Choosing The New Normal for Education in the United States

Originally published May 12, 2020.

“It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.”- Joan Didion

“Fate will not create the new normal; choices will.”- Don Berwick, MD, MPP, May 4, 2020

“This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be.” - Charles Duhigg

Each summer familiar milestones mark the transition back to school. The seasonal displays of pencils, crayons, backpacks, and notebooks. The new pair of shoes and the fresh haircut. It all comes so fast. Then, the obligatory first day of school photo on the way out the door, and we are back. Same friends (for the most part), same smells (unavoidable), and while there is a new teacher, the classroom routines remain mostly the same. Year-after-year, household by household, neighborhood by neighborhood, powerful rituals come to life. The transition into the academic year governs family routines, economic spending habits, and cultural rhythms.

Similar rituals move spring toward summer. Who’s going with whom to prom? The orchestral and theatrical performances, end-of-year awards, and AP testing. Senior skip day, a showing of All Quiet on the Western Front in Social Studies class, cram for finals, and suddenly, graduation. Year-in and year-out, uninterrupted for nearly four generations, millions of students and families have danced this dance, expecting to dance it all over again alongside their own kids and grandkids.

This year, though, COVID-19 canceled the end-of-year school rituals. Likewise, the pandemic will consume the back-to-school rituals and with them the very act of going back to school for millions of students.

Leaders in public education across the nation are responding to the current context. 47 states have announced that schools will not reopen before the end of the current academic year, and there has never been as much pressure on school and district leaders as there is now. Financial, employee health and well-being, student care and learning, curriculum, parent communications, nutrition, regulatory relief, technology. No solace on any front.

These same leaders are also planning for the year ahead in an environment growing more and more ominous. Billion dollar (and increasing) budget shortfalls. Non-specific forecasts from public health officials constituting an opaque go- or no-go decision-making process for back-to-school this August/September. Out-of-date yet still-in-effect regulatory constraints. Crescendoing cries from businesses to open the schools both to signal a return to normal and to reclaim the undivided productivity of their workforce.

School is a societal habit. A habit indifferent to the outcomes it produces. A habit indifferent to countless attempts to change it. A habit so fixed, the nation lost track of all it had delegated to the subconscious. A habit so ingrained, that even those who are publishing scenario plans, blueprints, and roadmaps for reopening this fall, accept its traditional cues, its routines, and its rewards. Yet, not enough attention has been given to what replaces the habit of school — what will come after our extended, forced withdrawal? Every distance learning day since March 12 only adds to the inertia and increases the likelihood that the United States will need a new habit, and need one fast.

Alice Cooper wasn’t wrong; just 48 years early: “Schools out for the summer. Schools out forever.”

This essay is organized as follows:

1. The purpose of school
2. Summarize and assess various scenarios plans for the return to school this August
3. The return to school is unlikely
4. Creating the new school habit

THE PURPOSE OF SCHOOL

Closures this spring clarified the several purposes we assign to schools. These are purposes grounded in both philosophy and in day-to-day.

• Knowledge : Academic instruction in the methods of seeking truth, establishing fact, and separating both from opinion.
• Social Development and Accountability: The check, balance, and support role that local communities play in family life. School provides seven hours a day of custodial care. The safety net (across all income classes) and the legal interventions in response to familial breakdowns often start inside the school building. Also, children are socialized to local and national norms. (A separate essay but notable, here: this purpose sits in tension with the Rousseauian vision of personal development absent society’s cruel interference. A vision many educators hold as an additional purpose of school).
• Economic Productivity: Schools provide childcare in part so parents can work. Businesses need committed, focused, and productive employees. The economy needs productive businesses. The role of schools in creating a labor supply is a key feature of an economy that runs on working parents.

