Future of Learning: Coronavirus opens doors to rethinking education

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By Tara García Mathewson

The coronavirus has forced education leaders to consider a new future for schools. Most are focusing on the near future, when state-imposed social distancing requirements lift and students return to school buildings. They’re outlining new cleaning procedures, staggered school schedules, mandatory face masks and an end to school assemblies.

But some educators are thinking beyond near-term logistics and brainstorming ways to reimagine schooling more ambitiously.

“In any tough time of crisis, there’s always opportunity,” said Arne Duncan, former U.S. secretary of education, in a recent webinar hosted by GSV Ventures, an investment fund that focuses on education.

Duncan has been a longtime proponent of changing the academic calendar. During the webinar, he suggested mandatory summer school for everyone and longer breaks in the winter months when more common viruses like the flu already hit communities the hardest. Educators and even legislators around the country are making similar pitches for year-round schooling in a push to eliminate the negative, compounding effect of summer learning loss, when students forget what they learned the prior year and achievement gaps grow because of vastly different summertime experiences, often based on socioeconomic status.

Beyond school schedules, Duncan said the current crisis should be an opportunity to fundamentally rethink everything: “There’s no better time to do that than now.”

Educators who have long embraced innovative ideas for schools have stepped up in recent weeks to advocate more widespread adoption of models they already see working. One example: proponents of competency-based education, which calls for a laser focus on student mastery of learning objectives and student-specific supports and routes to mastery, have become more vocal. All schools have learning objectives for students based on state standards, but most of them push teachers to move from one lesson to another based on a timeline that doesn’t always accommodate students’ different learning needs. And most teachers assign grades based on a mixture of how students behave in class and how they perform academically. With school buildings closed and students in need of more flexibility while they work from home, the idea that students should get credit for meeting learning objectives no matter how they prove it or how long it takes them seems like a particularly logical alternative.

Lindsay Unified School District serves a high-needs student population of about 4,100 in central California. The district had a long history of poor performance before transitioning to a personalized, competency-based system that has greatly improved graduation rates and student achievement on standardized tests over the last decade.

Superintendent Tom Rooney knows students like his often aren’t held to high standards and many educators don’t always think it makes sense to try innovative teaching methods with them, but school closures have forced some experimentation. In another GSV Ventures virtual panel, Rooney said educators are realizing that many more students than they previously thought can handle self-directed or online learning. And they are rethinking their preconceptions about how and where learning happens.

These lessons may set districts up to embrace more community-based learning opportunities and give them the evidence they need to attempt more personalized learning experiences, where students get a greater say over what and how they learn.

“It will forever change what’s possible,” Rooney said.

Many schools will necessarily enter this post-COVID world better set up to mix online with face-to-face instruction. They are exploring new tools for online instruction right now and more widely distributing computers and other digital devices for student use. Advocates of blended learning hope educators will capitalize on these efforts to expand these practices even after students are allowed back into classrooms.

Sal Khan, founder and CEO of Khan Academy, the free online learning hub, acknowledged in the panel with Duncan that coronavirus-related school closures have brought into sharp relief how technology can reinforce and amplify educational inequities. But he said that the changes districts are making right now to deliver remote instruction are building a powerful muscle they can use as an equalizing force in the future.

Technology, he said, can be used to ensure all students have access to more rigorous learning materials, give students the extra academic support they need to catch up to their peers, and let them continue learning when schools are closed – including in the summer.

The coronavirus is wreaking havoc on the U.S. education system, but many educators are finding a silver lining in its potential to be just destructive enough to prompt change for the better.

Send story ideas and news tips to tara@hechingerreport.org. Tweet at @TaraGarciaM. Read high-quality news about innovation and inequality in education at The Hechinger Report. And, here’s a list of the latest news and trends in the future of learning.

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The Shortlist

Speaking of expanding education innovation. The Aurora Institute, a supporter of education innovation, recently released state and federal policy priorities that double down on ideas that have been popular in certain education circles for years. Besides recommending state leaders create competency-based education task forces and pilots, the nonprofit suggests they offer credit flexibility, better align K-12 curriculum with higher education programs and workforce needs, diversify the educator population, improve state testing systems and revamp the ways they hold schools accountable, among other things. The nonprofit has similar goals for federal education policy and also calls for expanded access to high-speed internet. Read the state and federal policy priorities for more detail.

The Covid-19 Slide. “Summer slide” refers to the learning loss students experience during summer breaks. Researchers at NWEA, a nonprofit testing organization, have projected the learning loss we can expect from current school closures based on what we know about how much students backslide during the summer. It’s depressing. Their preliminary estimates show students could return to school in the fall with less than 50 percent of the math learning gains teachers might otherwise have expected from this year – meaning the students will be almost a full year behind in math. The news is slightly better in reading, with students expected to return in the fall with roughly 70 percent of the typical learning gains from this school year. Read the full report here.

What’s happening in schools right now? A number of organizations are launching surveys or tracking their own user data to figure out how schools are tackling remote learning. Tyton Partners, a consulting firm, surveyed about 500 teachers across 49 states and found about 95 percent of them work in schools that are either encouraging or requiring remote instruction. The rates are higher in charter, private and more affluent public schools. LearnPlatform, which helps districts better use education technology, identified a number of usage trends across 350 client districts. Researchers found that ed tech usage dropped significantly when schools first closed and has increased but not reached previous levels overall. Troublingly, fewer individuals are using ed tech, but the ones who are using it are doing so at higher levels than they were before schools closed, indicating a growing digital divide. Download LearnPlatform’s latest analyses here.

The future of state tests. Statewide standardized tests have been under attack since at least 2014, according to an analysis by researchers at FutureEd, a thinktank based at Georgetown University. Their new paper, “The Big Test: The Future of State Standardized Assessments,” chronicles state testing-related legislation passed in all 50 states since then and tracks the rise and fall from grace of what was once hailed as an important way to improve schools and ensure they serve all kids. For state standardized tests to survive, researchers say they must become more useful for educators and parents – and quickly, before the federal elementary and secondary education law gets its next update.

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