to say how the kids are actually doing — not just that they’re getting a particular grade. Are they mastering the skills that they need to graduate? Are they on track? And so that’s where I’d focus my efforts.”

Linda Jacobson contributed to this report.

During a break after one session, I struck up a conversation with another attendee, a longtime educator with special ed expertise. She was a Black woman working in a rural public district two hours outside of Atlanta, and she told me how discouraged she felt by the way districts treat families of color with children who have special needs. She was frustrated about the constraints placed on her as a teacher — she couldn’t hug a student who was crying, for example, presumably because of rules around touch and safety.

So she is starting her own microschool. It will launch this fall. She’s working with a few families, all Black, who are eager for a different and more affirming experience for their young learners.

As I walked to my next session, I couldn’t get something out of my head: This teacher has a thousand burdens, and she isn’t responding by finding ways to work less. She’s taking on more work by starting her own school, an endeavor that one of the conference’s main-stage panelists described as “brutal” in the first year. In a sector where “overburdened” may be the most frequently used term to describe teachers, this educator and many of her peers (fellow teachers as well as parents) at the conference were not trying to step back. They were leaping forward, taking on new challenges.

I was deeply inspired by their energy. But I also walked away with a nagging sense of frustration, because the public education system is harnessing so little of that energy. Most of the entrepreneurs I met are assuming personal risk and putting incredible effort into starting microschools, hybrid homeschools and homeschooling cooperatives outside the governance and structures of public education.

I believe in public education, for all its faults. But I also think there are incredible resources in public school systems that are going to waste — including the intellectual capital of inventive educators and community members who want to pursue new ideas. Look no further than the teacher I met, feeling like the best way to serve her students was to leave — and to take some of them with her.

Public schools need to reckon with the opportunities they’re losing if there aren’t channels inside the system to encourage creativity, ingenuity and entrepreneurship from teachers, parents and even students.

There are some places where districts and charters are better channeling this energy. Consider:

The Madison, Wisconsin, school district used pandemic funding to launch 14 innovative projects dreamed up by staff or community members. One winner, the antiracist microschool ALL+IN, encourages students to learn outside the classroom and in the community, like in museums and libraries.

In North Carolina, the rural Edgecombe County district has used microschools and learning hubs for years to develop and test different school designs.

In Indiana, Innovation Network Schools support the growth of autonomous schools that operate inside Indianapolis Public Schools, but with flexibilities similar to those enjoyed by independent charters.

Across the country, teacher-powered schools are governed by teams of educators instead of a single principal.

Microschools like the Black Mothers Forum, Vita Schools of Innovation, Great Hearts Microschools, Arizona State University’s ASU Prep microschools and Gem Prep Learning Societies have launched as part of charter schools.

Nokomis Regional High School in Maine, which I profiled in a case study, has created a strong culture of teacher-led innovation with support from administrators.

To be honest, these glimmers are the outliers. In most school systems, teachers and parents are often expected to sit back and wait for instructions, not encouraged to generate and try new ideas. “Change” means nothing more than a new math curriculum. Charter school authorizers invite new ideas in theory, but then often stall their development with hundreds of pages of requirements and legalese.

I’m worried there’s a brain drain in public education that’s been accelerated by the pandemic and divisive politics. And I don’t just mean that superintendents are quitting. The parents and teachers opting out of public schools aren’t just leaving jobs vacant and reducing districts’ enrollment dollars. Some of them are walking away with good ideas for how schools can be more responsive to students’ varied needs. Some of them have especially good ideas for how to better meet the needs of underserved communities that are tired of being told to wait while someone else figures it out.

If public schools, charter authorizers and charter management organizations are willing to embrace creative solutions from teachers and the community, there are ways to do it: State and local leaders can encourage pods and microschools, partner with community organizations to create learning hubs, allow for autonomous district schools or enable parent-teacher compacts.

So, fellow believers in public education: If the cost of retaining education entrepreneurs is to give life to their ideas, what is there to lose?

Those conclusions represent the latest and widest-ranging evidence yet of the damage inflicted by the emergence of COVID — both in terms of direct interruptions to schooling and the social and economic turmoil in other spheres of life. They dovetail with the observations of education experts who have also pointed to steep declines in nationwide academic performance, along with the billion-dollar investments made by governments to help schools bounce back.

But they also come as have argued that learning losses may be less harmful than advertised, that a single-minded focus on the pandemic’s toll could hurt teacher morale. With American students now returned to a post-COVID reality in the classroom, a recent speech by Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona largely skirted the subject of learning loss.

By contrast, the review, based on 42 research studies from 15 countries, calls for heightened urgency from both leaders and educators in re-setting the trajectory for student outcomes.  

“The persistence of learning deficits two and a half years into the pandemic highlights the need for well-designed, well-resourced and decisive policy initiatives to recover learning deficits,” the authors write. “Policymakers, schools, and families will need to identify and realize opportunities to complement and expand on regular school-based learning.”