While not impossible, it is difficult to consider an activity that takes place under the umbrella of school that doesn’t neatly fit into one, or several, of these purposes. The cross country team: social development, personal development, and by way of extended after school practices, an additional few hours of childcare. Mandated reporter laws for school employees are a powerful safeguard against child abuse (the increase in child abuse is a grievous consequences of the pandemic). The school lunch is one less thing for the working parent to worry about even as it provides nearly 30 million children with a free lunch everyday at a cost of $13.8 billion a year (2018). Schools are a big deal even before weaving in the stories of beautiful moments and traumatic events that shape us as people and as a people.

For all the talk of the need to “blow it up” or “dismantle it” in order to produce different (and hopefully better) outcomes, and the billions upon billions of philanthropic capital poured into those efforts (or, rhetorically softer efforts like “reimagine” or “transform”), the prevailing form and function of the public education order has demonstrated significant resilience. Across more than 100,000 schools it has never been just about academic achievement. Attempts to place achievement first inevitably threaten the equilibrium and are slowly reintegrated into the mainstream. By naming the multiple purposes embedded in school, it is easier to understand why efforts to change it have been hard and fleeting.

CURRENT SCENARIO PLANNING

Emily Freitag, the CEO of Instruction Partners, has laid out what she believes are four likely scenarios for public education this fall.

The main constituents for Emily’s work are school district superintendents, so her chart can be interpreted as a guide for specific school district planning. For geographic areas large enough, it’s possible that different zones are separately entering and exiting different scenarios at the same time. The Governor and the State Superintendent’s task will, for the most part, be even more complicated than the local district official’s. For the foreseeable future, schools to some degree will continue to be responding to and managing the spread of the virus.

Organizations representing members nationwide are incorporating just this sort of geographic variation in their reopening recommendations. Here’s the American Federation of Teachers, AFT:

There won’t be a one-size-fits-all process, or a hard open where every school in every district immediately turns the lights on; we may be opening and closing for a number of months while we secure these measures and develop ways to keep everyone safe. In addition to the immediate public health tools and interventions, we must plan for a curriculum-based academic year, and for the panoply of appropriate educational and social-emotional supports our students need. We must be prepared for the trauma, the transition and the many instructional issues — including the effects of learning loss and the digital divide.

Revisiting the community school model is a way to do all of the above. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, community schools created a community hub where students and families could get access to health services, where marginalized communities received support, and where necessary services were available in one place. This model is needed even more now, given the effects of the pandemic — from the inequalities that have been exacerbated, to the need for care before and after school so that essential workers can 8 continue to work and other parents can return to work.

The AFT is unequivocal in its position that school must return: “This experience has made clear that there is no substitute for a safe and welcoming neighborhood school.” It will just need new capabilities in public health interventions (including test, trace, and isolate protocols), additional social supports for students in response to “ongoing trauma and mental health issues,” and renewed focus on highly quality instruction liberated from the many of the modern standardization and accountability measures.

A looming school funding crisis will complicate these recommended interventions. Michael Griffith, Senior Researcher and Policy Analyst at Learning Policy Institute projects a total budget impact across FY20 and FY21 of $229,632,786,355 (assuming a 5% reduction in state funding in FY20 and a 20% reduction in FY21). The Federal Department of Education appropriated $45,000,000,000 on PreK-12 for FY20, and an additional $30,750,000,000 through the Educational Stabilization Fund of the CARES Act.

Based on workforce attrition during the Great Recession, Griffith goes on to “project a loss of more than 450,000 school positions, or 12.2% of the nation’s education workforce — a far larger number than was lost in the last recession.” Griffith directs his final call-to-action at the federal government: “For schools to weather these challenging times without dramatically affecting our students’ education and, as a result, our nation’s economic welfare, states and districts will need assistance from the federal government. Absent that help, it’s not clear that schools will be able to do the job they want — and we need them — to do."

