Forbes | April 9, 2020
By Jeanne Allen, Founder and CEO of CER

It was a simple statement I made on Twitter after seeing some less-than-nice comments about a parents’ ability to do education at home.

“Every family has the capacity to educate their children.”

It elicited many responses, some in agreement; others, not so sure:

“I think all families want their kids educated, but I have been personally talking to the neediest - homeless and [English Language Learning] and many are incapable by lacking basic literacy and severe emotional health right now. They are at a loss.”

“This is a nice sentiment and many probably can, but social workers don’t want us to forget about the families that they work with. There are also children with special needs that rely on expensive services.”

And this from a well-informed, respected education change advocate:

“After 2 weeks, I’m questioning this; not anyone else’s capacity, but my own. One thing for sure... 95% of Americans will better appreciate and understand our kids’ schooling. Dropping kids off for a full day feels like a luxury right now.”

Then there’s this commentary from a reporter in US News and World Report:  “Teachers who are also parents say that remote instruction is, unsurprisingly, quite challenging”What isn’t challenging to learn?

It got me thinking: as complex as it is to educate, those who question the capacity of parents to educate their own kids, which right now is the only option for most (even if some states disagree) may be overlooking one indisputable fact - that most parents are educating their kids in real time without even considering it education.

Potty training? Check.

Learning to walk & talk? Check.

Dressing, eating? Check.

How about the child’s first day of school? How to talk to others? Manners and living basics?

I know what some of you are thinking: But, Jeanne, this doesn’t happen in all families and children in dysfunctional homes don’t have what you describe.

As in everything, there is truth in that statement. However, it’s not universal.

Celebrated author  J.D. Vance argues in Hillbilly Elegy that while he grew up amidst a sea of family dysfunction, he did have one family unit - a grandparent - whose influence allowed him to develop and learn and to grow up and out of a beleaguered industrial town and dysfunctional community.

'The End of Average', Todd Rose | PENGUIN BOOKS

Todd Rose, a welfare parent turned Harvard psychologist argues in his End of Averageresearch that the very concept of ‘average’ relies on the assumption that there is one composite of a person that fits neatly into certain categories based on certain attributes (e.g., a poor family can’t educate). 

That misconception actually ignores the fact that a person’s capacity to do anything is not understandable without the full context of who they are. There is no average, as Rose argues, so we must put an end to generalizing people’s conditions based on some notion of average. The reality is there is no way to know of a person or family’s capacity to do something extraordinary in an extraordinary time.

More often than not, education is nothing more than influence. No matter what their lot in life, a parent’s ability to influence their kids is extraordinary. They may be able to impart lessons, or simply encourage them, or they may create the conditions for them to learn on their own. The bias in the policy and media dialogue today is that there is something inherently superior in having a traditional teacher, in traditional schools with brick and mortar propping them up, rooms divided by walls and desks and materials, highly prescribed programming and curriculum, and lots of other students there to make the entire experience enjoyable, or perhaps, depending upon the teacher, miserable. It is thought that this trumps having to administer home learning for one or just a few students. But a parent in her home right now need not be operating what we collectively conceive of as ‘school’ to have an impact on the education of their children. 

Many parents across all income levels are justifiably daunted by the present crisis.  They were not prepared or equipped with the knowledge or tools to continue for the entirety of a school ‘day’ all that is typically delivered, and expected, from lessons to assessment. And it’s no wonder. For generations we’ve told parents to butt out of school, leave it to the experts. For years, education has resisted change and innovations that make learning more personalized and less dependent on a 9 month, 180 day, agrarian calendar.

But they want to engage, and always have. A Gallup poll released this week found that 42 percent of parents are concerned that this crisis will have an adverse affect on their students’ learning. With most districts still not putting in place a plan for all students to be learning remotely, it’s up to families to pick up the slack. 

Here’s what we do know: Even if a parent can’t muster time or skills to do more than one or two subjects at most, every parent or caregiver in the nation can give their students agency, and provide the encouragement, space and tools (which are myriad and plentiful for free) to allow their students to drive their own learning during these stress-filled days confined at home.

The best case for this notion of student agency was made by Sugata Mutra, an education researcher and Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, England. 

NEW DELHI, INDIA - FEBRUARY 21: Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at the School of ... [+] HINDUSTAN TIMES VIA GETTY IMAGES

Back in 1999 before technology was so ubiquitous, “some colleagues and I sunk a computer into the opening of a wall near our office in Kalkaji, New Delhi,” he writes. “The area was located in an expansive slum, with desperately poor people struggling to survive. The screen was visible from the street, and the PC was available to anyone who passed by. The computer had online access and a number of programs that could be used, but no instructions were given for its use.”

What Mutra and his colleagues discovered was extraordinary - that given the freedom, students can manage and discover their own learning. 

“Over the next decade we did extensive research in self-directed learning, in many places and through many cultures. Each time, the children were able to develop deep learning by teaching themselves. I decided to call the method of instruction we had developed Minimally Invasive Education (MIE). The rest of the world continues to call it the ‘Hole in the Wall.’”