Robin Lake, director of the Center for Reinventing Public Education, said the findings were consistent with those of her own organization’s , released last summer.

“There is no question that learning gaps have become chasms and that while some students are catching up quickly, too many are not,” Lake wrote in an email. “This is a global concern and requires innovative and urgent action. I am deeply concerned that national educational and civic leaders in the U.S. are not taking this learning crisis seriously enough.”

Here are four key takeaways from the study:

1. Inequality in education grew

While the dozens of studies classified socioeconomic status according to different metrics (including parental income, free lunch eligibility, and neighborhood disadvantage, among others), most estimates indicated that achievement gaps between richer and poorer students tended to increase in both math and reading. Most showed widening inequality during the first year of the pandemic, but a sizable number also pointed to the same trend even into its second and third years.

In an email, Dan Goldhaber, director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, called the results “depressingly consistent about the pandemic exacerbating learning loss along preexisting lines of inequality.”

2. Poorer countries were hit harder too

No low-income countries were included in the analysis, as little evidence exists to identify the academic impact of COVID in the developing world. But the four middle-income countries under study (Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and South Africa) saw larger average learning deficits than their higher-income counterparts, including the three largest overall estimates of learning loss. 

The authors write that the effects of the last three years are likely to worsen the long-term inequality in international learning outcomes and “undo past progress” in closing gaps across borders.

3. Learning loss is stuck in 2020

After first emerging in the early months of the pandemic, the literature suggests that learning deficits have roughly held steady in the time since. That implies that efforts to adjust to ever-changing disruptions in schools were successful in holding off further losses, the authors write, but also that those efforts “have been unable to reverse them” so far. The pattern, which appears throughout all 15 countries, is also consistent within the three (the United States, United Kingdom, and Netherlands) that have cumulatively generated the most research findings.

4. Losses were greater in math than reading

In keeping with one of the most consistent findings in education research, the review shows that academic reversals in math have been significantly greater than those in literacy. Given the to teach their children reading skills, math has been characterized as a more “school-dependent subject,” and previous data on COVID-era achievement — including results from America’s foremost standardized K–12 exam, the National Assessment of Educational Progress — has already shown math scores absorbing a greater blow over the past few years. Across the study’s included in the review, reading losses at the median were only about half the magnitude of math losses.

“Even before the pandemic we were seeing serious challenges for communities of color and students from low income communities when it came to educational equity,” said interim chief executive officer Denise Forte.

“So while no one was really too surprised by the numbers, it just tells us we have so much more to do,” Forte said about the recent National Assessment of Educational Progress test scores.

Often called the “Nation’s Report Card,” eighth and fourth grade math scores dropped by eight and five points respectively – the largest decline ever recorded on the test. In addition, eighth and fourth grade reading scores dropped by three points.

From high-dosage tutoring to family-school engagement, advocates and experts weigh in on solutions:

1. Family-school partnerships

Yvonne Johnson, president-elect, said teachers need to build relationships with families to improve student outcomes.

“Families might not be 100% aware that it’s their responsibility too,” Johnson told ����Ӱ��. “So it’s incumbent upon us to bring them into the schools and have family reading nights and math nights and other things that make learning fun for kids.”

A solution Johnson proposed is funding .

“The goal would be to have these family engagement centers where schools have a centralized area to provide resources, wraparound services and other things families need to help their children succeed in school,” Johnson said. “If we had one in every single state, perhaps we would have been more prepared to help families navigate remote learning.”

2. High-dosage tutoring

Forte said programs such as high-dosage tutoring will expand learning time and target students with the greatest need.

“We need to give kids more time on task and it doesn’t have to be fully about academics,” Forte told ����Ӱ��. “You can build out really fun learning programs that include other activities that make sure kids feel included and have a sense of belonging.”

But, Robin Lake, director of the , said parents aren’t pushing for tutoring because they don’t understand how much pandemic learning loss damage affected their child.

“We’ve seen in a couple big national surveys that they’re not interested in tutoring and other interventions for their child,” Lake told ����Ӱ��. “My biggest concern is how do we help parents understand that they need to ask hard questions about their child’s mastery of core subjects.”

Lake recommends training parents to become tutors for not just their own children, but other kids in their communities.

“One of the barriers that districts are running into is that they’re trying to hire more teachers or more office aides to provide tutoring or counseling services in schools – but let’s open that up,” Lake said. “Parents want to know how to help their kids and they’d like to be able to help other kids as well…so let’s get creative about who our after school providers can be.”

3. Technology access for remote learning

Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of AASA, , said that pandemic virtual learning further deepened the digital divide for students nationwide.

“Millions of kids did not have the technology to receive an online education and that was reflected in these test scores,” Domenech told ����Ӱ��. “The lowest performing schools had the greatest loss because those were primarily the kids that didn’t have a laptop at home – or even if they did, their home didn’t have internet access.”

