Forbes | July 27, 2020
By Jeanne Allen, Founder and CEO of CER

It shouldn’t take a pandemic.

It’s the biggest and hottest topic  – reopening school.

Left, right and center, political reporters are knee deep in covering the impact and controversy over conflicting calls and demands to open school or limit everyone to learning remotely. Community, parent and teacher responses have been fast and furious. It’s hard to keep up. Nearly every hour of the day there is a new story about another system announcing new opening plans, unions standing in their way, or parents losing faith.

It wasn’t the decade-long decline in student achievement that got our attention—that just one-third of all students are actually reading, writing, performing math, science or demonstrating knowledge of history and civics at grade level, across nearly every demographic. It wasn’t the fact that college entrance exam scores among even high achievers have plateaued or fallen drastically as well that commanded our attention.  No, because the media’s minute-quick coverage of our academic predicament consistently fails to impart the right amount of gravity on its audience, the public has until now been tragically under-informed about the condition of public education, which Covid-19 has now brought into full focus. A system whose structure makes it impervious to failure in everything, from reading to college or career readiness, is a system that is incapable of innovating. The lightbulb has seemingly gone off. Parents aren’t taking it anymore.

When affluent Montgomery County, Maryland last week announced its enormous 162,000 enrollment public school system would be operating 100% remotely, thousands of parents expressed their outrage on local listservs. “I’m just hoping and praying for the taxpayer revolt over paying $16,952 per pupil at Westbrook for students to stay home,”  said one. Many across social media echoed the sentiment too, demanding that if their education system cannot figure out how to best educate kids they should be able to take matters into their own hands.

They have good reason. In the same area, all non-public schools are physically opening, with variations in delivery for parents who insist on a remote learning option. One school reports that applications for admissions are up an estimated 20 percent and that is consistent across peer schools across the area.

While many of our leaders are demanding public education get all students “back in school,” most systems are releasing confusing plans for remote-only education.

 “I can’t even begin to wrap my head around this stuff! Our town had webinars last night…  posts of the guided and misguided are flying – a lot to wade through!,” reported one neighbor.

Another whose school is giving options says, “I dream of 5 full days of in-class instruction… (Hoping lots of families opt for full time remote learning so my kids can sit in the classroom!)” They are understandably looking for a return to “normal,” given their experience with months of ineffective remote education where they had to coax their kids constantly to do their work, putting the burden on the parent not the school.  The problem is that few have ever experienced effective online education.

Technology is but a tool, and innovation can happen with it playing a leading role or a supporting role. This is contrary to what most know – and what most reporters report. The conventional wisdom is that there are only two kinds of teaching remotely – in front of Zoom, or just some online school-directed program that delivers and receives assignments, with little feedback or interaction. These ineffective approaches raise concerns about students not being able to learn when an adult is not present and ignores the evidence that students can be fiercely independent and engaged with the right tools.

The reality is that digital learning can be highly interactive and provide substantial opportunity to see, talk and work with other students and teachers. PE, Sports and lunchroom time aside, hallway cliques and pressures to conform go away when students do not have to be in the same building configured only one way day after day.

“K-12 online schools have been around for two decades,” says Amy Valentine, Chief Executive Officer and Education Evangelist of Future of School, an organization dedicated to helping teachers teach and students learn through innovative approaches.  “They are actual schools, with learning experiences that have been developed and designed to be delivered fully online. Administrators set policies; certified, qualified teachers design course content and teach students; opportunities abound for peer collaboration, and high-quality special education services are provided, among other supports.

“What most kids in our country experienced this past spring was not online, virtual or blended education. It was crisis schooling at best.”

And that’s precisely what parents are beginning to discover. They are actively learning – on their own and not from their schools – about the amazing innovations that have been happening that they never knew existed, and that they can deploy themselves to make sure that their kids truly do go back to school, even if it’s different than what it once was.

It is reminiscent of the parent-led push for charter schools that TIME called “A Grassroots Revolt,”  when parents’ frustration with a one-size-fits-all approach to education gave way to new bold and ambitious ways to ensure their kids were educated well.  Now, from ‘Pandemic Pods’ and microschools, to reinvigorated demands at a policy level for money to follow kids, parents and change advocates are helping to usher in a new era in education innovation. “Fed up with remote education, parents who can pay have a new plan for fall: import teachers to their homes,” says the Washington Post. These new kinds of schools are being built on a variety of existing curricula, pedagogy and programs that are largely being pulled together independent of traditional oversight bodies and delivered either directly by the parents or by educators that fit parents’ conception of what school needs to look like.

