Election Series | Narratives of Schooling in the United States During and After COVID-19 by Beth Howd, Logan Rutten, and Jeremy Singer

This is the second 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.

In March 2020, K-12 schools were shuttered across the United States as a public health response to the rapid spread of COVID-19 (Ballotpedia.org, n.d.; Education Week, 2020). School districts scrambled to make arrangements for distance instruction (Center for Reinventing Public Education, 2020). Parents and guardians who had abruptly lost jobs or childcare, or who suddenly found themselves working from home, simultaneously shouldered increased responsibility for their children’s schooling (E. A. Harris, 2020). Existing inequalities were exacerbated as schools moved online (Goldstein, 2020), and concerns about issues such as food insecurity called attention to the vital roles schools play in meeting children’s basic needs. The move to reopen schools has been equally fraught, with President Trump threatening reduced federal funding to school districts that choose not to hold in-person classes (Baker, Green, & Weiland, 2020).

As school start dates drew nearer and states and school districts began to make decisions about whether, when, and how to reopen schools, questions about schools’ form and function reached a crisis point (D. N. Harris, 2020; National Education Policy Center, 2020). In response, this essay proposes narrative as one lens for considering what it means to reopen schools during a pandemic and for defining schools’ broader roles in American society. The essay begins with a brief overview of narrative as a way to think about schooling. Next, two conflicting narratives of schooling during COVID-19 are presented and contrasted in relation to the question of what it means to reopen schools. The essay concludes with a call for citizens to seize the moment created by COVID-19 and the upcoming presidential election to participate in the creation of compelling new narratives to shape schooling in the pandemic’s wake.

Narratives of Schooling in the United States

Neil Postman (1995) once observed that schooling consists of two fundamental challenges: an engineering problem and a metaphysical problem. Postman argued that Americans too seldom interrogate the ultimate purposes of their schools, choosing to focus upon the engineering problem (i.e., determining the means of schooling) at the expense of the metaphysical problem (i.e., determining the ends of schooling). Yet the metaphysical problem is always addressed, whether thoughtfully or aimlessly, within the narratives Americans tell themselves about their schools.

Narratives give voice to particular purposes of schooling (e.g., Labaree, 1997), thereby shaping how the engineering problems are framed and addressed both in policy and in practice. Some narratives are primarily economic: America’s schools are for producing “college and career ready” employees for tomorrow’s workforce. Other narratives are more civic-minded: America’s schools are for forming a thoughtful, engaged, and democratic people. Still others are decidedly pessimistic, prefiguring particular policy arguments: America’s children are being left behind because of their failing schools, so we must hold schools accountable through standardized testing or school choice initiatives. From such premises, more complex narratives of schooling can be framed and used to justify a wide range of engineering responses.

Narrative can also be used to call attention to the broader institutional roles schools are asked to fill. For example, policymakers working within a narrative that treats schools as sites for remedying inequality often assign schools the task of addressing a wide range of social problems, in part because “schools represent the nation’s most fully developed network of sociopolitical institutions” (Schneider, 2011, p. 140). Economic narratives highlight the institutional role of schools as employers of teachers, administrators, social workers, psychologists, maintenance staff, service workers, and more (Apple, 2008). In the context of COVID-19, the institutional role of schools as childcare providers has been highlighted by an economic narrative in which the reopening of physical school buildings is necessary for parents or guardians to participate in the workforce (Brown et al., 2016). These narratives notably do not emphasize the role of schools as learning institutions.

Postman (1995) did not insist upon any particular narrative or agitate for just a single story. Rather, his insight was that some narrative of schooling is always present, even if it is not explicitly articulated. The contemporary implication is that by paying attention to the narratives that are present as schools prepare to reopen during COVID-19 and as a presidential election approaches, citizens could seize an opportunity to draft new narratives for schooling in the United States. This moment presents a chance not only to tackle the logistical challenges of how to reopen but also to create a fresh and compelling story about why schools should reopen—and why they should continue to keep their doors open after the pandemic has finally passed.

