For the two of us—educators born almost 60 years apart—it’s a marvel to see what generative artificial intelligence (AI) can do. One of us, Professor Edmund W. Gordon, was born in 1921 and has served many roles throughout an 80-plus-year career: from psychologist and minister to civil rights leader and public servant. The other, Eric Tucker, born in 1980, is a parent of school-age children, a special educator, a former superintendent, and a technologist. Despite our different perspectives, this new reality of AI leaves us pondering: If AI can produce something that takes the typical student years, even decades, to master, what does it mean to be educated? 

As the launch of ChatGPT marks its first anniversary, we’re not the only ones asking these questions. Tumult at OpenAI, the non-profit AI research and deployment shop and publisher of ChatGPT whose mission is “to ensure that artificial general intelligence—AI systems that are generally smarter than humans—benefits all of humanity” creates something of an Overton window to consider what broadly distributed benefits for AI might look like in the field of education. 

A Biden administration executive order and report highlights how educators and schools might navigate the rapid expansion of AI, arguably one of the most significant transformations since the War on Poverty, of which Dr. Gordon was a key architect during the Johnson administration.

Dr. Gordon’s scholarship has considered what it means to be human and how technologies amplify learning and development over a career that included contributions to numerous presidential administrations, including Kennedy’s desegregation efforts, Johnson’s creation of Head Start, and Obama’s Promise Neighborhoods. To paraphrase Gordon: Being a learner for life is not about filling a pail but lighting a fire.

In the wake of the public debut of ChatGPT, Claude, and Bard, it’s clear that AI’s influence is here to stay. So while it’s worth understanding the risks—including the potential for AI to disrupt human jobs, metastasize bias, reproduce mistakes, undermine privacy, and cause unintended consequences—it’s also important to understand AI’s possibilities for enhancing human potential and informing educational processes. 

As educators, we’re interested in how these technologies could help students learn in a manner that honors learner variability. How can educators and caregivers orient our work regarding these tools to ensure all children thrive in an uncertain future? While the technology is different, educators have considered these types of questions before. We’ve gone from encyclopedia sets to Google workspaces, from one-room schoolhouses to Zoom seminars. As the storm of AI-fueled transformation makes landfall, we believe educators should understand the emergence of AI as an opportunity to take stock of what matters most for learners in the period ahead. 

What It Means to Educated for the Future

In the face of emerging technological advances, Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scardamalia (2013) considered human competencies that matter in an uncertain world. They elevate the ability to create knowledge, find real-world applications for abstract ideas, understand and operate within complex systems, sustain focus amid multiplying distractions, and engage in collective work.

Similarly, the XQ Institute has identified research-backed goals, or learner outcomes, that students must develop to be successful in the future. These include agility in their ways of thinking and making sense of the world, building collaborative capacities such as self-awareness and social awareness, and cultivating curiosity to become lifelong learners.

Studies show too many U.S. high school graduates need remedial courses in college and don’t master the skills employers increasingly prioritize. XQ is working to change that by redesigning the high school experience. XQ’s Learner Outcomes help educators identify how to engage students deeply in their learning to master the knowledge and skills necessary to meet the challenges—and opportunities—they’ll need for college, career, and any other future success. Within these outcomes are numerous competencies aimed at developing skills such as critical thinking, social awareness, and self-management.

For example, when Eric Tucker co-founded the Edmund W. Gordon Brooklyn Laboratory High School in 2017, the curriculum emphasized the practice and presentation of applied research. For each year of high school, students completed interdisciplinary year-long seminar courses sponsored by the College Board, investigating pressing issues of social concern in various disciplinary contexts, writing research-based essays, and designing and giving presentations as teams and individuals. Students completed research projects on topics they chose—from environmental justice to gun control, affirmative action, and economic mobility—gathering and combining information from various sources, viewing an issue from multiple perspectives, and crafting arguments based on evidence. 

Such competencies are human competencies—abilities that, at present, technology cannot fully replicate. In the face of AI, we, as educators, are the ones who must help all learners cultivate these competencies. We must shift education to focus on human potential, to develop students’ breadth and depth of knowledge, as well as their ability to navigate diverse ideas, people, and cultures. This is not a job a robot or algorithm can perform.

Focusing Education on Human Potential

Instead of practicing tasks that AI will increasingly perform (such as producing a first draft of an essay outline, generating initial lines of code, or preparing a range of preliminary visualizations of a statistical analysis), educators should shift our focus to enhancing uniquely human capabilities—amplifying human potential through technological advancements and beyond. Schools should embrace generative AI and similar tools to increase time spent honing competencies such as framing meaningful questions, contextualizing arguments, and evaluating multiple perspectives.

Dr. Gordon’s scholarly work explores two competencies that are particularly important for educators to focus on: 

Human agency. Agency is the ability to recognize and act in the best interest of yourself and others. Another way to think about it is the ability to hold onto a sense of efficacy and enact your values. Ana Mari Cauce and Gordon (2013) define human agency as the propensity to take action and to be goal-driven. 

Human agency is significant because it enables people to act for the collective good. As Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor and psychologist, captures so beautifully in “Man’s Search for Meaning” (1954), fulfillment ensues “… as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.” In an era of AI, we can amplify agency by using tools that enhance the ability to act meaningfully in the surrounding world. 

This is particularly true when confronted by complex existential threats like climate change. Educators focusing on student agency can work with students on how to use AI to address environmental challenges. Students might explore how AI can support campaigns to lower energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, monitor deforestation, or track carbon removal. The International Society for Technology in Education’s guide, for example, proposes students research and identify a local environmental or sustainability challenge, define the problem in detail, explore how an AI-powered solution might fit into the more extensive solution, and create and test a working prototype. In this example, an agentic learner can practice setting authentic goals and using AI to help solve a real-world problem.

Intellective competence and character. Dr. Gordon coined “intellective competence” (2013) to describe the ability to use knowledge, technique, and values to engage and solve novel problems. He uses the term “intellective character” to reflect that what we want learners to know and be able to do must be instrumental to achieving what we want learners to be and become. Intellectual character implies becoming a good citizen and creatively using imagination to address challenges and improve circumstances.

The ability to make sense of and address such problems sets humans apart from our ever-evolving technological counterparts. For example, Chris Terrill from Crosstown High highlights schools worldwide where students work together to address environmental challenges, big and small. Educators can strengthen intellective competence by engaging students using AI tools for sustainability challenges. Platforms such as Wildlife.ai, Restor, and Zooniverse suggest how AI might help provide insights into environmental challenges such as climate change, protecting ocean ecosystems and wildlife, water and plant conservation, or air quality. Intellective character orients a learner’s urgency, values, and commitments toward environmental justice.

Educators and students in classrooms around the country are exploring future-leaning approaches that resonate with Gordon’s notions of agency and intellective competence. Notably, XQ schools such as Latitude High School in Oakland, Iowa BIG in Cedar Rapids, and the Purdue Polytechnic High Schools in Indiana demonstrate how meaningful projects in which students have a voice in their learning and collaborate with community partners can nurture these competencies. 

