Election Series | New Demands for 2020 Presidential Candidates: Rethinking K12 Education Policy in the Wake of COVID-19 by Nikki Cohron

This is the first contribution in the AJE Forum Election Issues series. Together, these pieces will introduce and analyze relevant issues in education policy and politics that will shape the 2020 Presidential election including the politics of school choice, Black Lives Matter and social justice, reopening schools during a pandemic, prioritizing funding for students with disabilities, early childhood education policies, and student loans for higher education.

Being a roughly thirty-year-old former elementary school teacher, I am fortunate to have a wide social media network of public school teachers and parents of school-aged children. Prior to writing this piece, I reached out with a plea for insight to see how COVID-19 is impacting teachers’ work during the Spring 2020 semester and how parents are perceiving their children’s new education contexts (as pictured in the post below). Dozens of friends and former colleagues reached out. While this was an informal inquiry and the responses are not representative of the entire nation, it only took a quick scan of my social network’s first-hand narratives for the scope of pandemic-induced change in American K12 schools to become apparent in a tangible way.

Responses came from several states in nearly every region and schools from every SES bracket. Rural, suburban, and urban contexts were represented, as well as traditional public, charter, and private schools. Every response was unique, even those from neighboring districts.

• A middle school teacher from a suburban Alabama school district said that school closures meant, “We had to contact the parents of every child in our homeroom. We filled out a form that asked about Wi-Fi, technology, address, and a few other things. We are checking out technology to any family who needs it. We are posting 2-3 assignments per subject each week. We have the option to use Google Meet and some are using Screencastify. The most challenging thing is to ensure that everyone is sharing the same message and sharing the data we get from parents with the administration.”
  • In a neighboring Alabama school district (less than one mile away from the school above), a fifth-grade teacher stated that, “We had four or five days to pull seven weeks of plans together… We wanted those who need paper copies to only have to pick things up once… I’ve been able to reach all of my families in some fashion, but some only by email or text.”
  • An elementary school teacher from northwest Washington said her district “created grade level menus” on a weekly basis with “Literacy, Math, Play, Art, Social Studies, and/or Science activities based on essential standards identified by grade-level teams. Menus are posted to Seesaw on Monday and packed in weekly lunch boxes distributed on Monday, as well. Teachers post daily videos… and they are expected to respond to students at least once daily. We are not requiring participation at this point [mid-April] and have not focused on assessment… Our district is prioritizing connection and health and safety above all other things…”
  • A middle grade English Language Arts teacher from a public charter school in Tennessee said, “The first five days we sent home packet work, then we went into online teaching mode. We use Zoom to teach even classes on Monday and Thursday and odd classes on Tuesday and Friday. Wednesday is the day we use for office hours and made a lot of calls home… There was a major concern of equity around technology access, but our school was quick to act and provide students with options.”
  • An Upper School teacher at a private, college-preparatory school in Virginia said he uses, “Zoom, Google Classroom, and OnCampus. We are doing synchronous learning since they closed in the schools at the beginning of March. I do about 20-25 minutes of a PowerPoint and a small assignment… Some challenges have been planning lessons for virtual consumption, engaging students (particularly 9^th grade), and staying on top of a billion daily emails. One amazing thing I was able to arrange was a virtual tour of the US Capitol though my contact in DC. She works for the office of the Architect of the Capital, so she took my classes on virtual Zoom tours of the building, which fit perfectly into my civics unit.”

While the Democratic National Convention is set for August 17th, the Democratic nominee has been clear for months. The dramatic Super Tuesday results in early March signaled a decisive alignment of the Democratic Establishment and voters with the campaign of former Vice President Joe Biden, despite his shaky early primary season performance. Biden’s fate as the presumptive nominee was cemented in early April when Senator Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race.