Domenech believes the priority for the needs to be put into quality instructional material.

“Students are in facilities that don’t have, for example, the technology and all of these other factors that wealthier communities have,” Domenech said. “So if we want equity and if we want to do away with that achievement gap, then we have to do away with the inequity of technology access.”

4. School climate and student mental health

Ronn Nozoe, the chief executive officer, said schools need to pay attention to the role social media plays on student mental health.

“Kids were troubled by social media even before the pandemic, especially girls feeling the pressure that their peers…in school put them in,” Nozoe told ����Ӱ��. “We need to create safe spaces for kids to talk about these issues who don’t feel comfortable talking to their parents.”

He also noted the challenges teachers face, oftentimes serving as secondary sources of support for their students’ mental health needs.

“If we know teachers are the most powerful and most impactful variable in the development of a child, then why would we make teaching the most difficult profession on the face of the earth?” Nozoe said.

5. Teacher shortages

Richard Carranza, chief of strategy and global development, said the shortage of qualified teachers contributed to test score disparities.

“Is it concerning that teachers are leaving the profession? Absolutely it’s concerning,” Carranza told ����Ӱ��. “It’s a herculean job that teachers have in front of them to make up for lost ground and continue to accelerate students, and it’s an even heavier lift if you don’t have credentialed teachers readily available in schools.”

The mental health needs of teachers need to be addressed, Carranza added. 

“If we pay attention to the social emotional needs of students and teachers in schools,” Carranza said, “they’re going to create an environment in which they’re able to do their best work – which will be reflected in better test scores.”

Last fall, the Center on Reinventing Public Education found that almost all of America’s 100 large and urban districts planned to prioritize at least one learning acceleration strategy, but only 20% intended to offer a comprehensive suite of approaches to help students catch up.

Our new review of spending plans reveals about 1 in 3 large U.S. districts (34) plan to incorporate all four evidence-based learning acceleration strategies — tutoring supports, extended learning opportunities, small-group instruction and use of data — a sign that more students may be poised to receive such help.

We do not know how successfully districts are implementing these plans, however. While most districts signaled that they’re also assessing students’ academic progress and/or their emotional needs, only a fraction publicized the results, according to our review. It’s also unclear how or whether districts plan to measure the effectiveness of the strategies to address learning loss that they plan to carry out.

The majority of districts plan for some form of learning acceleration, primarily through extended learning and tutoring 

This latest analysis comes from our larger review of districts’ federally mandated spending plans for their COVID relief money. We also reviewed data from other public sources, including districts’ proposed annual budgets and recovery strategies they reported for 2021-22. Districts may continue these efforts through 2024, the deadline to spend the federal funds.

Nearly 8 in 10 large and urban school districts (78) said they planned to offer tutoring during 2021-22 — 16 more than the year before. Of these, 27 offered tutoring to all students and 35 targeted specific subgroups. in North Carolina, for example, used an algorithm to identify students in most need of tutoring. Other districts, like in Delaware, described populations they would prioritize, such as newcomers, long-term English learners, migratory students and children with disabilities.

A slightly larger share of districts (83) shared plans for extended school services, including lengthening the school day (6) or offering summer programs (29). But most districts (48) opted to offer a combination of extended learning opportunities.

Roughly one-fifth of districts (22) offered these learning services to all students, but slightly more (27) prioritized tutoring for subgroups, such as elementary students and English learners.

About 1 in 3 large U.S. districts said they’d offer small-group instruction (60) or use data to diagnose student needs (64). 

The number of districts that signaled they’d employ all four learning acceleration strategies increased overall. During our initial review, just over one-fifth incorporated every acceleration strategy in their recovery plans. The latest review shows about 1 in 3 large districts (34) intend to do this now.

While most districts had a plan to assess student progress in fall 2021, few provided details on how this data would be used moving forward

According to our analysis, 70 districts shared evidence of assessing students’ academic or social needs in fall 2021. Of these, most prioritized academic assessments, but a handful also gauged students’ well-being. 

Only a fraction of these districts (18 of 70) shared the results publicly, however.

Roughly a quarter of districts (26) described how they would use data from these assessments, typically stating it would be analyzed to identify students in need of academic support. California’s school district, for example, employed i-Ready assessment data to identify students to receive tutoring support. 

About one-third of districts (35) said they’re adopting new assessment systems or data priorities. Long Beach Unified also developed a for a new assessment platform, progress monitoring tools and the use of comparative data to analyze student growth and acceleration. 

In its , the School District of Philadelphia outlined new plans to prioritize student well-being. Beginning in fall 2021, it implemented a social-emotional behavior screener to identify students in need of additional help. The application also stated plans to install a multi-tiered system of support in all schools this fall. While these examples highlight ways some districts are thinking about monitoring students’ academic and social-emotional statuses, the vast majority are not taking similar initiative.