As technological breakthroughs, analytic methods, and artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly redefine what it means to be educated, they correspondingly transform how we can measure and inform learning and development. At the Gordon Commission Study Group, we believe that now is the time to accelerate measurement and assessment system innovation to maximize learning and thriving for every learner. We are working to study the best of assessment, data, and AI practice, technology, and policy; consider future design needs and opportunities for educational systems; and generate recommendations to better meet the needs of students, families, educators, and society.

The emergence of generative AI signals a sea change for what it means to be educated. Our challenge to fellow educators is to join us in rethinking what it means to learn and thrive, given AI-powered tools. Our combined 100-plus years of experience as parents, educators, and applied researchers lends us confidence. We can embrace agency, encourage intellective character, and foster the abilities that shape us as individuals and help us create a healthy, just, and sustainable world.

The post What Educators and Families Should Prioritize in the Age of AI appeared first on Getting Smart.

On the occasion of Dr. Gordon’s 101st birthday, we continue to honor his singularly wide and deep influence on education and civil rights. As a founding father of Brooklyn Lab, Dr. Gordon helped our school bring his ideas about equity and justice in education to life. He has deep thumbprints on everything we do as a learning community, and Dr. Gordon’s mentorship and educational concepts have shaped Brooklyn LAB practitioners’ approach to their work and how we implement our Key Design Elements.

But his influence in education has extended far beyond our school. Like his mentors, W.E.B. Du Bois and Alaine Locke, Dr. Gordon is one of America’s most distinguished public intellectuals, a champion for equity in an era of inequality. Dr. Gordon has influenced hundreds of thousands of teachers, school leaders, academic researchers, and policymakers, revolutionizing how educators teach and how schools deliver the effective and just educational experiences every student deserves.

One of Dr. Gordon’s primary areas of focus has been on the positive development of underserved children of color. He has spent decades examining the state of education in America, and where it’s falling short, creating theories and frameworks that have made pedagogy and curriculum more responsive to the needs of students from all walks of life.

Thanks to Dr. Gordon, we now have a public education system that recognizes the strengths of every community and family, and attempts to harness those assets to meet students where they are and build their strengths.

An Exhibit Celebrating the Legacy of a Living Legend

Dr. Gordon’s work is as relevant today as it was when he started his career in the early 1940s.

As a culmination of our Centennial Celebration, our school community is preparing to share an exhibit to celebrate the legacy of this living legend. As we finalize these materials, we will share them within our school community and beyond.

The forthcoming exhibit celebrates Dr. Gordon’s life and work: where he came from, what inspired him, and the big ideas that Dr. Gordon put forth, which continue to shape a vision of American education at its best—a just and equitable system that serves the needs of all students.

The exhibit unpacks the tenets of Gordon’s applied and theoretical research about life, education, and epistemological thinking—approaches that led to the creation of Head Start and other social educational programs designed to provide equal access to quality education.

The heart of this exhibit explains several of Dr. Gordon’s key education concepts, including: educational resilience, compensatory education, affirmative development, supplemental education, intellective competence, and assessment for learning. These approaches will influence educators for generations to come. We also share case studies from Brooklyn Lab and across New York City—real examples of how our school has become a living laboratory celebrating, building on, and honoring Gordon’s impactful work.

Dr. Gordon’s ideas have inspired our journey, and we hope they inspire yours.

The post Edmund W Gordon Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School’s Centennial Celebration appeared first on Getting Smart.

The bureaucratic process that has created the biggest headaches and heartaches for public charter school communities is authorization, which too often distorts priorities and fails to focus on what’s most important: student learning and development.

Brooklyn Laboratory Charter Schools—which aims to serve the needs of our community’s most marginalized students, including students who live with a disability, students who come from low-income families, and students of color—shares the same stated goals as many of our state policymakers: to provide the kind of learning and development experience that helps all students succeed. Despite these shared aspirations, when our schools and regulators fight over what our families and students need and deserve, students are the ones who suffer the most.

Today, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools celebrates public education leaders who are making a difference in their communities. As a 2022 Changemaker Award recipient, Eric reached out to Tom to begin to consider how might we better support educators to positively impact the lives of their school community, bring “innovation and creativity to solve problems”, and amplify the voices of students and educators.

When we think about improving public charter schools to meet the needs of our students at LAB—and the 3 million students at charter schools across the country—one of the areas that’s ripe for improvement is the authorization process.

There are seven things we believe authorization should focus on to meet the shared goal of improving student learning and development.

1. Encourage a future-ready student performance framework.

For 20 years, schools have been updating their learning goals to reflect the knowledge, skills, and dispositions critical to success in college, careers, and life. Basic literacy and numeracy skills remain critical but insufficient for future-ready students and communities. The pandemic was a reminder of the importance of whole learner outcomes, including self awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship skills.

Too often, authorizer performance frameworks are fixated on foundational literacy and numeracy skills, and lack a compelling architecture to enable a broader vision of student success.

That broader vision has been championed by leading authorities in American education policy for decades. In his seminal book College Knowledge, David Conley outlined what students need to know and be able to do to succeed in college and careers: including managing time and learning, conducting research, problem solving strategies, career awareness, and self-advocacy. His “Think, Know, Act, Go” outcome framework was foundational for Summit Learning and MyWays from NGLC. Inspired by these and XQ Learner Goals, Brooklyn LAB and other schools around the country are embraced a comprehensive student performance framework.

Bb Ntsakey, LAB’s Senior Director of Academics, echoes his school’s call for “whole-adolescent” and strength-based approaches that incorporate the latest research on learning and brain development to inform systems like IEPs and transcripts.

Recommendation for authorizers: Differentiate authorizing approaches based on context, student population, learning model, and outcome framework. Schools with a track record of improvement and success against a comprehensive outcome framework should have access to expedited renewal and eased process to scale.

2. Embrace assessment for learning.

Assessments can play a crucial role in the way charter schools deliver their promise, advance student success, and guide individual learning. Smart, well-planned assessments can inform and enhance the way students learn, helping educators ensure they’re serving all learners and meeting students where they’re at.

The renowned educator (and namesake of our school) Dr. Edmund W. Gordon has talked about the need to develop strategies that both inform and enable learning and development—wherever it’s occurring. “Traditionally, assessment has assumed that you have a pool of developed resources, and the assessment process is trying to show them,” Gordon said. “I’m trying to push assessment in the direction not of discovering talent, but of developing it.” For this to happen, Gordon observes, “assessments must fully represent the competencies that the increasingly complex and changing world demands. The best assessments can accelerate the acquisition of these competencies if they guide the actions of teachers and enable students to gauge their progress.”

Historically, policymakers have used what Learning Policy Institute President Linda Darling-Hammond calls “punitive sanctions,” or high-stakes consequences for schools, teachers, and even students. But this has a detrimental effect on the quality of education. “We need to move to a form of assessment and a companion form of accountability that will support children in their learning, rather than undermining their learning,” she said.

Assessments can also be a useful tool in holding charter schools accountable for upholding the highest educational goals, and helping them reach those goals. But in order to do that, authorizers must embrace how measurement of learning can be used to contribute to the cultivation of ability.