Inequality and Safety: Two Narratives of Reopening

As COVID-19 prompted school closures across the United States, concerns about existing inequalities being exacerbated by the pandemic contributed to a narrative of schools as places where inequality can be remedied through education and attention to students’ physical and emotional needs. This narrative has drawn unprecedented public attention to the extensive array of non-educational roles schools are charged with fulfilling, such as ensuring that eligible children receive subsidized meals (Turner & Kamenetz, 2020). As schools transitioned to distance instruction, this narrative also highlighted questions about how students without home computers or internet access would participate in online lessons and how parents or guardians would supervise their children’s school-related learning. Among many others, additional concerns related to schools’ obligation to serve students receiving special education accommodations.

As distance learning has proceeded, however, COVID-19 has deepened inequalities that already existed before the pandemic, with schools serving the wealthy forging ahead with rich, interactive curricula via high-speed internet and videoconferencing, while schools serving the poor have tended to offer independent work packets (Goldstein, 2020). Scholars and journalists alike observed that COVID-19 has created a unique opportunity to reimagine “normal,” since “normal” represented a system of entrenched inequality for many people of color, children experiencing poverty, and other marginalized groups (Griffin, 2020).

Once decisions regarding the return to school were imminent, however, this narrative of schools as places for addressing inequality was eclipsed by a narrative of schools as vehicles for promoting the country’s safety and wellbeing. While school districts grapple with how to continue their educational missions, contrasting versions of the narrative of safety and wellbeing have become a central focus of discussions about returning to school.

One version of this safety and wellbeing narrative focuses on the economic considerations of reopening schools. Without children physically present in school buildings, many parents are not able to return to work. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines that were published earlier this summer offer recommendations like desks facing the same direction, limited student-to-student interactions, universal mask wearing, lunch in the classrooms, and no in-person community events (CDC, 2020) in order to create an environment where students can be physically safe while their parents are at work but that may not support robust teaching and learning.

Another version focuses on the role of schools in individual student wellbeing and growth. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released a statement that highlights the importance of the non-academic opportunities that are lost if schools do not physically reopen. The AAP says, “We recognize that children learn best when physically present in the classroom. But children get much more than academics at school. They also learn social and emotional skills at school, get healthy meals and exercise, mental health support and other services that cannot be easily replicated online…” (Miller, 2020). The AAP’s statement engages a narrative based on individual student safety and wellbeing as the justification for returning to buildings even with the risks of COVID-19.

A third version of the safety narrative focuses on reducing family and community spread of COVID-19 through different forms of distance instruction. This approach focuses on school as a place to learn and to interact, while minimizing the non-educational functions of public schools. Awareness that the education a school provides is not its only important feature points to the need to craft narratives that can explain why children need to go to a physical school building amid a public health crisis. This awareness can then be transferred to the development of new narratives that integrate the many roles that schools play in the United States.

Drafting New Narratives for Schooling in the United States

As communities across the United States reckon with what school should look like this fall and into the future, a compelling story is needed to explain why schools should reopen. Such a narrative would require a more explicit public understanding of what citizens want their schools to accomplish. This essay proposes that any narrative worthy enough to guide the reopening of schools must aim at a higher purpose, a cause beyond both the schools themselves and the practical ends they are being asked to fulfill. This higher purpose must be something remarkable, welcoming, inclusive, inspiring. It must be about more than preparing today’s students to take positions in tomorrow’s workforce, or the production of another grossly unequal generation of taxpayers and consumers. It could incorporate pieces of COVID-era narratives about schools’ roles in addressing inequality and promoting wellbeing, but these alone will not sustain schools beyond the acute crisis of the pandemic.

According to Postman (1995), any worthy narrative of schooling would resonate widely with people across the United States. It would provide powerful moral guidance, inspiration for the daily engineering work of schooling, and transcendent hope for the future. Worthy narratives of schooling must unequivocally acknowledge the failures represented by the status quo, but they must also offer more than blame—and be supported with the funding and infrastructure to bring them to life.