It’s not too late to prioritize data collection efforts

While more districts have communicated their learning acceleration plans since 2020-21, it’s unclear how many have actually put them in motion and will continue them this year and next. A forthcoming study by CRPE, conducted as part of the , suggests that efforts have been slowed by staff and student absences.

It’s also unclear how many districts plan to monitor student progress or assess the effectiveness of these new strategies. Student progress data is not widely released to the public, as evidenced by the fact that less than 1 in 5 districts shared data on how students were faring in fall 2021. 

In a separate we conducted recently of spending plans for districts in New England, only 0.4% of relief funds were planned for data investments. Similarly, a FutureEd of spending plans found few districts planned to invest in student information systems. Overall, most districts don’t appear to be keeping data and progress monitoring top of mind. This isn’t to say that investments in learning acceleration are not well spent, but these efforts are less meaningful if school systems don’t have a plan to track how these strategies pay off in the long run.

Districts don’t have to be alone in organizing data collection efforts. States play a role in shaping how and what districts can do by requiring reports on important student metrics, such as assessment data, participation rates and chronic absenteeism levels. Connecticut has an that outlines 12 indicators to measure school and district success. approved the state’s waiver to report on some of these metrics in 2021, when it was difficult to collect accurate data during school closures, but it will be important to continue gathering more information on students’ progress now that schools are operating in a new type of normal. More states must support data collection efforts as the country enters a new phase of recovery for students. Meanwhile, districts need to be honest about their capacity to carry out — and measure — the results of their planned learning recovery strategies.

At the same time, more than half of large districts are scrambling to incentivize staff to stay put amid a tight job market, often by pouring federal pandemic relief dollars into salary bonuses for current and new hires, or expanding programs to recruit and retain new teachers.

The contrasting trends underscore the pandemic’s wildly variable impact on large districts — and the importance of enrollment to a district’s livelihood, as each student brings a specific amount of public funding to a school. In some states, attendance also affects that per-pupil funding allotment.

Yet amid this focus on staff and per-pupil dollars, few districts reporting enrollment drops appear to be spending their relief dollars on efforts to re-enroll students, according to our review. Instead, more districts are spending their one-time funds on teacher recruitment and retention – which means staffing cuts may loom on the horizon when stimulus funds dry up.

For example, more than three-quarters of the districts offering bonuses didn’t report gaining new students between fall 2020 and fall 2021. With flat or declining enrollment, those districts may not be able to sustain the pay boosts over time.

Districts losing students consider staff cuts, school closures

School enrollment trends used to be easier to predict – and to factor into districts’ budget planning – because they played out over a longer span of time. But the pandemic changed all that.

We recently analyzed the budget and staffing decisions large districts made in response by reviewing their websites, board documents, media mentions, and COVID federal relief spending plans.

Of the 100 large and urban districts in our database, 38 referenced declining enrollment between the 2020-21 and the 2021-22 school years on their websites. That fits with the national pandemic trend, as public school enrollment fell by 3% in 2020-21 compared to the previous school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Ten large districts with significant enrollment declines are considering or actually closing schools. Three of those districts plan to consolidate more than nine schools each: El Paso Independent School District in Texas, Oakland Unified School District in California and St. Paul Public Schools in Minnesota.

Nearly one in five large districts reference staffing cuts for the 2022-23 school year, and the vast majority cite declining enrollment as the primary driver of those decisions.

Others are cutting staff for other reasons. The Houston Independent School District is planning to lay off 25 curriculum specialists due to a $60 million cut designed to centralize district administration costs, while Richmond Public Schools in Virginia will cut 40 full-time jobs as it closes its virtual academy.

Using pandemic dollars to lure back families – and funding

Some districts are smartly using their federal relief funds to re-engage families, in hopes of attracting new students, finding and re-enrolling those who left, or maintaining current students. Of the 10 districts that cited declining enrollment as a rationale for closing schools, six say they’re using pandemic funds to improve attendance and prevent further enrollment declines.

Broward County Public Schools, which identified 11,500 students who were “unaccounted for” during the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years, will spend $4 million over the next two years to locate missing students and help them return to school. That work is being anchored by community partnerships.

Using pandemic dollars to stabilize the workforce

For other large districts, worker shortages and turnover have been bigger problems than enrollment fluctuations.

Due to widespread staff shortages in critical subject areas, 59 districts are offering bonuses to new and current employees, according to our analysis. Anchorage Public Schools is offering current employees a $500 bonus for every new hire they refer and an additional $500 if that person, once hired, completes the school year. That’s in addition to a $2,500 signing bonus for new employees.

After high rates of staff absences, Oklahoma City Public Schools is giving substitute teachers $40 per day pay boost. The district will also give stipends to staff members who return to campus early for training on addressing learning loss.