Recommendation for authorizers: Incentivize local assessment plans that aim for schools to use evidence and data to serve, inform, and enhance teaching and learning processes and outcomes.

3. Privilege the needs of all learners, including those who live with disabilities.

Charter schools can be leaders in special education.

Together with a coalition of civil rights groups, disability advocacy organizations, and others, LAB co-founded the Educating All Learners Alliance because we know charter schools can be more nimble and innovative, creating new approaches to serving historically disadvantaged students.

One of the nation’s leading education lawyers, Paul O’Neill, of the Center for Learner Equity, urges schools to both acknowledge the “smallness and the meanness and the narrowness of the structure that we consider to be the standard,” and to respond with the kind of empathy, compassion, and commitment to human dignity that come from a place of deep care. He asks, “Who deserves less than everything we can do for them?”

Unfortunately, public charter schools sometimes get penalized by authorizers for disrupting the broken model. We need charter authorization to incentivize academic growth and the quality of programs, interventions, and services focused on meeting the needs of students who learn and develop differently. Charters should be encouraged to defend and promote the civil and human rights of underdeveloped learners, rather than incentivized to avoid serving young people whose abilities have been disproportionately underdeveloped.

Recommendation for authorizers: Insist that all public charter schools demonstrate a commitment to ensuring that students with disabilities have equitable access to quality educational options. Improve the health of the charter sector by embracing performance frameworks that reward schools for effectively serving Black, Latino, and low-income students with disabilities.

4. Empower diverse, talented educators and focus school talent systems on student success.

Schools across the country are facing a shortage of teachers, especially teachers who are Black or Brown. But charter schools are in a unique position to grow their own teacher pipelines by using residency programs, like the one we have at Brooklyn LAB.

Study after study shows that students of color thrive when their teachers look like them and have shared experiences. According to Pathways Alliance, which advocates for teacher diversity, it’s more important than ever to build sustainable education preparation programs. Doing this, according to the Teaching Profession Playbook, requires investments, which public charter schools are prepared to make. As Monica Martinez, director of strategic initiatives at the Learning Policy Institute, points out: “There are so many initiatives right now that are opening the door for a more diverse workforce.”

Unfortunately, the authorization process is holding back this momentum. Too often, state education departments and authorizers take steps that restrain the progress of emerging educators of color and exclude aspiring teachers from contributing.

Recommendation for authorizers: Encourage charter schools to prioritize the cultivation of robust talent pipelines that include educators of color. Support charter school efforts to create long-term solutions to staffing shortages that create a more diverse workforce. Consider certification expectations within the context of creating space for teams of educators to specialize to meet the needs of students. Provide educators with better ways to enter the profession, develop professionally, and advance.

5. Partner effectively and engage equitably with families and communities.

Spending the time to get to know students and their families deeply over the years helps charter schools pivot quickly when the moment calls for it—whether it’s shifting to a remote-learning format or transitioning to an in-person learning model.

“The most important things students need to learn and thrive in schools are relationships,” said Shatoya Ward, principal of Englewood Campus Purdue Polytechnic High School.

These connections help students succeed. “This kind of community-building makes our work especially rewarding,” said Jonathan Flynn, director of family and community engagement and public affairs at Brooklyn LAB. “We listen to our families’ needs and serve them in the best way we know how. It’s important because it feels like we’re working on something bigger than ourselves. We’re investing in the future.”

Authorizing needs to prioritize community stakeholder voice and responsiveness to family needs. Stakeholder input, voice, and participation must be authentically engaged in an ongoing, robust manner.

“This is an important moment where schools can intentionally build trust with families and enter into true partnerships with parents,” said Bibb Hubbard, founder and president of Learning Heroes.

Recommendations for authorizers: Create frameworks and practices that support work to strengthen families, communities, and schools to advance children’s learning and development.

6. Safeguard school community health and well-being.

Charter schools must continually improve their approach to the physical and mental well-being of students, staff, and families, especially since the pandemic upended life for so many.

This, as Brooklyn LAB chief financial officer Sheryl Gomez points out, is essential. “Charter schools are well suited to creating robust plans that are equitable, and focus on those students who are most vulnerable, with a level of specificity and credibility that is worthy of the families and children we serve,” she explained.

“The safety of our students and those who support them has to be our No. 1 priority,” said Marla Ucelli-Kashyap, senior director of educational issues for the American Federation of Teachers.

Recommendation for authorizers: As a component of renewal decisions, encourage schools to focus on investments that safeguard the health, safety, and well-being of school communities. Reward schools that prepare for learning options that meet the needs of all students in the face of uncertainty and volatility. Prepare for health and safety as non-negotiables, in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity.

7. Leverage engaged school boards.

The final way authorizers can support charter schools to create the education environment all students deserve is to insist boards take responsibility for students achieving jaw-dropping academic growth, and regularly measure progress toward school goals.

Charter schools need strong, engaged school boards to build bridges within the community and between families, businesses, government, nonprofits, and other schools. “At their best, charter boards govern to fulfill the mission of the school, and the promise of scholars learning and thriving,” said Carrie Irving, chief executive officer of Education Board Partners.

Under the current system, however, authorizers sometimes discount and fail to benefit from the powerful force that boards can play to improve school quality and accountability.

Recommendation for authorizers: Hold boards accountable to provide competent stewardship and oversight while investing in board effectiveness and preparation for a rapidly changing, uncertain world.

A Moment to Rethink Authorizing

As communities prepare public schools to rise to the challenge of the uncertainty and volatility ahead, this is the moment to rethink authorizing. As charter school leaders and education policymakers, we must put aside adult resentment and priorities, and focus on our shared imperative to secure student success.

Charter schools were initially envisioned as nimble and adaptable, with the potential to understand how to foster resilience during tough times. School communities now face challenges such as health pandemics and the increasingly perilous weather disasters that result from climate change. Unlike slower-moving bureaucracies, public schools must speed up the pace of improvement by surfacing the most promising prospective solutions for emerging challenges.

This makes charter schools ideally suited to embrace change, which is necessary for progress. As author John Seely Brown has written: “In a world of constant change, entrepreneurial learners must be willing to regrind the conceptual lenses with which they make sense of the world.”

This also needs to happen when it comes to authorizing.

It’s on us, as public school leaders and policymakers. We must rethink authorizing together, to meet this moment and put our students first.

The post Reimagining Charter School Authorizing to Focus on Student Learning and Development appeared first on Getting Smart.

Being the glue that holds a school community together is both fulfilling and exhausting. Our decisions to leave the profession—or transition to another school or district—hit school communities profoundly, and oftentimes, with unexpected force. This is not to say that educators shouldn’t leave; transitions may well be appropriate and necessary. It’s not wrong to need (or want) to move on. However, how we move on matters. We have responsibilities to each other, our students, and the institution of public education.