Not everyone has that luxury, however. Lower income families who have reason to be even more concerned about their students’ health are facing untenable choices: Return to potentially risky physical buildings, or suffer through poorly-devised remote education. Without the money to put together their own schools, they are talking about boycotting schools that don’t deliver education for them well.  Some are asking for an individualized learning plan for every student, something that is normally reserved for students formally categorized in special education programs. In essence they are arguing that they, not the schools, should get the funds to spend on education, to decide what will work for their kids in this unprecedented time. It’s a brilliant concept, actually, that money should pay for the education a parent deems best. It shouldn’t take a pandemic to prompt novel ideas for ensuring all students have access to the education they deserve. But it has.

Smart state and education leaders understand parents’ concerns. When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his administration issued an emergency order requiring all ‘brick and mortar schools’ to open at least five days per week for all students, they were met with fierce opposition- and a union lawsuit. He argued that schools must be responsible for delivering education for 180 days, which is what they are paid more than enough to do. “If a parent wants to opt for virtual education,” he said, “they should absolutely be able to do that. We shouldn’t be forcing them to make any types of decisions.”

Jon Hage, CEO of one of the nation’s largest charter school networks, didn’t need an order to open school. Charter Schools USA’s approach was to create different options for parents. “Our classrooms will be safe and ready for students. But for those not ready to return to a school building, we are using innovative ideas and technology to bring the classroom to students, wherever they are. Our philosophy is simple: allow parents to have a choice not only when it comes to which school to send their child to, but to how to have school delivered to them.”

There’s no excuse for districts not to innovate in a state that has a long history of providing flexibility for school leaders. Florida also offers effective virtual options, including a statewide virtual school which was serving more than 200,000 students before the pandemic. Many charter schools and a few bold traditional school district leaders, like Miami’s Alberto M. Carvalho, also embrace the varied needs of a wide array of diverse parents.

Most parents will not have options when school “starts,” however, other than the false choice of sending their kids to school or keeping them home. That’s why we need a new approach to education systems that makes districts accountable, puts parents in charge, and empowers professionals who want to teach. All three can effected quickly at the state and national levels:

1. Tie new federal stimulus funding to universal education delivery. Negotiations are ongoing and approximately $70 billion may soon be approved for state and local education use. Every state should be required as a condition of this next funding round to distribute funds to schools only if they can offer effective, proven online and on-ground solutions to every parent.  Some will argue this is heavy-handed, but let’s resolve that if a district in 2020 doesn’t utilize one of the hundreds of exceptional programs or providers able to deliver education digitally, virtually, personalized or blended, they shouldn’t get any federal support funds, period.

2. Require funds to follow the child. Schools that do not meet parents’ needs – whether as a result of the kind of education they are offering or health concerns – should pay the provider of their choice to deliver education. Public schools contract with private and other public entities all the time for special education, transportation, curriculum and the like. If a parent wants a better education than what the district is giving, they should tell them which provider they are using and send their money there. That should include microschools, private tutors and the new “pandemic pods.”

3. Open up the teaching profession to interested, qualified people.Some teachers are understandably worried for their family about going back to the classroom. Teachers that cannot go back to their traditional school, are unable to deliver education digitally or have another issue (like their union has negotiated restrictions on their time) should be free to find another job.  Requirements for certification (which have nothing to do with being a good teacher) should be suspended during this pandemic. We must allow individuals who want and can teach and are highly qualified in their field (like the aerospace engineer who could teach science and math) to work in schools for commensurate pay. That kind of flexibility does not exist in public education right now and it’s part of what’s killing our kids.

It’s time to end the universal dependency on national, state and local leaders to fund and run a system that has outlived its usefulness particularly in these extraordinary times. The crisis has wrought a unique opportunity to recraft how we as a nation “do” school. Put the parents in charge. Allow money to flow only where education is happening. Then watch the new innovation era unfold.

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