ound that, in April 2021, 59% of K-8 schools were offering in-person instruction full time, up from 46% since January 2021.
Special Report: How We Go Back to School: Presents a broad spectrum of options for how to open and operate schools during the COVID-19 national emergency, through interviews with dozens of public health experts, consultants, and frontline educators. In this multi-part series Education Week explores specific strategies that some districts will adopt, and explain the pros, the cons, and the costs.
Restructuring California Schools to Address Barriers to Learning and Teaching in the COVID-19 Context and Beyond: Highlights ways to systematically transform how schools address the overlapping learning, behavioral, and emotional problems that can interfere with learning and teaching. This brief, produced for Policy Analysis for California Education [PACE] by co-directors of UCLA’s Center for Mental Health in Schools, provides a blueprint to enable the state, local education agencies (LEAs) and schools to play a greater role in providing student and learning supports, in ways that enhance equity of opportunity. (The content is applicable in any state, not only in California.)
The Return: How Should Education Leaders Prepare for Reentry and Beyond?: Offers and supports four major recommendations for school leaders to prepare for students’ return to school in the aftermath of the national COVID-19 emergency. This report is a collaboration between Chiefs for Change, a nonprofit, bipartisan network of state and district education chiefs; and the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Education Policy.
Recognizing the Role of Afterschool and Summer Programs and Systems in Reopening and Rebuilding: Describes the role that afterschool and summer programs and systems can play in conjoint strategies with school leaders to support youth, families and communities to prepare for and accomplish school reopening. This succinct brief by the American Institutes for Research explains how afterschool and summer programs can contribute to such strategies, illuminates examples from the field, and identifies numerous resources that can help programs and practitioners to capitalize on opportunities to rebuild and return even stronger than before COVID-19.
Getting Back to School after Disruptions: Resources for Making Your School Year Safer, More Predictable, and More Positive: Describes how multi-tiered systems of supports [MTSS], such as PBIS, are ideal frameworks for implementing strategies to support students coming back to school after experiencing trauma from public health crises, weather disasters, or other upsetting events that may have exposed them to unpredictable schedules, inconsistent supervision, food insecurity or other disruption. Students in such circumstances desperately need school to be a safe, predictable and positive setting. This practice guide, updated by the Center on PBIS to reflect the current COVID-19 pandemic, recommends six strategies for school teams to ensure a safe, predictable, and positive school year.
Reopening Schools after COVID-19 Closures: Explores options to assist state education leaders’ decision-making about these key questions: (1) When and how should schools reopen, once it is safe from a health perspective to do so?, (2) What could school schedule, student placement and staffing options look like when schools reopen?, and (3) How should we provide support to students (particularly those most in-need) as schools reopen? This toolkit will be frequently updated.
COVID-19 and Whole Child Efforts: Describes the importance of attending to the basic needs and well being of children and youth as central to supporting their success in school, and the particular salience of that holistic approach for supporting students’ return to classrooms in the aftermath of the COVID-19 national emergency. This brief from the American Institutes for Research defines key themes and terms to support shared understanding across community and school system leaders, and crosswalks prominent guidance for school r