If you’re thinking of leaving public education, you’re not alone. The National Education Association released survey results that show more than half (55%) of members plan to leave education sooner than planned because of the pandemic. The pandemic has poured gasoline on challenges that educators were already facing, including burnout and staffing shortages. The conflagration of need due to the pandemic has left many depleted and ready to prioritize personal well-being.

Just as the surge of employees who are leaving their roles, or thinking about doing so, should prompt organizations to devote time to learn why and act thoughtfully in response, employees would be well served to explore what leaving well means in their own context. As Christine Bader, of The Life I Want, reminds us: regardless of what you contributed up until that point, “quitting a job badly can undermine the better life you’re leaving for.”

Like so many educators, the past two years have been the most challenging of my career, and, paradoxically, in some ways the most rewarding. Partnering with scholars, faculty, and the wider school community to safeguard health and support the most vulnerable learners has brought a renewed sense of professional purpose. Nevertheless, it is the right time for me to move on as executive director of Brooklyn LAB in order to focus my attention on the needs of my own children, now seven and four.

The “right” way, in this case, means that our Board and I began to prepare for my succession in earnest three years ago, and that I’ll do whatever it takes to support a next chapter worthy of our school community (apply for the chief executive role); ease our staff, families and students through transition; and celebrate all that LAB has accomplished and will accomplish.

We educators are stewards of public institutions that matter, and our choices have ripple effects on individual lives, and, in aggregate, throughout society. Our departures from public education roles must be thoughtful, empathetic, and cognizant of the weightiness of our responsibilities and how much we matter to our communities. This piece reflects on lessons I’m learning as I strive to be a good steward.

Prioritize young people and those who will best support them.

Put children first. Children have been disproportionately impacted by COVID, resulting in social isolation, anxiety, and learning loss. What young people need, in response, are consistent, attuned relationships that build safety, trust, and belief in their futures. Pamela Cantor, M.D. Founder of Turnaround for Children, writes, “relationships are the antidote to stress and the engine for motivation and learning.” Hour by hour, educators support youth with all of their needs, from academic to mental and emotional support. As you step away, remember that you are part of a larger social safety net that relieves pressure on parents and supports students to tackle unprecedented challenges. You mean a whole lot. Transition in a way that honors your impact on individuals’ lives and this collective responsibility. If possible, maintain ties with those who’ve looked to you for support.

Cultivate colleagues. As you step away, consider whom you can encourage to lean forward. This moment provides a chance to make real progress toward building an educator workforce that better reflects the diversity of the students schools serve. Dewayne J. McClary of Digital Promise asks, “What can you do to support the next generation, which is being asked to step forward?” As you step away, can you support your school to find creative, ambitious ways to hire and promote team members whose lived experiences reflect the students and families the school serves? Monica Martinez, of the Learning Policy Institute, asks schools to consider how to do more to open “the door for a more diverse workforce.”

Prioritize how you share the news of departure.

Provide the communication your school community deserves. As you exit, identify who should be aware of this communication, in what cadence, and how each audience best receives information. Work to ask yourself how you can be attentive to the human aspects of your impending departure, including the values and needs of your school. Brooklyn LAB has hard-earned lessons about the communication that school communities deserve in times of uncertainty and stress, which are those that are collaborative, empathetic, transparent, accessible, and inclusive. When it comes to communicating your own departure, this might entail seeking input from your team, asking what your people need from you emotionally and logistically, and sharing insight into the process and timeline of your departure.

Be attentive to grief and loss. COVID-19 has been harsh and unfair. Our students, families, and colleagues have experienced tremendous loss and are navigating trauma. Our decisions to move on professionally may add to feelings of grief and sadness, or trigger anxiety. Therefore, we must consider how to navigate our departures with intention and care As Jonathan Flynn, Director of Family Engagement and Community Affairs of Brooklyn LAB, says, “During these most difficult moments, it’s important to [consider] how to best communicate with and serve our school communities.” Cecile Kidd, LAB’s Bursar, asks, “How can we depart in a manner that provides students a source of stability through the storm?” How can you be the thermostat (and not just the thermometer) for how our students and families experience transition?

Work backwards from need. Educators should cultivate empathy for students and their families, placing the needs, perspectives, and experiences of affected people at the center of transition plans. Students’ thoughts, needs, and ideas must be explicitly valued and reflected in plans. This often means asking our students how they feel and what they need from us as we prepare to depart? This type of engagement, respect, and inclusion conditions our students to better navigate change.

A successful transition reflects care and love.

Convey and express care. Students and families need educators to provide care – to show empathy, compassion and commitment to human dignity. As Paul O’Neill, an advisor to our school, has eloquently put it, “Who deserves less than everything we can do for them?” Even, and perhaps especially, in our transitions, we need to recognize that schools provide a community safety net to care for and love people when they are in a vulnerable place. We must ask how to best prepare our students to continue to thrive in our absence.

Cultivate psychological safety. Chuck Jones, Middle School Director at Brooklyn LAB, emphasizes how psychological safety is the “next frontier as we create systems of equity around race, economics, and social change in our schools.” What makes an effective transition? What impact do you want your transition to have on your students and team over the next six months? Imagine yourself one year in the future. Looking back, what would make you most proud? What three words would you like someone to use to describe you when you’re no longer in the room?

Be a steward and consider your legacy. As you depart, consider how you will sustain your own relationships with your staff, students, and families. Our school, the Edmund W. Gordon Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School, was named to honor Dr. Gordon’s wide and deep influence on the fields of education and civil rights. A research scientist, author, professor, civil rights leader, former minister, and psychologist, Dr. Gordon’s mentorship and ideas have shaped Brooklyn LAB practitioners’ approach to our work. As a school community, we celebrate “not only by his towering intellect but his warmth, compassion, and humanity,” Pedro Noguera affirms. Over the decades, which included role changes, Dr. Gordon has brought together a group of education leaders whom he had mentored individually and collectively.

By Way of Conclusion

Arundhati Roy writes, “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.” W.E.B. DuBois observed, “Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.” Our departure plans must place our students, staff, and families’ needs at their center, which might mean that our timelines and strategies are not our personal ideal. We must prioritize empathy, communication, and responsible stewardship to ensure an effective transition that honors the incredible power of educators. To do otherwise, undermines all the good work we have done.

The post How to Leave Your Education Job as a Good Steward appeared first on Getting Smart.

Staffing shortages are straining school communities around the country, even as new variants of COVID-19 make the pathway forward uncertain.

Schools can use federal funds to create long-term solutions to staffing shortages and create a more diverse workforce that reflects the communities they serve. Key steps:

• Build partnerships with local community colleges and four-year colleges and universities
• Pay teachers-to-be during their training year in the classroom
• Consider student loan forgiveness
• Create incentives for support staff, including tutors and aides, to become fully credentialed teachers

These are challenging times for education leaders everywhere. But amid the hardships and turmoil associated with the pandemic is a chance to make real progress toward achieving a long-standing goal for public education: building an educator workforce that better reflects the diversity of the students schools serve.

Using new funding resources and an opportunity to “reset” school priorities, educators are finding creative, ambitious ways to hire more teachers and other school staff who reflect the communities they serve. That means hiring, supporting, and retaining more teachers and staff of color, whose lived experiences mirror those of the students and families they serve.