Summit Public Schools Students Engage in Personalized Learning. | GETTING SMART

Mutra’s findings are actualized in the work of Summit Public Schools, a charter network begun in east Palo Alto and focused on students with the most exceptional of needs. Diane Tavenner, the network’s founder, had her own personal challenges as a child, and she was determined to create a school that would be both sensitive to the traumas students endure and recognize and promote the individual learning needs of every student. While the story of Summit’s personalized learning approach becoming a widely embraced national model is in and of itself a story worthy of attention, it’s what Diane discovered about parents that is most germane here.

Bill Gates, one of Summit’s early supporters recounts: “It was unlike any school I had visited before. Some students worked on their own, moving at their own pace through their courses. Others worked together on projects. Instead of lecturing at the front of a class, teachers acted like coaches, providing one-on-one guidance to students. Everyone was engaged.”

Summit students are self-directed. They develop their own learning plans, assessments and projects. They learn at their own pace and have mentors who help them navigate their academic goals. And the result? “98% of graduates are accepted to at least one 4 year college and students complete college at double the rate of the national average.”

Summit Learning Blog: What Is Summit Learning’s ‘Secret Sauce’? Diane Tavenner Answers

Tavenner is among the successful educational leaders who believe not just in a students’ ability to learn, but in a parents’ predisposition to support that learning. Eva Moskowitz, another charismatic education entrepreneur has been both praised and criticized for expecting much from parents. According to Success ‘biographer’ Robert Pondiscio, her approach triggers “muscular expectations of students AND parents [by] attracting some number of families who are eagerly buying what she's selling. This enables her to create and sustain a culture bringing along for the ride families for whom this becomes their new normal (and some number who ultimately reject it or for whom it's too much).”  Witness the thousands of families competing in lotteries to enroll their students in Success’ schools in some of New York City’s poorest neighborhoods.

Said Pondiscio, “the point is she starts with a critical mass as a pre-condition that allows her to turbocharge achievement.”

Serving students in the least advantaged communities in Washington D.C., Friendship Public Charter Schools’ leadership believes in the capacity of every parent to support their students’ learning. “Phase II of your virtual-learning materials,” they announced through all mediums. “Drive-thru pick up at every FPCS campus is on this Friday & Saturday, April 3-4, 8:30 a.m. - 3 p.m. School administrators will contact families with their pick up time.” Since then, Friendship teachers have been in touch regularly with students and parents are engaging substantially. Friendship expects parents will do what they can to help their students succeed and they rise to the occasion.

Some remain skeptical parents can pull ‘this’ off. “This massive rush to move K-12 education online is a mistake,” says CNN commentator David Perry. “It’s going to intensify pre-existing inequities and it just doesn’t feel necessary. Instead of pretending we can instantly create virtual classrooms for every American child, we should shut the school year down - meaning not even educate - until it's safe enough to return.”

Translation: Kids should do nothing while waiting until school opens again.

That’s nonsense, of course. Shutting schools altogether with no potential for students to learn not only guarantees learning loss, which is profound particularly for children from fragile communities, but it also creates anxiety in children through unpredictability. When students have anxiety, learning is that much harder! 

Khan Academy founder Sal Khan speaking to CER at the 2016 ASU + GSV Summit. | CENTER FOR EDUCATION REFORM

With a more hopeful outlook, Khan Academy founder Sal Khan argued recently that“coming out of this crisis might help equity in the long run - personalization, access to rigorous materials, equipment” and basic learning challenges we have across the education spectrum may finally be addressed as we go through this.

Every family has the capacity to help students learn and if we take the advice of the good doctor from India (among others) to heart, we’ll see that students can not only learn in this new environment but gain enormously valuable skills to guide their own education during this crisis and long after it is over.

Forbes | April 2, 2020
By Jeanne Allen

While the impact of the pandemic on education doesn’t have an official start date in the United States, by March 11th, many of Washington state’s schools, including in Seattle, were closed for business. Meanwhile in neighboring Northshore, Washington, whose schools had closed a week earlier out of precaution, 23,000 homebound students were notified they would be continuing their education remotely.

The initiative was short-lived. Northshore was told to halt its remote program a mere week later by the state, and instructed to make any work done by students supplemental, arguing that if they couldn't reach or guarantee learning for everyone, they shouldn’t expect it of anyone.

In that one week test drive, “attendance” in school increased dramatically. Northshore Superintendent Michelle Reid reports that on a normal week in school, more than 7,000 are absent. When she opened up online learning, fewer than 500 students were “absent.”

Despite positive signs that both students and parents want to continue their education in whatever way it can be delivered, in just 3 short weeks, the country has witnessed states and districts actively banning “school” even where online platforms are readily accessible for use, and where educators are vocally up for the task.  

Oregon closed school for all students - even those already enrolled in virtual schools, with their Department of Education categorizing any form of remote learning as just supplemental and not counted for grading - though pressure from the public has caused officials there to reconsider.