About half the country’s largest districts (49 of 100) are directing federal relief dollars toward teacher recruitment and development. For example, as a part of its teacher residency program, Buffalo Public Schools in New York is collaborating with the University of Buffalo to match diverse education-school students with a master district teacher for a one-year residency. The program includes a Puerto Rico recruitment initiative, which uses online platforms to recruit bilingual and bi-literate candidates to Buffalo to help close achievement gaps and accelerate the achievement of Latino students. The district also hosts an urban teacher academy, which invites local high school graduates to explore teacher assistant positions.

District leaders should balance using one-time funds to save teacher positions with investments to re-engage students

Despite robust teacher recruitment programs, staffing cuts may be on the horizon once stimulus funds dry up in 2024 if districts fail to reverse declining enrollment.

Districts should balance spending on new staff and bonuses with investments in re-engaging students and families. Together, those efforts could help mitigate declining enrollment – and declining revenue. Listening to families, incorporating their ideas, and making their children feel connected is not only good practice, but also a way to build community support and to balance short-term staffing needs with long-term teacher retention.

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Data released Monday revealed a startling decline in the number of American children attending public schools: Total K-12 enrollment dropped by roughly 3 percent in 2020-21 compared with the previous school year.

The overall number obscures an even more dramatic drop among the youngest children. According to the data circulated by the National Center for Education Statistics — the federal agency charged with analyzing and disseminating information about schools and education — the combined number of preschool and kindergarten students decreased by 13 percent last year. All told, the decline is the largest since the turn of the century.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said that in order to help students recover from the setbacks of the last year, educators needed to re-engage with families whose ties to schools had been frayed by COVID-related upheaval.

That work, Cardona added in a statement provided to ����Ӱ��, “includes preparing to fully re-open schools for the fall, providing summer learning and enrichment opportunities, and investing in high-quality preschool, which we know is crucial for connecting children with necessary supports—particularly our youngest learners with developmental delays and disabilities.”

The NCES findings, based on figures collected from state education authorities, were characterized as preliminary, and final results will be made available next spring. While 49 states and multiple U.S. territories submitted all the relevant data, Illinois missed NCES’s deadline, and a handful of other jurisdictions did not provide statistics for pre-kindergarten.

Still, the overall picture of diminished enrollment confirms some of the impressions formed by education observers over the last year, as the disruptions triggered by COVID-19 and remote learning drove many families to switch to private schools or homeschooling. While final numbers are yet to be released, it is believed that may have dropped out of school since their classrooms were shuttered last spring.

A 3 percent decline, measured against a national public school population of 51.1 million during the 2019-20 school year, amounts to a drop of roughly 1.5 million pupils.

While the softening in enrollment was seen in every area of the country, NCES’s figures show that it was felt much more severely in certain states than others. Twenty-nine states lost between 1 and 3 percent of their students year over year; Utah and South Dakota, along with the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, and American Samoa, saw decreases of less than 1 percent; the rest of the country lost more than 3 percent — including Vermont, Mississippi, and Puerto Rico, which each saw declines of more than 5 percent.

Ross Santy, the agency’s associate commissioner for administrative data, highlighted the rarity of American classrooms losing students.

“K-12 enrollment in our nation’s public schools has been slowly increasing almost every year since the start of this century,” Santy said in a statement. “Before this year, in the few recent years where we have seen enrollment decreases, they have been small changes representing less than 1 percent of total enrollment.”

Shrunken enrollment was also concentrated in specific age bands. The number of high schoolers fell by just .4 percent, while elementary and middle schoolers accounted for a 3 percent decrease. By contrast, enrollment of kindergarteners declined by three times as much, while the pre-K population plunged by an astonishing 22 percent. Those results confirm , which indicated that many families were choosing to keep their young children home longer than expected rather than sign up for virtual learning in the early school years.

Robin Lake, director of the nonpartisan research organization Center on Reinventing Public Education, said that the fall in K-12 enrollment, while somewhat predictable, still left questions about whether the families who have exited school systems over the last 16 months would return by September. The number of families choosing to homeschool their children during the past school year, while applications to both virtual and brick-and-mortar charter schools has also spiked in many areas.

For kids making their way back to school, or enrolling for the first time after a “redshirt” year, it would be vital to make up for the missed opportunities to learn and interact with their peers, Lake remarked.

“Not only have a lot of these kids not been in school, they haven’t been in normal play situations,” she said. “They’re coming in having to learn how to engage with other kids appropriately, and so having supports in place to help navigate those realities will be important.”

Many districts now expect to see a “” in the fall, as millions of children from the ages of 4-6 enroll in school for the first time. Lake said that districts would have to be prepared to meet the rush of young kids with the necessary staff, classroom space, and teaching resources.

“These kids are owed a lot in terms of the time they’ve missed learning things, playing with other kids, all of that stuff. So we’re encouraging school districts to put those kinds of supports in place this summer and try to reach as many kids as possible to address some of those foundational skills.”