“There are so many initiatives right now that are opening the door for a more diverse workforce,” said Monica Martinez, director of strategic initiatives at the Learning Policy Institute. “We’re seeing a momentum shift. … I feel very hopeful about the work that’s being done right now.”

The K-12 student population is more racially diverse than ever before, with Latino students comprising almost 25% of the student population (up from 18% a decade ago) and Black students making up 15%. Asian students represent 6%, and white students 59%, according to U.S. Department of Education data. Some states are even more diverse. In California, for example, non-white students represent well over 75% of the K-12 student enrollment.

But teachers in every state remain overwhelmingly white, according to a 2020 survey by the U.S. Department of Education. Nearly 80% of public school teachers are white, fewer than 7% of teachers are Black, and just 2% are Black men. This indicates that representation is  often not considered in the design of school systems.

But research shows that representation is important as the increased exposure to educators of color correlates directly with students’ ability to visualize and manifest themselves into higher career opportunities. According to the Brookings Institute, Black and brown students scored higher on standardized tests, had higher attendance rates and were less likely to be suspended when they had at least one teacher who matched their race.

Investing in educators of color allows us as a sector (both charter and public, and private) to consider the natural deposit of development and sustainability for the families we serve. Using funds from the Every Student Succeeds Act and American Rescue Plan, schools are now in a unique position to bolster the diversity of their workforces and invest in long-term staffing solutions.  

The key, according to some of the country’s leading experts on the issue, is partnerships – not just with local colleges and universities, but with organizations that can help schools create permanent teacher pipelines.

“This is not easy work. You’ll get further down the road if you engage with an external partner who’s has experience supporting this kind of work,” said Karen DeMoss, executive director of Prepared to Teach at the Bank Street College of Education. “We’ve seen the bumps, and we know how to get around them.”

DeMoss urges schools to expand co-teaching and residency opportunities, which can make teaching a more accessible and appealing career for everyone, especially people of color.

Grow Your Own (GYO) is an educator preparation strategy that focuses on recruiting, developing, and retaining teachers from the local community. GYO models have been effective in both urban and rural areas in addressing shortages and increasing educator diversity, as highlighted in New America’s resource.

Co-teaching allows a novice teacher, or one who’s still in a training program, to share a classroom with an experienced teacher who can serve as a mentor. The advantages are myriad, she said, as the experienced teacher can get some extra help in the classroom and the newer teacher can gain on-the-ground experience from a seasoned veteran. If done well, co-teaching can:

• Reduce discipline referrals, which disproportionately impact student of color
• Reduce the need for remediation, as students can get more individualized attention
• Improve early intervention for students with disabilities, helping students get the help they need sooner.

Paying teachers for their residencies is also a good way to bring in more teachers of color, she said.  

“Most people cannot afford to learn to teach for free, for a whole year. This is not a democratic system of access. And it’s clearly not equitable for students,” DeMoss said, noting that under-prepared teachers are more likely to work in high-needs schools.

Education leaders who balk at paying teachers for their residencies should consider the high cost of teacher turnover, she said. Each time a teacher quits, districts lose an estimated $20,000 in time spent on on-boarding and off-boarding. Instead, schools should put that money toward a system that pays residents a fair wage and retains them over the long term. Funds set aside for professional development can also be used for residencies.      

The Learning Policy Institute’s report, Diversifying the Teaching Profession: How to Recruit and Retain Teachers of Color, describes research on alternative certification routes that do not provide comprehensive preparation and resulting turnover rates among teachers of color.

“Remember, you’re retaining these teachers, so you’ll need fewer of them over the long term,” DeMoss said. “This allows you to have a high-impact teacher preparation program in your district that’s sustainably funded.”

Lisa Thomas, senior education policy analyst at the American Federation of Teachers, said education leaders should look to support staff as a source of teacher diversity. Paraprofessionals, aides and others on campus “already have the experience. They just need the credentials and the pedagogy,” she said. “There’s a real opportunity there.”

Investing in support staff’s professional development is also a great way to demonstrate how much those staff members are valued, she said.

“The pandemic has shown us how important and how essential and how critical the support staff is – our paraprofessionals, our bus drivers, our cafeteria workers, and everyone else that make up the support network in our schools.”

Brent Maddin, executive director of Next Education Workforce at the Arizona State University Teachers College, also urged education leaders to create career pathways for paraprofessionals. He suggested providing them with specialized training, such as in early literacy, and offering them pay raises as an incentive.    

According to Maddin, paying teacher residents – with special priority given to Pell grant recipients and first-generation college students – is also a great way to attract people of color and those from low-income backgrounds to the teaching profession.  

“When we think about equity, we need to think about the amount of debt undergraduates carry when they leave our universities,” he said. “We need to ask ourselves, are there things we can do to create more paid residencies? That can make a big difference.”

Partnering with local community colleges and four-year colleges and universities is a key way for districts to create a pipeline for diverse community members to become teachers. Loan forgiveness and pay for teaching residents are good ways to attract a wider variety of candidates to the teaching profession, Martinez said.

But diversity efforts should not be limited to teaching staff, she added.

What students especially need right now is extra support on campus – tutors, aides, mentors and extended learning staff who can help students with pandemic-related learning loss and overall school engagement.

Districts should use their ESSER and ARP funds to boost support services, bringing more high-quality assistance to students who need it.  

“This is not an argument about reducing class sizes. This is an argument for providing extra support for students,” Martinez said. “It’s about prioritizing wellness and accelerated learning. It’s about evidence-based practices for tutoring and mentoring. … All of our kids are in a different place right now. No two will have had the same experience, and they need all the support we can provide.”

Patrick Steck, senior director for policy at Deans for Impact, echoed Martinez’s support for hiring high-quality tutors, especially in high-needs schools, and then encouraging them to become fully credentialed teachers.

“Mobilizing future teachers as tutors – especially at the district’s highest-need and hardest-to-staff campuses — holds great promise for strengthening partnerships between institutions of higher learning, school districts, and the broader community,” he said.

To do this, districts should strengthen and formalize their ties to local colleges and universities, so future teachers have a seamless transition from their preparation programs to employment.

The benefits are many:

1. Institutions of higher learning can fulfill their missions to serve the local community
2. College faculty can offer future teachers more access to high-quality classroom experiences
3. Future teachers can strengthen their instructional skills, fulfill licensure requirements, and, in many cases, earn compensation
4. School leaders build a sustainable pipeline of highly effective teachers that are likely to understand and stay in their communities 
5. Families gain a valuable addition to their support network 
6. Students gain access to additional academic and social-emotional support.

“By deepening their partnership with educator-preparation programs, school districts can better serve students and strengthen their workforce,” he said. “With deeper partnerships, everyone benefits.” 

Erin Mote is the co-founder of Brooklyn LAB and CEO of the non-profit InnovateEDU. You can reach Erin at @erinmote.  

Kate Cochran is Chief of Staff at the non-profit InnovateEDU.

Chuck Jones is Middle School Director at Brooklyn LAB.