Michigan says online instruction will not count toward traditional “seat time” requirements, meaning if students don’t finish the year as, say, a fourth grader, not only will their status be up in the air, but more importantly they will lack the continuity in learning needed to progress. 

Oregon and Michigan join the rousing chorus of district officials who argue that equity is at stake, that children with special needs or limited English proficiency are not capable of learning on their own (another subject I will cover in the future) - and that some parents cannot be expected to expect their children to learn, and moreover, to guide their progress in doing so.

Meanwhile on the East Coast, New Jersey’s State Board of Education voted unanimously on April 1 “to approve emergency changes in the state administrative code to allow students with disabilities to receive their special education services remotely while schools are closed due to the coronavirus pandemic….” 

Said Education Commissioner Lamont Repollet, “without this increased flexibility,students with disabilities will not receive the special education and related services they are entitled to as determined by each student's individual educational plan.” 

“I’m not going to make you repeat the year if you do all your school work. This is school,” said Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo. “This isn’t vacation. This is real school. Work as hard and as serious as you would in real school.” 

These promising signs by state officers in key roles reinforce that students should be “entitled” to learning no matter what the circumstance, should be the rule, not the exception.

In all of this discussion and delay, however, there are some voices that are making these difficult decisions more about their own existence than the welfare of children.  

The leader of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators said he was worried that online learning would draw students away from traditional schools when this is all over.

“You have got to give the school districts time to make some decisions, make plans, and put alternative learning delivery systems together,” said DiRocco, arguing it is not fair to “allow the charter schools to say, ‘Well we are open for business now.’” “How can we prevent mass numbers of students from enrolling in cyber schools," a union leader in the Keystone state went so far as to ask his members.

These actions and attitudes are but a microcosm of what is the norm among traditionalists in education.

Outside times of crisis, nearly every facet of society has continued to evolve through ambitious innovation and technological advancements, but education has always dragged its feet. 

Could it be that this crisis will trigger a critical demand of the typically sleepy U.S. education system; a demand that pushes for more advances, and for a wholly different kind of delivery method?

WPA Ad (Source: WPA)

The big issue for many is, however, what to do about the limited access to technology and internet that is an issue in pockets of every state. Or the needs of children in special education who some fear will be left behind because teachers and specially-trained professionals are not physically present to ensure the success of their individualized education plans. This equity gap is at the core of the well-intentioned but flawed decisions that some states have made to limit education or to tell teachers to assure parents that work going home should not count, which anyone who has children knows will result in very little being done. 

Just consider the dramatic change in students “attending school” in that Washington state district. That more went online than went to school regularly underscores the reality of today’s students, who are digital natives. They have grown up with a menu of technology, and are handed phones and ipads almost at the same time as their first sippy cups. Many students already have access to the devices they would need to continue their learning online straight away. Others would only need access.

Take Miami, where the school district figured out a way to get 56,000 devices to families in under one week. 

Or New York City’s Success Academy, the largest and most successful charter school network in the Big Apple, whose majority low-income student population had a remote learning program and computers in hand in just four days, ready for students and teachers to get to work at their new ‘schools’ - their homes, where the only expectation was that learning would continue.  

In Bridgeport, Connectiuct, school leaders regularly converse with their parents and teachers, inspiring them with the expectation that they continue to work, to study, and to learn - as learning during this time will count, and their time spent won’t be wasted.

In Chicago, the Learn Charter Network noted, “[We] have been in constant communication, by phone and email, with each of their families to answer questions and help with any challenge a child or family may be facing.” 

That’s the attitude we all need right now as we are increasingly confined to our homes and endure weeks more of this virus and daily devastating news. And as cases spike in major cities like Chicago, the network’s early responsiveness to connectivity between teachers and families will prove to be a game-changer, should the virus continue to keep students at home, learning.

Experts like Robin Lake of the Center for Reinventing Education at the University of Washington agree that while we must address these unprecedented challenges, you don’t stop, because not all can’t benefit. “Doing nothing guarantees certain inequities and hardships. Students with disabilities, for example, receive no services and no social interaction,” said Lake. “Doing something produces unknown inequities that can be addressed with enough will, creativity and innovation.”

The reality is undeniable - we can do something. And many will choose to. 

The private sector, and particularly ed tech companies, are delivering to Americans’ doorsteps a plethora of products, tools and services, many free, that make learning remotely not only possible, but trackable, leaving no room for categorization of remote learning as solely supplemental. 

There is no rulebook for how to take care of the education of our most precious resource, our children, during COVID-19. And if there is no rule book, the old rules must  be abandoned. 

Innovation requires risk. It’s time to throw caution to the wind, and provide the tools necessary to allow parents and educators to take control - everywhere. Hopefully, if they can do that until their eventual return to school, our kids will be prepared for what the future holds.

We can do this. After all, we’re Americans.

Jeanne Allen is Founder and CEO of CER, the Center for Education Reform.