The November 2020 election presents an opportunity for drafting a worthy narrative. This narrative would include lessons learned during COVID-19 about the importance of school as an institution along with what is already known about school’s role in education and social development. The following is a summary of the leading presidential candidates’ education policy platforms and a brief critique of the lack of a compelling narrative driving those platforms.

President Trump’s education policy proposals focus on promoting the economic outcomes of schooling, strengthening state oversight of education, and funding school choice initiatives (U.S. Department of Education, 2020). According to his reelection website, Trump’s major K-12 policy accomplishment during his term was increasing the funding available for school choice (Promises Kept, n.d.). His February 2020 proposal for the 2021 education budget focuses on providing school choice through state level block grants, funding Career and Technical Education (CTE) opportunities, creating privately funded Education Freedom Scholarships for school choice, and increasing the funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), and the Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program (MSEIP) (U.S Department of Education, 2020). Finally, Trump is proposing to restructure the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) into its own entity with a difference governance structure (U.S. Department of Education, 2020; Fredman, 2020). His current push for schools to reopen during the pandemic focuses on schools as an essential component of the economy (Baker & Green, 2020), but it does little to address the equity issues that garnered significant attention during the first months of COVID-19.

Joe Biden’s education platform focuses on expanding infrastructure in order to decrease educational inequality, increase student wellbeing, and increase high school students’ access to successful career paths (JoeBiden.com, n.d.). Major parts of his plan include eliminating the funding gap between districts, increasing access to 3 and 4-year-old preschool, increasing access to rigorous course work, diversifying schools, increasing IDEA funding, funding CTE programs, expand home visits, and provide access to pediatricians for early childhood developmental support (JoeBiden.com, n.d.). Biden’s platform focuses on equity issues and increasing access to more services and levels of education, but it does little to address other institutional functions of schools that have taken center stage during more recent months of the pandemic.

As the United States anticipates its upcoming presidential election, the issues that have surfaced around reopening schools during COVID-19 signal that the creation of new, optimistic, and compelling narratives is desperately needed. Yet neither major candidate’s platform directly tackles the issues that have arisen since the beginning of COVID-19 or connects their policy proposals to a higher purpose for schooling. The candidates’ platforms indicate the need for a broader, more purposeful conversation about the narratives guiding schooling in this country.

What might be possible if, instead of attempting to approximate schooling before COVID-19, “reopening” meant that students, parents, guardians, and community members were invited to a series of discussions about the purpose of reopening their school? What if reopening meant that every aspect of school were opened to questioning and careful study before being retained, rejected, or reinvented? What if, this election season, all citizens considered what has been learned during the pandemic and pushed for a conversation about fresh and more nuanced narratives for schooling? What if every citizen helped create a compelling narrative to answer the perennial question: what are schools for? The question is not new (Badiali, 2019; Dewey 1916; Goodlad, 2008), yet it is particularly relevant at this moment, when discussions about reopening schools are taking place throughout the United States. The country is at a crossroads where citizens can participate intentionally in forging a coherent narrative for the why of schooling, or they can let their reactions to the how of schooling during COVID-19 create the narrative for them.

Beth Howd is a Ph.D. student in the Education Theory and Policy program at Penn State University.  She has over fifteen years of experience teaching chemistry and physics in multiple settings.  These experiences have created an interest in urban and rural education, school effectiveness, and STEM education.  She holds an M.Div. from Mercer University and B.S. from Furman University. 

Logan Rutten is a teacher educator and Ph.D. candidate in Curriculum and Instruction at Penn State University. Logan studies practitioner inquiry as a form of professional learning for pre- and in-service teachers. He earned a B.A. at Concordia College and an M.Ed. from Penn State.

Jeremy Singer is a Ph.D. student in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. His interests include the social and material context of urban education and critical analysis of educational policy, politics, implementation, and research use. He is a research assistant and project coordinator for the Detroit Education Research Partnership. He formerly taught in the Detroit Public Schools. Policy and politics

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