Eric Tucker is the co-founder and Executive Director of Brooklyn Laboratory Charter Schools.

The post Equity and ESSER: Why Now is the Perfect Time for Schools to Invest in Educator Diversity appeared first on Getting Smart.

Despite how critical IEPs are for students with learning differences, many schools and districts may continue to apply outdated tools, measurements, and mindsets to create these plans and rarely weave in students’ abilities, strengths, and potential to address their challenges.

Together with Digital Promise and the Educating All Learners Alliance, Brooklyn Laboratory Charter Schools are releasing a guide that embraces a “whole-child” and strength-based approach to rethinking IEPs, and incorporating the latest research on learning and brain development to create and share resources, reflection tools, and guidance to support the work of teachers as they strive to update their approach to IEPs.

Why a Whole Child Approach is Important

Learning sciences emphasize the importance of innovative approaches to learning and assessment, looking beyond traditional tests and siloed learning systems for evidence of student improvement and engagement. It also provides a map for whole child teaching and learning.

The learning sciences, as well as developmental and sociological research, have shown that strong, positive relationships, a sense of belonging and safety at school, recognition and celebration of cultural diversity, and mental and emotional development, allow learners to thrive at school and beyond. In other words, an understanding of each student’s learner variability through a whole child lens is essential for academic growth and the pursuit of happiness in all learning environments.

Context also matters. Understanding a student’s learner variability within a whole child framework, but also recognizing that their variability can change within different contexts can guide educators as they strive to customize the learning experience for students.

How to Apply the Whole Child Approach to IEPs

Teachers can use this approach with IEPs by recognizing that each student, regardless of their school-based label, has unique strengths and challenges that are varied, connected, and fluid depending on the context. By prioritizing students’ strengths and potential, rather than their deficits, teachers can use IEPs as a powerful tool to spur student success. Saman Marji, from Brooklyn LAB, shares reflections on the importance of this approach here.

Here are a few ways educators can create strength-based, whole-child IEPs:

Gather the right information to plan the IEP: Before beginning the IEP process, teachers can ask themselves questions about the student as an individual: What does the student do well? What do they enjoy doing? How can I pair what they do well and enjoy doing with challenges they face to improve opportunities for learning? How can I, in partnership with the student and family, create strategies that allow their strengths to support their challenges?

Include students in the process by asking them to help identify their strengths, interests, and preferences. Students can also help the team think about how to use these strengths to develop strategies for success. This process promotes self-awareness and self-advocacy that can help students throughout their lives.

Plan curriculum around students’ strengths: Consider how to incorporate students’ interests and hobbies into coursework. Also, consider the best way the student engages with the content. Project-based learning? Socratic seminars? Inquiry-based activities? Look for supports to help the student engage. For instance, some students may prefer to work independently, while others benefit from working with a partner or in a small group.

Think about their self-management and communications skills. Tap into students’ strengths to help them with goals like staying organized and engaging in class. For example, if the student seems more engaged in math class, find out why and see if you can replicate what happens in math in other classes. Also, pay close attention to a student’s communication and interpersonal style. If the student connects best with others through technology, try to accommodate that need.

Support students’ agency: Consider the student’s self-image and how well they advocate for themselves. A little boost in a student’s self-confidence may help them understand their own needs better, and communicate them with teachers. To increase a student’s motivation, look at their activities and talents outside school, such as sports, music, art, or reading. Find ways to incorporate those activities into their coursework.

Measure strengths, not just deficiencies: In looking at academics, take note of the types of assessments that best highlight a student’s success. Help students demonstrate their knowledge in the most positive way possible.

This shift in practice and mindset will require time and patience for teachers to implement successfully. School administrators can make this happen by incorporating learner variability into professional development, and giving teachers time to reflect and recognize their own learner variability as they set about transforming the IEP process. 

These changes won’t happen overnight, but with proper planning they can have a transformative impact on young people’s learning, engagement, and success long after they leave school.

To learn more, explore Digital Promise’s free open-source Learner Variability Navigator, and Brooklyn Laboratory Charter Schools’ IEP Teacher Reflection Tool.

The post A Whole Child, Strengths-Based Approach to IEPs appeared first on Getting Smart.

Trauma and stress are drowning students. Three-quarters of high school students say their mental health has worsened since the start of the pandemic, and while many also show signs of resilience and hope, students of all ages say they’re anxious, lonely, depressed, and scared. 66% of high school students say they are disengaged from learning.

One of the defining features of adolescence is the ability to see and plan for the future, but right now they’re caught in a spin cycle of despair. It’s time for adults to help.

President Biden took a first step during his State of the Union address last night when he announced a critical way to help students recover from these challenges and set them up for future success: Make sure every student has access to individual support.

In a far-reaching strategy to address the nation’s mental health crisis, the White House yesterday committed the Department of Education to activate schools to provide tailored support for students through individual and small-group instruction, high-impact tutoring, summer learning, and after-school enrichment. The White House put it bluntly, “We need more caring adults taking on roles supporting students.”

The White House recommends that schools invest in programs that build relationships between students and trusted adults who can support youth with all of their needs, from learning to mental and emotional support.

As educators, we know these programs work. Developmental and learning science have shown that relationships are the antidote to stress and the engine for motivation and learning. Schools and communities designed using the principles of Whole Child Design can become the kind of safety nets students need if we as educators take the steps to create this kind of network of support. It’s time for us to invest in the power of relationships to change the trajectory of children’s lives in this critical moment.

One way schools can do this is by training success coaches, a volunteer corps of trusted adults who make sure every student has the right support at the right time. Done right, success coaching programs can help students learn, navigate uncertainty, and cultivate resilience.

At Brooklyn Lab, we started designing and launching our success coaching program the Spring of 2020 by recruiting teachers, staff members, and even community volunteers. To make it easier to train and onboard coaches, we created a research-based Success Coaching Playbook with partners from across the sector and disciplines, which we have shared with other schools. Starting in 2020, our coaches began meeting with students one on one every week and made themselves available on-call to help students whenever a need came up.

Building on work done by EL Education, we have also piloted small-group “advisories” composed of students and facilitated by caring adults who prioritize safety, belonging, and proactively address social and emotional concerns.

We have also trained every adult in the school building—from teachers to sports coaches—to form positive relationships with students using strategies such as a “2×10”: two-minute conversations between a teacher and student held every school day for 10 days in a row.

Since making these investments, we have seen dramatic changes both for students and for our school community. Success coaches have helped our students process pain and trauma and cultivate motivation and engagement. They have also relieved pressure on parents, creating a larger social safety net for students. And they have brought our community together at a time when social isolation and divisive political discourse is tearing many communities apart.

In announcing the mental health strategy, the White House underscored the importance of restoring our kids’ relationships: “Our youth have been particularly impacted as losses from COVID and disruptions in routines and relationships have led to increased social isolation, anxiety, and learning loss.” 

They’re right. What young people need now are consistent, caring, attuned relationships that build safety, trust, and belief in their futures. Our success coaching program taught us that, with the right support, every student can feel connected again and thrive. The program has truly transformed student lives.