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) joins the AFT in assuring readers “there is no one-size-fits-all approach to [the work of reopening schools]” in their recent “A Blueprint for Back to School.” AEI implores “schools to be ready to reopen as soon as public health officials signal it is safe” and that school “plans should take into account both the 2020–21 and 2021–22 school years.” After affirming state sovereignty over the decision to open and close schools, the report mostly takes the stance of reminding schools of all they are responsible for: “meeting the needs of all students,” “obliged to find ways to serve all students even during times of disruption,” “need to differentiate strategies based on school levels and student needs,” “need to review the apps and digital services used for remote learning to ensure they are consistent with privacy protections required under state and federal laws.” It concludes by noting that prior to the global pandemic schools were not consistently fulfilling these responsibilities. Indeed, “most importantly, the planning for reopening schools creates opportunity to renew a shared commitment to improving outcomes for all students.” We should not try to return to “normal, but rather strive for something better.”

If the AFT recommendations clash against a stark fiscal reality, it’s in AEI’s suggested blueprint that we find the almost-but-not-yet unbundling of the distinct purposes found in the school: “Adapting to the challenges of COVID-19 gives America’s schools the opportunity to provide what is uniquely possible in the schoolhouse while seeking new ways to fully use technology and community partnerships.” What are the things that are “uniquely possible in the schoolhouse” and therefore can’t be replaced outside of the school building even if there is success in the new uses of technology and community partnerships? The report does not offer an answer.

Transcend Education has offered a point of view on the “Three Jobs that Matter for School Communities” and The Opportunity Labs Initiative pulled together a “Return To School Roadmap.” Each paper is backed by smart, caring teams of policymakers, system leaders, advocates, and parents. And yet, across each reopening plan, there are echoes of Henry Ford’s quip, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Essentially, the reports restate what we already expect of schools (childcare and socialization) and that now is the time to make the academics even better. Also, don’t forget the newly-assigned purpose of ensuring and monitoring public health.

The clock is ticking toward the first day of the 2020–21 school year. At some point scenario planning must give way to decision making. Each school reopening plan directly or implicitly defers to the public health officials, their models, and their authority on timelines. It is possible both to grant that with each passing day the pandemic modeling grows stronger, and to recognize that the forecasts of eight weeks ago have not exactly been reliable. Eight weeks from now, we’ll be on the other side of the July 4th holiday, resigned to a not-summer summer and barreling toward the back-to-school cues.

Rather than allocate their time planning evenly across the assumed scenarios, families and educators can benefit from assessing the likelihood of each, and allocating expectations, energy, finances, and personal agency appropriately. Go back to Emily Freitag’s local scenario model. She offered 4 with an unstated 1 for a total of 5. Here’s my forecast. What’s yours?

Unsatisfied with this approach? Here’s an alternative question: how many of the 180 days of the upcoming school year will students spend inside a school building? What is the minimum threshold requirement of in-person days later to justify the allocation of scarce planning capital now? 50? 80? 101? 130? Keep in mind that across most New England districts (with a later first day of school than most other states), school closed in March around the 125 day of the academic year.

THE RETURN TO SCHOOL IS UNLIKELY

Families, educators, and policymakers must invest the majority of their time now preparing for a year when children will not spend time in-person in school buildings. Each of the above scenarios will force radical change in the school system. Only one of them is clear-eyed about the coming budget crisis as well as likely to endure with long-term benefits for students, states, and the nation overall.

Scenario 1 assumes at least a 28 day downward trajectory of documented cases locally. Depending on the first day of school in your district, you’re looking for steady declines beginning the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th week of July. Also, there will be some parents who simply refuse to send their children back to school. Because of their child’s comorbidities or those of another member of the household. Because of the direct pressure to continue with distance learning from their children, who have been thriving this spring or at least relieved to have avoided the social stress of it all. Or, simply, because they are afraid. Furthermore, adults will need to approve of and comply with the health measures school officials put in place. As much as schools and school districts will be petitioning for regulatory flexibility, expect families to be seeking similar accommodations. Scenario 1 is bolstered by the subsection of parents and children who choose to continue with distance learning. They will contribute to less student density inside school buildings in a way that allows for greater adherence to social distancing guidelines.