As more Americans receive Covid-19 vaccines and schools move to reopen widely, leaders are doing their best to make sure everyone gets the memo: School is happening in-person this fall.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently , “We must prepare now for full in-person instruction come next school year.”

In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy said in March he is “” schools across the state to return in-person in the fall, no exceptions. “We are expecting Monday through Friday, in-person, every school, every district,” he said.

Good luck with that.

Even as vaccination rates soar and the government authorizes access for adolescents, school districts nationwide are grappling with sometimes widespread suspicion and dissatisfaction over how they handled the pandemic, especially in communities of color. That’s forcing them to offer families an option that might have been unthinkable a year ago — and one that has a terrible track record: enrolling their children online this fall and continuing learning from home.

Dawn Williams, whose daughter will start first grade in August in Maryland’s Prince George’s County, said she’s seriously considering an online program. “Most of my friends that have children, their kids are still virtual,” she said.

So far it’s happening in just a fraction of the nation’s 13,500 districts. But those include a wide mix of rural and suburban districts, as well as large urban school systems like Albuquerque, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Dallas, Indianapolis, Nashville, Omaha, Richmond, and the District of Columbia, according to the University of Washington’s Center for the Reinvention of Public Education (CRPE).

In Colorado’s Jefferson County, the school district, responding to “high demand” from families, an online option in the fall. District spokesperson Cameron Bell said more than 700 students have enrolled so far, with at least 1,000 expected by August.

In Montgomery County, the largest school district in Maryland, officials are developing a virtual academy “to address both the students who may want to remain virtual for health reasons but also those who have thrived in virtual learning,” said spokesperson Gboyinde Onijala.

What’s going on here?

Much of this can be chalked up to simple consumer demand. One recent found that nearly 30 percent of parents would rely on virtual learning “indefinitely” going forward. That suggests a potential market of more than 15 million students.

Districts are listening. When RAND researchers surveyed about 320 public school leaders last October, they found that were either considering or actually planning to keep “one or more virtual schools” operating after the pandemic ends, said RAND’s Heather Schwartz.

“I expect that to hold, or even to increase somewhat based on early anecdotal indications that a sizable minority of students and parents prefer remote learning,” Schwartz said via email.

More recently, in early April, researchers at CRPE surveyed officials in 100 large urban school districts and found nearly identical results: 23, or just over one in five, plan to offer a remote option next fall.

District leaders told Schwartz and other researchers that their main motivation was “to be responsive to parent and student preferences” — and in no small part to improve sagging enrollments. of 33 states by The Associated Press and the education news site Chalkbeat found that public K-12 enrollment in 2020 dropped by more than half a million students, or 2 percent.

“You keep hearing this word: ‘thriving’”

As he talks these days to school leaders nationwide, education consultant John Bailey said he hears many of them say they plan to make online learning “a more permanent part of their offering to kids going forward.” A one-time U.S. Department of Education official who now advises the Walton Family Foundation, Bailey has supported the idea that reopening schools is safe. He said that while many educators acknowledge millions of students lost ground via distance learning, “for some kids, it’s working really well. So why not offer that going forward?”

Nationwide, families of color are keeping their children home at especially high rates. In Chicago, the district’s chief of school management told school board members late last month that most students are “learning virtually.” But about one in four Black high school students was absent from both in-person and remote learning in late April. Overall, only about two-thirds of high school students attended in-person classes on days they were expected in school, the Chicago Sun-Times .

At the same time, Asian fourth-graders attend school remotely at the of any group — 95 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Eighth-graders attend at an even higher rate: 96 percent. Asian families have expressed fears about their children experiencing anti-Asian discrimination or even violence in the wake of the pandemic.

While state and local restrictions can play a part in attendance statistics like these, many families are simply voting with their feet, said Bree Dusseault, a practitioner in residence at CRPE.

“There’s still a really sizable population of students who, even when given the option to be in-person, aren’t taking it,” she said.

“You keep hearing this word: ‘thriving’ — particularly in families of color,” said Annette Anderson, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Safe and Healthy Schools in Baltimore. “Districts have never had to wrestle with ‘How do we provide education in multiple formats?’ They thought this was a stopgap. Now what I think they’re finding is that there are many parents that were just fine with virtual learning.”

Anderson, a Black educator who is also a mother of three teens, said the past year has taught parents “that they have a voice at the table – and they are not being shy and retiring about letting people know what they want in terms of how they want their children to learn.”

Recent survey data suggest that Black, Hispanic and Asian parents are more likely than their white peers to say they prefer online learning. For instance, the journal recently noted data from early April that showed 60 percent of white parents have a preference for in-person learning, compared to just 25 percent of Black and Hispanic parents.

At the same time, Dusseault said, many parents of color see how badly education systems have served their kids in the past, with substandard instruction and .