The last two years in education have brought unprecedented challenges for our communities, and our students and families deserve extra support to help them thrive. By showing up for our students, our school communities have the potential to cultivate well-being within schools and beyond. We are hopeful that this approach can help us build a better future—a future in which everyone in the community shares in our collective responsibility to help the next generation succeed.

The Success Coaching Playbook was developed alongside partners City Year, EL Education, The Forum for Youth Investment, The Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University, Transcend, Turnaround for Children, and Dezudio.

The post The White House is Right: It’s Time for Schools to Invest in Student Success appeared first on Getting Smart.

It is not an understatement to say that the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will be with schools, with each of us, for a long time. As an educator, I have seen firsthand how it has affected the Brooklyn LAB school community. We have experienced collective trauma, and we’ll need time to recover and heal.

But we’ll also need something else: We’ll need each other. More specifically: We’ll need to care for each other.

This is not something that always comes easily in America. Our education and health systems are not set up for it, and even our culture encourages people in need to deal with issues themselves; it’s up to us and usually our immediate family to cope with hard times.

This approach doesn’t work for anyone. We deserve, indeed need, a better way.

This school year, I have been reflecting: How can we, as educators, create more space and provide more support for care within our school community? How can we best advance the struggle for human dignity?

I held these questions recently when I learned about the experience of a colleague and friend of our school community: Paul O’Neill, an education attorney and passionate advocate for students who learn and develop differently, and his wife, Margaret—Mari to the many who know and love her—who has dedicated her life to caring for others.

Paul and Mari’s story has lessons for us all as we think about composing a future that makes possible the kind of care we need to heal and move forward.

It begins as a love story. Paul and Mari met at 14 through a Catholic youth organization in New Jersey, where Mari and Paul’s brother were the leads in a local production of The Sound of Music. Mari had a crush on Paul’s brother, but when Mari and Paul graduated from high school and ended up at the same community college, they started dating. They were 17.

Over the next few years, they pursued their own paths in higher education, even as they remained together as a couple: Paul earned his bachelor’s from Oberlin, and Mari, always an altruistic person, began studying gerontology, later switching to elementary education.
 

They got married in 1989, and Mari took a job as a Catholic school teacher, later switching to HR, and then briefly enrolling in a master’s program at Teachers College. By the time Paul finished law school, they had their first of three children, and Mari decided to stay at home with the kids, while continuing volunteer work in her community. She joined the Glen Ridge Volunteer Ambulance Squad, first driving the rig and then taking on an unpaid administrative role to organize other volunteers. She volunteered for a hospice center, helping people through the last days, weeks, and months of their life. On Sunday mornings, she cooked for people in need, getting the whole family involved to make big dinners of chicken and rice.

For his part, Paul, who never got the support he needed in school as a student with learning disabilities and ADHD, was drawn to become an education advocate. After law school, he pursued his master’s in education and became an expert in special education law.

Family has always been at the center of Mari and Paul’s lives. They are close with their three children, who are all adults now. Twice a year, Mari’s extended family, who are spread across the country, come together for what they call “Farrell Week” after her family’s surname. During these times, they revel in each other’s company. And when anyone experiences hardship, they pull each other closer.

When the pandemic hit, Paul and Mari naturally thought about their family and community. They thought about their son, who’s in school for a public health degree and moonlights as an EMT. And they thought about their daughter, working long hours as a lawyer in Manhattan.

In February 2020, around the time New York’s first coronavirus patient began to feel ill, Mari noticed a prickly sensation on her tongue. She pushed the feeling aside, thinking maybe she’d eaten too much lemon. There were more pressing things to focus on.

As the pandemic spread and public life began shutting down, Mari and Paul stayed connected with their family and community through a social distance. They distributed handmade masks sewed by a neighbor, leaving a donation that went to charity. They dropped off groceries and Easter baskets on the curb at 7th Avenue and 16th Street for their daughter.

And Mari continued her work for the food pantry, doing her part to help the estimated 42 million Americans who experienced food insecurity during the pandemic. She got everybody involved, tugging them by the ear if necessary. When Mari heard that an older woman in their community needed help getting food, she bought provisions for the woman every time she and Paul shopped for family groceries.

As spring turned to summer, the tingling on Mari’s tongue spread, progressing through her mouth and throat, making it difficult to speak and swallow. At first, doctors thought Mari might have a condition called dystonia, which manifests with involuntary muscle contractions. By July, they settled on a more ominous diagnosis: She has Bulbar onset ALS, a form of the disease that debilitates the body much faster than limb onset ALS.

Mari’s diagnosis has been devastating, and also, ever the caretaker, her first response was to think about how it might affect others. How could she put them on a path to take better care of themselves, and set the family up to be OK without her?

Paul is juggling a lot. In anticipation of Mari’s needs as her disease progresses, he organized a move to his childhood home, which has a more accessible layout. They moved just after Hurricane Ida, and both their old house and new one flooded. In preparing for Mari’s care, Paul learned that in New Jersey, where they live, Medicaid benefits are more limited and financially ruinous to access than they are in New York, which is achingly close. They learned about the costs of the bed Mari might need, and the round-the-clock care, and how little of it is covered by insurance. Family and friends set up a GoFundMe, to help with the potentially catastrophic expenses and share supportive messages.

Despite their hardships, Paul points out that his family is fortunate. They have a home, access to healthcare, and a strong community. But as someone who has both lived and professional experience with disability, Paul has seen how often America’s systems fail vulnerable people. He described the “smallness and the meanness and the narrowness of the structure that we consider to be the standard.”

He’s right, and that standard needs to change.

Whenever we have leaned most heavily on Paul’s support at Brooklyn LAB, it’s been during a moment of vulnerability. My team and I go to Paul because we need his guidance on how best to meet the needs of a student or family whose needs have not yet been appropriately met.

No matter how intractable the situation, Paul responds with the kind of empathy, compassion, and commitment to human dignity that come from a place of deep care. He asks, “Who deserves less than everything we can do for them?” That question captures why we are proud to have Paul as a member of our wider school community.

Paul and Mari’s story shows us the best of who we are as people and the worst of who we are as a society: Within our communities, we hold the power of care, even as our systems fail us. We need people like Mari, who provide a community safety net to care for and love people when they are in a vulnerable place. We also need to secure our social safety nets, including in education, to meet people’s basic human needs.

During the darkest moments of this pandemic, one lesson has stuck: At some point, we’ll all need care, we’ll all have the chance to provide care, and our systems alone are not enough.

If you have been inspired by Paul and Mari’s story, please consider contributing to their GoFundMe or honoring Mari’s lifelong dedication to caring by supporting someone in need in your school community.

Eva Dienel is a journalist, writer, editor, and communications professional with more than 20 years of experience telling stories that matter—stories with an environmental, social, or human focus that engage people in making the world a better place. She is also the co-creator of the storytelling project The Life I Want, about a future of work that works for all.

The post Care: A Love Story appeared first on Getting Smart.