• Why this scenario is unlikely: first, it is unlikely to meet the criteria of a 28 day downward trajectory of documented cases by the first day of school. The operational challenge of providing two versions of school each day and doing so well exceeds school capabilities. Negotiating a compromise between politicians and labor groups regarding working conditions in schools will require strong partnership. Partnership that’s been sorely lacking in recent years. Finally, many of the pandemic models are forecasting that as social distancing requirements are eased over the summer and the temperature starts to drop in the fall, there will be another surge of cases. Another surge will lead to school closings. Once closed, the 28 day downward trajectory countdown clock begins again, effectively forcing 100% distance learning for nearly 50 school days (3–4 weeks to climb up the case resurgence curve; 4–5 weeks to climb down).

Scenarios 2 and 3 suffer from each of the weaknesses of Scenario 1 plus significantly more complicated operational and budget implications. The transaction costs of which kids come to school on which day will similarly soar. Same with the costs in the staffing model: which physics teacher is teaching in-person on Tuesday and which is teaching online, and what about schools where there is only one physics teacher?

This leaves Scenario 4 as the current front-runner, growing stronger everyday: 100% remote learning 100% of the coming school year.

Still, the old saying applies, “never mistake a clear view for a short distance.” This scenario will call for painful adjustments to what our society and economy expect related to education, childcare, the role of institutions in regulating the relationships of free citizens to their government as well as the roles of philanthropy, the tax code, and public and for-profit entrepreneurs.

CREATING THE NEW SCHOOL HABIT

There are key features of the old paradigm that we need to account for in the new one: building academic knowledge and skill, socialization and well-being, and childcare enabling parents to work, repair the economy, and pay taxes.

A) Academics: Learning has always been distant. Something I want to know or am told I need to know exists somewhere else. Maybe it’s in a book, maybe it’s in the teacher’s head, maybe it’s on the internet. Also, I could already know it, but I need to travel a great distance to discover it. In the early days of MOOCs, distance learning assumed self-paced, individual progress through a series of asynchronous lectures, modules, and tasks. An 1980s era correspondence course just on the computer and without trips to the post office to mail completed assignments.

It’s now looking less and less like this. With very little lead time, many educators have created vibrant, immersive learning communities online. And, others (ex, 1, 2, 3, 4) have found their educator hat and worn it with pride (still more are building models for adult learning that could be similarly deployed for the 12–17 year-olds). For students of all ages, we’ve known since Benjamin Bloom’s breakthroughs in the 1980s that individual tutoring produces outsized learning gains. But, it’s expensive. Today, technology is bringing down the costs and soaring unemployment for recent college graduates offers an opportunity to make Bloom’s insights accessible to millions of children.

B) Social Development and Well-being: Thanks to the choices of some school leaders since March, many teachers and principals are in more frequent communication and interaction with families today than they were before the pandemic. Even more, again based on choices schools have made, some teachers are finding they have more one-on-one time with students for well-being check-ins, reading interventions, progress monitoring, and technology problem-solving.

The National School Lunch Program has already approved millions of dollars of waivers for States to replace the meals students are missing while not in school. More can be done to replace the food distribution role schools have played since President Truman signed the law creating the program in 1946 while continuing to ensure students have access to ample, healthy food.

In normal conditions, schools do not receive good grades for their socializing effects. While true across all socio-economic classes, this is particularly true for students growing up in poverty. A 2016 report commissioned by Dalio Philanthropies found that nearly 22% of Connecticut high school students were disengaged and disconnected from school, meaning nearly 40,000 high school students were missing 25 days of school a year, failing at least two courses, or simply no longer attending at all. Lately, parents, educators, and policy makers have been bemoaning the rise in bullying and stress. The fighting over the U.S. History curriculum warped the textbook industry, such that the version taught in school is as red or blue as the state it’s taught in. Add in entrenched income and racial segregation and schools mostly inhibit social mobility rather than propel it.

