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COUNTERING COVID’s IMPACT ON EDUCATION.  Well Randi Weingarten can say she’s “not convinced” the CDC guidance is good enough all day long…and she can continue to fly around the country claiming – FALSELY – that she and her union have tried oh-so-very-hard to open schools since last year (that link right there is a must read), but thankfully some people haven’t waited for more complaints, delays or problems, or are waiting on new fresh billions of dollars to start flowing to do the right, the moral, the just thing.

LAST YEAR AT THIS TIME. We had pivoted virtually and began to share the extraordinary work of so many schools, systems and innovators who were able to turn on a dime to provide continual learning. The extraordinary efforts of these organizations and individuals proved the art of the possible — especially when you’re willing to put kids first:

SETON EDUCATION PARTNERS – The New York based network that partners with charter and catholic schools in underserved communities nationwide immediately created an Emergency Task Force and sent students home with learning materials before governors announced school closures. When they transitioned to remote learning, clear expectations were set that teachers must call every student for daily 30-minute deep learning sessions and wellbeing checks; and any child that didn’t login for class received a phone call home that same day. To ensure continued learning, Seton secured internet access for 1/3 of their families, issued devices to students, and created a tech help line. On day one, 85% of students were logged on.

PHOENIX UNION HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT – The umbrella high school district for the city of Phoenix switched 30,000 students and 4,000 staff almost overnight to a virtual school setting by providing instant and comprehensive virtual teaching training for all employees, and deploying devices and hotspots to all students without laptops and connectivity. The district realized that digital integration is one of the most important assets of a school system and made an immediate decision to create a Digital Content and Integration Department. Phoenix Union High School District is now a 1:1 school district to ensure high quality learning for all students.

ACADEMICA – The global network of charter schools built upon their virtual model to pivot 100,000 students to remote live instruction in three-days by distributing thousands of devices and training teachers prior to school closures on March 13. Their platform Colēgia provided secure authentication to ensure video conferencing had proper security protocols in place. By April 2020, attendance was better than pre-COVID; with most schools having 90%+ attendance, and some at 100%.

FRIENDSHIP PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS – in Washington DC deployed all of their teammates to locate and check in with students. Within one week they had made contact with all but 23 of 4,500 students, and ensured they all had devices to mitigate learning interruptions.



ONE YEAR LATER… It’s clear that nothing short of policy change is needed to ensure that never again do we allow so much loss and neglect to occur simply because we are tied to one way of doing things. Where are the lessons? We look to Pennsylvania next week, where while state and district leaders allowed unions to control reopening and remote education was largely a failure for most, many heroic efforts to educate despite the odds stemmed learning loss for thousands.