The NFL has made clear what every football fan knows: Players are only as good as their ability to show up, a team only as strong as its time together on the field. The NFL has also made clear that playing well entails safeguarding the health and safety of everyone in the League. The result: Even vaccine-hesitant players understand that remaining unvaccinated undermines their team’s prospects.

As students head back to school, states and school systems should borrow a page from the NFL’s playbook and embrace consistent and high levels of vaccination among school staff and eligible students as the lynchpin to a successful year.

This aligns with President Biden’s path out of the pandemic, which calls for schools to increase incentives and requirements to get staff and students vaccinated. Biden was adamant that schools must aim to get 100% of teachers vaccinated. “Vaccination requirements in schools are nothing new,” he said. “They work.”​​ Some districts are aiming higher: The Los Angeles school board, which manages the second-largest district in the country, voted to mandate vaccines for students 12 and up.

As a network-based organization with franchises across the country, the NFL’s vaccination plan provides a useful model for schools to learn from as they build their plans this year.

COVID-19 is spreading fast among children, most often among children of color and low-income households. The number of children hospitalized due to COVID-19 has reached the highest level since the pandemic began. As more kids return to school, infection rates are climbing, and districts have had to institute frequent, widespread quarantines and whole-school closures.

Recent studies have shown that remote school is often no substitute for the classroom: Pandemic learning disruptions have left K-12 students an average of five months behind in mathematics and four months behind in reading.

We need a vaccination plan to keep our schools open for learning and the other critical roles that they play in their communities. What should that playbook look like?

First, school staff — teachers, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, janitors, administrators — must be required to get vaccinated unless there is a clear medical or religious reason for exemption. Those who do not get vaccinated should be offered frequent community surveillance testing.

Second, every school should utilize federal stimulus dollars to create a campaign to get members of their community vaccinated, including students, families, and neighbors. The access schools have to American communities is wide and deep: some have the physical reach to offer accessible vaccine sites to students and/or the wider community, and most schools have staff and leaders with the necessary trust, credibility, and empathy to talk one-on-one with vaccine-hesitant people and encourage them to do what’s necessary to protect themselves, their families, and their communities.

Third, we should educate. Let us not forget what schools do best: We have an unparalleled opportunity to teach our kids about the importance of public health, the science behind the virus and how vaccines work, and how to make sense of misinformation.

Finally, school leaders should develop plans to encourage vaccinations for eligible students. Whether this is by providing incentives, such as providing a gift card for submitting proof of vaccination or access to events and opportunities, or by mandating vaccines for students who do not have clear medical or religious exemptions, as the Los Angeles Unified School District has done. We also must prepare for the next change in COVID-related policy, particularly the possible upcoming emergency authorization of vaccines for children ages 5–12.

A school vaccine playbook, deployed across the country, would help keep our schools open and allow  us avoid a repeat  last year’s learning loss and social-emotional disruptions.

Students need consistency. Parents need reliability. Communities deserve to be safe. Schools need to prioritize vaccination as a linchpin to a safe and successful year. It’s unacceptable to settle for lower safety standards for our children than for grown adults playing professional ball.

The post What Schools Can Learn from the NFL Vaccine Playbook appeared first on Getting Smart.

In one America, vaccinated people are traveling, eating out, and hugging loved ones with much less risk of transmission and serious illness. With mask requirements lifted in many public places, life is beginning to feel almost normal.

But in the other America—the one with low vaccination rates—the COVID-19 virus, including the more transmissible Delta variant, is raging on. A closer look reveals the disparities between these two Americas: According to research by the Kaiser Family Foundation, vaccination rates vary significantly across racial and ethnic groups and by state. The report’s authors concluded that if vaccination continues at the same pace, substantial disparities will remain, especially in Hispanic, Black, and some rural communities.

While America missed our national goal of 70% of adults vaccinated by July 4, we still have the opportunity to help communities overcome vaccine hesitancy and get their COVID-19 shots—if we get schools involved and fully mobilized. Schools have the depth and reach into communities that have been missing from our national vaccination effort. Moreover, schools have a vested interest in combating vaccine inequality, which is exacerbating education inequality.

Since March 2020, America has taken a patchwork approach to fight this virus. Vaccine rollout has also been uneven: Today, 55% of all people in the US have received at least one shot, with full vaccination rates ranging from more than 65% in Vermont to less than 30% in Mississippi. Meanwhile, rates of new vaccination are dropping.

These data point to a related risk: that vaccine unevenness will exacerbate education inequality, which exists in some of the same areas where vaccine rates are low, including parts of the South; rural regions across the Southwest and Midwest; and among some Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities.

According to analysis of CDC data, while vaccination rates have increased recently among Black and Brown communities, an overwhelming number of people in these demographics are still grappling with the decision to vaccinate. These same communities have experienced greater hardship during the pandemic, including higher rates of COVID-19 sickness and death and loss of income and employment.

Education outcomes among these groups have also declined: A McKinsey study found that the shift to remote schooling in the spring of 2020 set white students back by one to three months in math, while students of color lost three to five months. Research has shown that during the pandemic, people of color were 15% more likely to enroll in remote schools, while white people were more likely to have access to at least some schooling in person.

If vaccine inequality is not addressed, we’re on the path for deeper inequalities: In communities where most people are vaccinated, schools will reopen in the fall for in-person learning, and parents will no longer have to juggle work and homeschool. In communities where most people are not yet getting vaccinated, classroom closures and inconsistent attendance may prevent families from returning to employment, while students experience greater learning loss, social isolation, and mental distress due to localized COVID-19 resurgence. To protect whole communities—and ensure equal access to post-pandemic life—we need to achieve herd immunity, which we’ll reach if roughly 75% to 85% of the general public gets vaccinated. While most people have access to the COVID-19 vaccine, significant “vaccine deserts” remain where residents do not have convenient, practical access, often in communities that need vaccines most. Schools can help: Across the nation, there are roughly two public schools for every ZIP code. Schools are often some of the most trusted institutions in their communities, and they have the broadest and deepest reach into the everyday lives of Americans.

Principals, teachers, and school social workers can talk to students and families in ways that government leaders cannot, which allows them to address nuanced matters like misinformation, complacency, fear, and distrust of science that feed vaccine hesitancy. The reach of schools is also diverse and multigenerational, as students leave school buildings to return to communities of every background, race, faith, and political persuasion.

Schools can increase access to vaccination through onsite clinics for students, families, and staff; case management to complete appointments; and partnerships that lower costs of getting the jab. Teachers and school leaders can combat vaccine hesitancy by teaching the science, providing families with curated resources, and taking the time to ensure all school community members have their concerns addressed.

Together, we can help the country overcome this virus so that our school communities can get back to the important work of educating young people for the future.

For more, see:

• How Schools Can Promote Vaccination and Address Hesitancy: A 10-Point Plan that Puts Equity First
• Why We Built a Hub for Vetted Vaccination Resources for Public Schools

Stay in-the-know with innovations in learning by signing up for the weekly Smart Update.

The post Uneven Vaccination Rates Are Creating Two Americas: Schools Can Help Advance Vaccine Equity. appeared first on Getting Smart.