When Anderson surveyed her three children recently, none wanted to go back to their Baltimore school this fall. They like learning from home and have been successful.

“I think my kids sometimes miss their friends,” she said. “But aside from that, I don’t have any of my three children saying right now, ‘Mom, I want to go back to school today or tomorrow.’ They have adapted to this.”

Anderson was quick to add that her kids “have every kind of technology possible,” as well as space at home to use it. All three have their own rooms, plus their home has a backyard. But whatever their situations, she said, “There are a lot of kids who are at home and they’re thriving. You can’t negate the success of those students and the opportunity that they have had to be separated from their peers and still do well academically.”

Williams, mother of the Maryland first-grader, said her daughter is already doing advanced work — and she’d like to keep it that way. Giving her child a chance to work virtually and independently is key.

“Students that are more advanced — and parents that have the choice — we’re going to keep our kids home,” she said. “Those kids are going to accelerate. They’re going to soar and they’re going to keep advancing.”

“School hesitancy” and safety

Vladimir Kogan, an Ohio State University political scientist who studies politics and public policy, said “school hesitancy” may in part be a function of the messages families hear — especially in places where teachers’ unions loudly demonstrated last year, enacting and the like to warn of the dangers of reopening schools.

“I think that messaging has definitely filtered down to the parents,” he said.

But has shown that when prevention strategies are in place in schools, transmission of the virus is typically lower than, or similar to, levels of community transmission, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As a result, public opinion is shifting. A February Pew found that 61 percent of Americans said K-12 schools that weren’t open for in-person instruction “should give a lot of consideration to the possibility that students will fall behind academically.” That’s up from 48 percent last July. And fewer Americans said schools should give a lot of consideration to the risk to teachers or students.

“I think the number of parents who are hesitant is going to go down pretty substantially,” Kogan said. “But I don’t think it’s going to go down to zero.”

Bailey, who recently summarizing research on safe school re-openings amid Covid fears, predicted that there will be a group of parents “who will probably never feel that it’s safe until there’s a vaccine for kids.”

The prognosis on vaccines seems promising: This week, both the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved expanded use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children 12 to 15 years old. Pfizer also said it’ll ask the FDA for emergency authorization in September to administer its vaccine to children as young as 2 years old.

Both Johnson & Johnson and Moderna are conducting trials in children.The U.S. vaccine developer Novavax is also on children — its vaccine has a reported 96 percent efficacy rate in adults and is awaiting emergency use authorization in the U.S.

A “really terrible” track record for virtual schools

Kogan, the political scientist, worries that by relying on virtual schools, districts are embracing a well-studied — and failed — reform.

In a 2019 , researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s National Education Policy Center found that graduation rates at virtual and blended-learning schools were far lower than the national average for public schools. The review followed years of from researchers nationwide.

In 2016, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, along with other groups, issued “A Call to Action” to , saying far too many virtual schools “have experienced notable problems.”

At the student level, most of the dilemma lies in what’s required for students to be successful in virtual settings: huge amounts of self-control, motivation and discipline, said Kogan, who last January that found worse declines in reading achievement among Ohio third-graders in districts that used fully remote instruction.

The track record of these programs “was terrible before Covid,” Kogan said. “And I think it’s certainly the case that there are kids who do fine. But the districts are not saying, ‘We’re going to limit it only to kids who do fine.’”

To be fair, many educators get it. In its announcement of a “modified digital learning option,” the , district last month offered an official warning: “Digital learning is not optimal for every student. Some students did not do as well academically, socially, or emotionally in the digital learning environment.”

In the long term, Kogan said, his larger worry is that this could open the door to a two-tier education system: a bigger, functional one for students whose parents are comfortable sending them to school, and a smaller, inferior one “for kids whose parents are too scared and keep them home.”

The long-term damage, he said, “is going to be so devastating. It’s going to exacerbate all the inequalities that we already have.”

Anderson, the Baltimore educator and mother, acknowledged the dilemma, but emphasized it was nothing new: Millions of kids weren’t being served well before the pandemic. Here’s a chance for something better, especially for students of color who are already staying away in large numbers.

While leaders may insist that everyone attend in-person on the first day of school this fall, Anderson said, “I’m not hearing what is going to significantly shift over the summer that is going to make sure that these large numbers of families of color are going to suddenly show up in September.”

K-12 schools that cut instructional time by switching to a four-day week see meaningful reductions in student learning, according to recently published research. The effects are similar to those resulting from other common approaches to cost reduction, such as increasing class sizes, and the negative academic effects may intensify with the passage of time, the author finds.

The trend toward closing schools for one day each week — or at least replacing academic programming during a fifth day with enrichment, field trips, or professional development for teachers — was spreading quickly before the arrival of COVID-19. But the pandemic’s effects, including significant drops in test scores, also point to the damage wrought by lost hours in the classroom.

