Introduction

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread throughout the United States, every school district faces a series of difficult decisions about what is best for children, families, and the community. It is now clear that picking up where we left off and returning to business as usual in education is not possible. But since its inception, our education system has been deeply unequal and erratic in delivering on the promise of a quality education for all of America’s children. This pandemic puts a stark light on an emerging truth—education as we know it is over, and we must think of “school” in deeply different ways.

As the crisis began, millions of children lacked fundamental internet and device access to make remote learning possible, creating even greater equity gaps than before. But some states and districts have risen to the challenge of providing ongoing learning and supports to students and their families. Many of their creative responses hold promise for new and enduring ways to address educational quality and inequity. We now have the opportunity to follow the many inspiring examples educators have set and to shift our very idea of school to match the demands of this historic moment.

Why We Should Aim for Reinvention

Our current system took shape almost exactly a century ago, when scientific managers were looking for ways to accommodate the huge influx of students into urban areas from migration and immigration, coupled with the spread of compulsory education. The primary goal was preparing students for manual work on farms and in factories, as factory and landowners sought efficiencies from the rise of assembly-line technologies and new model bureaucracies. Schools were developed to maximize rule following and rote learning and to minimize relationships.

Only a small number of students were identified for access to the higher-order skills needed for thinking work. Funding, school assignment, and tracking systems designed to allocate students to their “places in life” were enacted within contexts of deep-seated racial, ethnic, and cultural prejudice.

Educators and policymakers have sought to evolve this system over the ensuing decades, with recurring eras of reform that have made small dents in the systems we have inherited. However, in a moment when we have more knowledge about human development and learning, when society and the economy demand a more challenging set of skills, and when—at least in our rhetoric—there is a greater social commitment to equitable education, it is time to use the huge disruptions caused by this pandemic to reinvent our systems of education.

We now know a great deal that we did not know 100 years ago. We know much about how people learn; how to enhance children’s development through productive relationships in supportive settings; and how to enhance their learning through inquiry-oriented, culturally relevant pedagogy and curricula, as well as through authentic, formative assessments.

The question is: How can we harness these understandings as we necessarily rethink school? How can we transform what has not been working for children and adults? As state and district leaders prepare for what schooling will look like in 2020 and beyond, there is an opportunity to identify evidence-based policies and practices that will enable them to seize this moment to strengthen learning opportunities for students. Currently, these efforts are highly variable and inequitably available, but growing coordination across state and district lines can solve some of our greatest challenges.

While deep inequalities have pervaded every aspect of education since schools were closed in the spring, remarkable areas of innovation and change have also occurred. We have seen more rapid progress in 2020 in bridging the digital divide than we have seen in the last 20 years. We have seen more uptake of technology-driven innovations in teaching, more outreach directly to families, and more collaboration time for teachers than were thought possible even a few months before the pandemic shut down in-person learning.

The initial changes were made quickly to meet immediate needs, but a broader question should guide our efforts throughout this year and beyond. How can we redesign schools to be:

• student-centered in ways that support the whole child’s social, emotional, cognitive, moral, and identity development;
• focused on deeper learning that meets the demands of today’s society;
• culturally and linguistically connected and sustaining;
• grounded in collaboration among students, staff, families, and communities; and
• equitable in the opportunities provided and outcomes achieved?

The Purpose of This Framework

Policymakers, educators, students, and families face daunting challenges as the 2020–21 school year begins. As communities continue to suffer from surging outbreaks of COVID-19, districts are considering a range of differing approaches to online, hybrid, and in-person instruction while they balance health and safety considerations. The framework presented here does not try to replicate the guidance that has been issued related to health and safety guidelines for reopening schools and how to organize school schedules to allow for social distancing, distance learning, and blended learning (see resources below).

This report builds on this guidance and focuses on how policymakers as well as educators can support equitable, effective teaching and learning regardless of the medium through which that takes place. It provides an overarching framework to inform the restart of schools for the 2020–21 school year while also providing a long-term vision that can guide leaders toward new and enduring ways to address educational quality and inequity (see Figure 1). The framework provides research, state and local examples, and policy recommendations in 10 key areas that speak to both transforming learning and closing opportunity and achievement gaps.