The bar for new approaches in this domain is not particularly high so long as the most important are accounted for. Food, a generally safe place to find shelter for a meaningful number of hours a day and days a year, and numerous encounters with adults who are paid to care. In a pandemic and a country approaching 20% unemployment, we’ll need to start with survival for those who are experiencing the hunger, displacement, trauma, and crisis most acutely. Even if a state’s own capacity to deliver these services and supports directly is hampered, it maintains the power of its discretionary budget to support those institutions and social entrepreneurs who can meet these needs and more.

C) Childcare for Workers: Families are complex, adaptive systems. Right now, they are living in a state of limbo, besieged with unanswerable questions. Will I keep my job? I just lost my job, now what? My mother-in-law’s assisted living facility just confirmed a positive case, what do we do? How many more times can my toddler interrupt my Zoom call with my boss before it’s no longer cute? If I’m working remotely and my kid’s teacher is logging on from the childhood home in Katy, TX, how much longer do we stay in New York City?

Making a clear decision now gives parents, childcare providers, employers, and policymakers time to make arrangements for late August and beyond. Summer has always been a whirlwind for working families coordinating pick-ups and drop-offs at rotating summer day camps, weeks with the grandparents, family vacations, and the like. Yet, there has not been a public outcry demanding a full 12-month school calendar. In fact, the public sentiment and employer response has moved in the other direction. Calls for universal daycare, more early childhood education, extended sick and family leave have not prevailed in legislatures. Increasingly, however, employers are offering similar benefits to attract and retain their workers, such as: extended primary and secondary caregiver leaves, unlimited paid time off, flexible working hours, work from home policies, etc. Perhaps a phenomenon of the modern knowledge economy, the broader labor market will need to begin to account for these costs in their personnel budgets, especially if there is a sustained reduction in immigration due to the pandemic.

If in addition to childcare, we orient more broadly to family care, there are a similar set of challenges present in caring for our older, aged family members. The pandemic has savaged nursing homes and assisted living centers, exploiting a weakness in our decisions to warehouse our senior citizens and to maintain strict generational demarcations in family living. We’ll need a new equilibrium as we consider how both our childcare and our elder care policies can care for each person and honor their dignity.

School has been a convenient way to transfer the high costs of childcare away from the employer and employee relationship toward neighbors in near and far places, regardless of the neighbor’s own childcare needs. (For the intrepid policy researcher, there is an interesting, marginal bargain to explore: trading out employer-sponsored healthcare and replacing it with employer-sponsored dependent care.)

None of the above is impossible. Hard, yes. But, we’re already moving over hard terrain, and no matter what decisions we make now with respect to schooling, it will get harder before it gets easier. That is the nature of global pandemics at the six month mark.

IN CONCLUSION

From Phaedrus to Pink Floyd, the tools and purposes of education have been explored, debated, and fought over. The habit of sending hundreds (often thousands) of children to the same geographic location everyday is relatively new in human history. The associated standardization and centralized control over curriculum and student experience produced incredible gains throughout the first half of the 20th Century. Yet, we’ve been riding the plateau of that growth curve now for several generations of students. It hasn’t been clear what comes after this model despite many “future of education” conference themes. Society’s loss aversion has precluded bold experimentation at the systems level, and families’ recognition of education as a prime status signal has kept localized experimentation isolated and often ridiculed. This dynamic has presented clear political incentives that have made public education either one of the few strong bipartisan areas of consensus comprise or relegated it to the bottom of the national agenda in deference to local control.

Donella Meadows described 12 places to intervene in a system to produce a change. Number 1 on her list is the power to transcend paradigms. Paradigm transcending moments are etched in the collective memory: Roger Bannister’s sub-4 minute mile, Sputnik, the U.S. Navy’s recent release of UFO videos. The COVID-19 pandemic crashed through paradigms across many systems. For the system of school, it could not have been more seismic. In the span of days, 50,000,000 students nation-wide experienced something radically new and different. It’s not perfect. Neither was school before it.

The current world record in the 1 mile race is 3:43.13. Unlike in footraces, we can leap in learning. School is not returning this fall. It is hard to see the end of the pandemic. The earlier we accept this, the easier it will be to see the choices we have for a new beginning.

Photo by kyo azuma on Unsplash