The , originally published in January and featured today in the journal Education Next, looks at the academic outcomes of nearly 700,000 Oregon students between the 2004-05 and 2018-19 school years. The total number of schools in the state using a four-day week fluctuated from a low of 108 to a high of 156 during that period, with a large surge in adoption during the budget crunch that followed the Great Recession.

Study author Paul Thompson, an economist at Oregon State University, said that most of the schools making the switch were highly rural, enrolling as few as 20 students. The change was implemented differently across districts, he added.

“These are unique situations, and after surveying these schools and talking about why they adopted this four-day week, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach in terms of why they adopted it or how they structure them or what they do on the off day,” Thompson said. “That makes it difficult to think about one blanket type of policy for these schools.”

One consequence that doesn’t vary much, however, is lost learning time. Even though schools tend to expand the remaining school days by roughly 50 minutes to compensate for the missed day, that still leads to students losing out on three to four hours of learning each week.

By studying districts that switched to a four-day week during the period under study and comparing them with other districts that did not, Thompson found that the reduction in teaching resulted in lower test performance for both math and reading. The decline was particularly pronounced for students in the seventh and eighth grades; those larger impacts may result from the earlier start times necessitated by lengthening the other four school days, which could adolescent sleep schedules.

But the average loss in learning may mask even greater detrimental effects. Some schools in the study shortened their week for a year or two as a result of financial necessity, then quickly returned to a standard schedule when their circumstances permitted it. Those schools still experienced a drop in student achievement, but it faded over time as things reverted to the status quo. For those that stuck with the four-day week, learning loss grew considerably as the years passed.

“The important piece here is that if you’re losing instructional time year-over-year, that learning loss is growing over time,” Thompson said. “For schools that continually have reduced instructional time year over year…relative to what they would have had if they’d gone back to the five-day schedule, they see this compounding negative effect.”

The movement toward reducing instructional time is by no means exclusive to Oregon. According to analysis from the Center for Reinventing Public Education, half of all states are home to at least one school running on a four-day week; in five states, all in the West, over 20 percent of all schools have followed that course. Examining the policy’s nationwide spread, Thompson found that the number of such schools grew from 257 in 199 to over 1,600 in 2019. While some provide office hours or other supplemental learning options on their fifth day, others are fully closed to staff and students.

Pre-COVID, the trend had already grown so quickly that researchers at CRPE called it a “”; in one state they studied, , 42 out 115 districts had changed to a shorter schedule. And while the arrangement is often popular with both teachers and families, who can struggle to commute long distances to reach schools in rural areas, the hoped-for cost savings don’t necessarily arrive as advertised. In on six four-day districts, Learning Policy Institute analyst Michael Griffith found they saved between .4 percent and 2.5 percent of their total budgets by instituting the change — largely because they continued to keep schools open for a fifth day to allow for teacher training and student extracurricular activities.

The negative impacts measured by Thompson may also hold ominous implications for students who spent months out of school during the pandemic. Even those who were long ago allowed to return on a hybrid schedule experienced disruptions to the traditional rhythms of school that far exceed those imposed by a shorter week. According to RAND’s ongoing surveys of American teachers, just said that they had covered all of the curriculum that they would have if their schools had stayed open. A California analysis found that as many as 20 percent of low-income students received no live instruction during the course of a given week.

To address the huge needs faced by families and schools looking to get back to normal, Democrats in Congress passed the mammoth American Rescue Plan, including over $120 billion in new funding for K-12 schools. The money can largely be used at the discretion of states, and may ultimately be spent providing summer programs and intensive tutoring that effectively lengthen the school year.

Robin Lake, director of CRPE, compared the “heavy burden” borne by families struggling to adjust to four-day school schedules — and often left without child care coverage for part of the week — with the challenges posed by the year of COVID. Contemplating what it would take for kids to recover from being separated from teachers and classmates, she argued that the solution “can’t be less of anything. It has to be more of everything.”

“I look out at the next couple of years, and I see an almost impossible problem to solve,” she said. “A very concerning lost instructional time, especially in math and especially for certain kids. Extraordinary challenges for kids when it comes to mental health and social-emotional learning. Lost therapeutic services and other supports for students with complex needs. It’s just an extraordinary challenge, and how do we solve that without maximizing the time that kids have in school with teachers?”

Thompson said he was optimistic about the evidence from schools that only temporarily used a four-day week, which ultimately saw “minimal” learning losses as a result. But the long-term consequences for the students involved, including on important benchmarks like persistence in school and high school graduation, still need to be closely studied, he cautioned.

“That’s good news to think about, and it’s what we’re hoping will happen if schools are able to open full-time and kids can get back to instructional time consistent with what we saw pre-pandemic. Hopefully some of these knowledge losses can be caught up. But there are questions about some of the long-run ramifications on outcomes besides achievement.”