Resources for schools preparing for next year

We all know that planning for an effective year of school during the continuing pandemic is a herculean task.

There are some simple steps the state can, and should, take to make it easier like resolving questions on how CARES Act funds are distributed and making sure students can easily enroll in virtual education, but there are still a lot of difficult details for individual schools to work out.

Thankfully a number of national organizations are stepping up and providing well-researched guidance on some best practices and innovative ways to provide education in the new pandemic normal.

FutureEd

FutureEd, an independent, solution-oriented think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, has released a lot of publications in recent weeks focused on key questions for the education community during the pandemic. They include:

• A revised and expanded guide to reducing chronic student absenteeism that addresses new challenges educators face from the coronavirus and the trauma from recent attacks on African Americans. 
• A state-by-state analysis of federal stimulus aid to schools and colleges.
• A breakdown of how students at different ages are handling distance learning.
• An analysis of whether school districts saved money during this spring’s school closures. 
• An examination of the troubling impact of the pandemic on teacher pay, and a strategy for addressing the problem. 
• A strategy for using standardized testing effectively in the coming months. 
• An argument for expanding national service to put recent colleges graduates to work and help schools address learning loss. 
• Insights into the pandemic’s impact on college admissions.
• Podcasts on the pandemic’s consequences for instruction, enrollment, and budgeting in higher education.
• A state legislation tracker on coronavirus bills related to schools and colleges.
• A profile of a program that delivers college courses to students in low-income high schools online. 
• A listing of education events planned for the coming months that have been rescheduled or canceled. 

ExcelinEd

ExcelinEd has provided three great guides to best practices for schools planning for next year.

One focuses on ensuring that students with special needs can succeed through distance education.

The second provides recommendations on how to reopen schools after the pandemic forced closures.

Finally, they provided a good guide for how states can use the new federal micro-grants under the CARES Act to improve and stabilize remote learning.

Other resources

Several other national organizations have released impactful studies to help schools deal with the myriad issues that have arisen during 2020:

• Hybrid Homeschooling (American Enterprise Institute) 
• Too Many Schools Leave Learning to Chance During the Pandemic (Center on Reinventing Public Education)
• In Support of Our Black Community: Emerging Resources (Leading Elephants)
• Developing COVID Comeback Models for Fall 2020 (Education Resource Strategies)
• Education Equity in Crisis: #Data4ThePeople but How? (The Education Trust-West)
• High-Quality Curriculum Implementation: Connecting What to Teach with How to Teach It (National Institute for Excellence in Teaching)