Barring any unexpected events, Joe Biden will face incumbent President Donald Trump in November. In terms of education policy, several issues have dominated the conversation over the course of the past four years. However, in the wake of COVID-19, the 2020 presidential candidates must rethink even the most enduring education issues and address them with fresh eyes and an even greater sense of urgency. To better understand this increased urgency, I outline essential themes and questions that arose from my informal social media inquiry, in terms of how each must be addressed by K12 education scholars and policymakers, especially the 2020 presidential candidates. While this piece focuses on how teachers grappled with teaching during the second half of the 2019-20 academic year, a later piece in this AJE series will tackle the politics of reopening schools for the 2020-21 academic year.

Equity. From my social network, I know teachers who were required to teach remotely via countless tech tools, some synchronously on a daily basis, others asynchronously at wider time increments during Spring 2020. I know other teachers who were required to create and distribute paper packets of work at the beginning of crisis and follow up with students via phone or email. Some schools systematically provided remote-learning technologies to students with need, while other schools lacked the capacity to do so, leading some school administrators to advise teachers to avoid technology and student-contact altogether for equity’s sake in the early stages of the pandemic, as noted by a rural Mississippi teacher in my social network inquiry. Undoubtedly, there are many unmentioned versions of school responses, but the takeaway is simple. Despite the general messaging that we are “all in this together” and stay at-home orders leave students across America “in the same boat,” the overall impact on students varies greatly by local context, especially given the dramatically different nature of state-level policies regarding COVID-19. With this in mind, policymakers will need to look to researchers for help grappling with the pre-existing, exacerbated, and potentially new equity gaps for resources and funding, particularly for economically disadvantaged students and students of color.

The Academic Calendar. In addition to resources and funding, a specific equity issue is the traditional academic calendar. Researchers have known for years that Summer Learning Loss or the “Summer Slide” disproportionately impacts low-SES students and students of color, largely because families of students from  low-SES homes generally have less money and time to devote to summer learning and enrichment activities (Alexander, Pitcock, & Boulay, 2016; Gershenson, 2013). From what we can see across COVID-19 responses, students from schools with fewer technology resources for remote learning may face new and potentially more detrimental loss than before. As evidence of an exacerbated time-gap, we already have data that suggests middle- and upper-class families adults are more likely able to work from home throughout COVID-19 stay-at-home orders, so even if all students within a district are provided equal access to tech tools and internet connectivity, they may be offered different level of family learning support at home (Gould & Shierholz, 2020). Researchers are labeling this phenomenon the “COVID-19 Slide,” which will necessarily be an urgent policy issue as schools begin to reopen (or not).

Further, in addition to potential equity concerns rising from current school closures, school are reckoning with potential resurgence of COVID-19 and closures that may be required in the future and/or a dramatic restructuring of what physical school attendance looks like. In an abundance of caution, some schools have already announced later openings for Fall 2020, along with hybrid and/or fully remote learning options for the school year. CDC recommendations for opening schools demand creative policymaking and a willingness to rethink the academic calendar, potentially begging the long-term question: Is a traditional ten-month academic calendar still the preferred option for schools?

Standardized Assessment. While the Trump Administration largely failed to offer federal guidance for schools during the early stages of COVID-19, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos did release public schools from accountability mandates related to standardized testing in late March (U.S. Department of Education, 2020). The 2019-2020 academic year will show policymakers what is lost from a gap in testing, but it will also provide them with opportunities to measure schools through different lenses, for better or worse. COVID-19 gives researchers and policymakers an opportunity to better understand the role schools and teachers can play in self-evaluation for insights about student performance and accountability, and how leaning into their localized expertise can inform policy and practice. On the other hand, significant gaps in student data during the pandemic could greatly undermine efforts to identity and address equity gaps.

Teachers’ Work. In what might be framed as beautiful irony, the COVID-19 crisis has reinforced the battle cries of the Red for Ed movement in the public opinion. Since early March, parents across America have been asked to fill the shoes of teachers at home (at least to an extent), and through this experience, the public may be recognizing the true size of teachers’ shoes is bigger than previously assumed. Prior to the crisis, public opinion already supported teacher striker demands, and increasing teacher pay was already a driving issue in the Democratic primary. In Spring 2020, families across the nation are getting a taste of teachers’ work, how it never was and never could be confined to the designated eight hours spent inside of a school building for ten months each year. Simultaneously, in the absence of annual standardized testing, accountability czars must now rely on teachers more than ever for insights about student performance and progress.

Increasing teacher voice is an essential priority to address issues that existed long before COVID-19. While a greater public understanding of teachers’ work has potentially signaled a long-overdue restoration of public respect for the teaching profession, the pendulum also has the potential to swing the in another direction. Unfortunately, we are currently seeing a more hostile public response toward teachers and a politicization of teachers’ work as many advocate for workplace safety and push for clarity and assurances regarding school reopening plans. Further, while families supporting students learning remotely at the beginning of the pandemic led to admiration for teachers’ work, these same experiences may now produce an irreconcilable tension for families feeling overwhelmed and ill-equipped for this task who desperately want to see their children back in the classroom.

Technology in Education. With the impending reality of schools being dramatically modified for the upcoming academic year in response to COVID-19, schools are not only having to rethink their calendars, school leaders and policymakers are coming to terms with the reality that most schools are woefully underprepared for remote teaching. The next time closures come, schools will not be able to lean heavily into the element of surprise to excuse lack of preparedness. In efforts to prepare for future or continued closures, teachers will need targeted professional development. One-to-one technology policies will be necessary to ensure all students have the tools they need to complete assignments. Access to high-speed internet will be necessary for all (Smith, 2020). None of these things are disruptive, but previous school responses to disasters, such post-Katrina New Orleans, show us that responses to education systems in crisis is never simple (Saltman, 2007; Scott, 2009). Corporate stakeholders are uniquely positioned to frame themselves as heroes and increase the scope of their influence in way not typically possible, and the consequences may be immense (2009).  

Overall, the next three months will be a critical time for both presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden and Incumbent President Trump to clarify their visions for education policy in the ever-evolving landscape of the COVID-19 era. The overarching themes will likely remain the same, but the specific ways in which these themes are addressed will inevitably and necessarily be understood through COVID-colored lenses. The following pieces in this series will unpack several enduring issues in education policy and politics (some briefly addressed in this introductory piece, some not) and offer insights into how candidates have previously addressed or might address these issues in the future.

Nikki Cohron is a Ph.D. student in the Educational Theory and Policy Program at Penn State. She holds master’s degree in Educational Leadership, Organizations, and Policy from Samford University and a bachelor’s degree in Collaborative Education from Birmingham-Southern College. Her background includes teaching at the elementary and undergraduate levels, as well as promoting college faculty development as an instructional technologist. Nikki’s current research interests include the intersections between research, policy, and the K-12 classroom and understanding how teachers perceive their role in educational change.

Resources

Alexander, K. L., Pitcock, S., & Boulay, M. (2016). The summer slide: What we know and can do about summer learning loss. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Gershenson, S. (2013). Do Summer Time-Use Gaps Vary by Socioeconomic Status? American Educational Research Journal, 50(6), 1219–1248. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831213502516

Gould, E. & Shierholz, H. (2020). Not everybody can work from home. Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute. Retrieved from https://www.epi.org/blog/black-and-hispanic-workers-are-much-less-likely-to-be-able-to-work-from-home/

Saltman, K. (2007). Schooling in Disaster Capitalism: How the political right is using disaster to privatize public schooling. Teacher Education Quarterly, 34(2), 131-156. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/23479021

Scott, J. (2009). The politics of venture philanthropy in charter school policy and advocacy. Educational Policy, 23(1), 106-136. doi:10.1177/0895904808328531

Smith, R. (2020). Coronavirus moves schools online, raising equity issues. University of Colorado Boulder. Retrieved from https://www.colorado.edu/cmci/2020/06/08/coronavirus-moves-schools-online-raising-equity-issues

U.S. Department of Education (2020). Helping students adversely affected by school closures, Secretary Devos announces broad flexibilities for states to cancel testing during national emergency. Retrieved from https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/helping-students-adversely-affected-school-closures-secretary-devos-announces-broad-flexibilities-states-cancel-testing-during-national-emergency