One Possibility for '21-'22

Talk is slowly turning to next school year with the assumption that come September 2021 we’ll be on the other side of the pandemic. What will it be like? What will districts and states do with all that cash from the federal stimulus and recovery acts? 195 Billion! Which habits and approaches developed during the pandemic will stick? Or, will there be a mad dash back to normal across 14,000 schools educating 55,000,000 children?

On that score, new Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona told The Washington Post, “There may be an opportunity to reimagine what schools will look like...It’s always important we continue to think about how to evolve schooling so the kids get the most out of it.”  Whether “evolve” connotes a true son of Connecticut, “the land of steady habits,” or the Administration is poised to truly “reimagine” school as it is doing to other social welfare policy remains to be seen.

In fairness to the Secretary, the “could bes,” “maybes,” and “time to think abouts” capture the gist of the discussion about next year even beyond Washington. One recent exception was on Diane Tavenner and Michael Horn's podcast, Class Disrupted. They talked through five specific focus areas for school communities in advance of next year.

The most exciting work I’ve seen so far, though, is from Liz Chu and her team at the Columbia University Center for Public Research and Leadership (CPRL). They just released a "RISE to Thrive" vision synthesizing their conversations with nearly 350 families, community organizations, and educators across a diverse range of urban and rural geographies. Check it out on their website.

In a first for PostCommon, I’m copying a format I enjoy in other newsletters: the email interview. Liz is one of the outstanding leaders in the K-12 space who deserves, and I believe will be getting, more attention soon. She’s built CPRL into a highly effective partner to countless organizations across the nation — schools, districts, non-profits, foundations — and the leaders they’ve trained go on to play key roles driving change in education policy and practice. Liz has agreed to answer a series of questions about “RISE To Thrive” and where she’d like to see it go.

Nate Snow: Liz, I enjoyed following along as you created RISE To Thrive. Nice work on shipping a synthesized approach to the field. It’s the first I’ve seen. What was the motivating drive behind the project? Where did it come from?

Liz Chu:  At CPRL, we partner with those closest to the point of impact to understand, design, and implement equity-focused solutions to complex problems.

Since the pandemic began, we’ve worked with students, families, family support organizations, and school systems to hear about and help address pressing challenges and study innovative ways students, families, and educators are meeting the moment.

Over the course of our 300+ conversations, we heard three things about what families, teachers, and leaders want from post-pandemic public education. We based our RISE to Thrive model of an equitably transformed public education system on what families, students, and teachers told us they want, and what district, CMOs, educators, and family innovations have now shown is possible in the US and abroad.

1. What families—particularly those of color and low-income—don’t want is to go back to the broken public education system of old. They have had a previously unheard of level of transparency into what schooling looks like—and has long looked like—for their children; they know their children deserve better; and they are insisting on being part of the solution.
2. Teachers, too, want something different from the public system of old. They’ve discovered new ways of teaching and of partnering with students and families, and they want a new normal that sustains the flexibilities and innovations they’ve had the freedom to pursue during the crisis.
3. Education leaders also sense that the pandemic has revolutionized their operational range of motion and instructional practice, but are still so busy managing the crisis that they haven’t had time to imagine how simultaneously to capitalize on their new capabilities, address families’ demand for change, and come up with more permanent ways to avoid being stymied by the rules and regulations they’ve been able to side step during the pandemic.

We based our RISE to Thrive model of an equitably transformed public education system on what families, students, and teachers told us they want, and what district, CMOs, educators, and family innovations have now shown is possible in the US and abroad.

NS: Right now public school systems are embattled. They’ve lost so many families and are at risk of losing so many more to all sorts of options.  You say it’s essential now for them to Realize Individualized Student-centered Education, or RISE, to enable kids to thrive. What do you envision?

LC: Every family has spent the last year mobilizing the best collection of supports for their kids they can—some online, some in person; some from their own schools, and others from other schools or even from museums, websites, internships for their older kids, you name it. Watching and helping their kids get educated minute-by-minute for a year now, they see what’s possible, what’s lacking in the supports any single teacher or public school can provide, and what they from now on will demand that organized schooling provide. So, it’s time. Time

• for our public schools to organize their educators and staff into teams of experts, one of whom has lead responsibility for partnering with the student and family to design, mobilize support for, help implement, and monitor an individualized plan for each child; and
• for schools and district leaders to create the necessary outside partnerships, provide the training and assessments, review the results, and facilitate the continuous improvements needed for each school team to provide each student with the array of supports she needs to thrive.

For a year now, millions of families did this on their own or through friend or advocacy groups, by searching out other districts, charter or private schools, or other services.  Given the vast know-how, inventiveness, and desire of their teachers and staff, our public districts can do the same for all children. For their own survival—and that is my goal given my deep commitment to public, socially integrated schools—our public systems have no choice but to make the switch. CPRL’s commitment to help them develop the tools and structures to do so is what drives us every day.

NS: There are five core principles outlined in the RISE To Thrive. I’d direct readers to resources or an upcoming webinar for the deeper review of all five. I’m curious, though, which one is your favorite? Also, which one is the biggest departure from how schools and districts approached learning before the pandemic?

LC: For easy access, here they are:

1. Focus on equity to reach equality and justice.
2. Learning is the constant; operations, instruction, and time are the variables.
3. Getting better requires democratic participation and partnership with families, students, and community members.
4. Effective, not best, practices drive student learning.
5. Student opportunity and learning must traverse traditional boundaries.

You won’t be surprised that I think they’re all important. The first is especially so. To Realize Individualized Student-centered Education (to “RISE”) to thrive, systems have to prioritize equity of opportunity. Delivering on that promise will allow us to reach equal and just outcomes.

We’ve also gotten lots of questions asking what #4 means. Here’s what we propose: we’re not after some “one best solution” that works for all children, because there’s no such thing; and even when we identify steps that are effective for particular kids, we know we can always make them MORE effective.

As to departures: they all are, and yet the pandemic has made them all within reach. I’d guess the fifth will present the biggest challenge and opportunity moving forward. Collaborating across boundaries is challenging in any sector, and especially so in public education where we have a long history of resource hoarding and segregation. But consider the sheer number of opportunities available to students’ if their zip code and zoned school no longer limit what’s available to them. It’s a game changer.

NS: When it comes to improving education, there’s always a tension between top-down and bottoms-up solutions. You make it sound like the momentum currently favors the “bottoms-up” approach. Am I inferring accurately? And, if so, what’s possible because of that and where are the limits?

LC: Right now, students, families, and teachers are putting tremendous pressure on school systems. Families exited public schools at alarming rates during the pandemic, and many won’t return – or will leave again if schooling is low-quality, inflexible, and shuts out families and their cultures. Elected officials and system leaders feel this pressure and in some cases are pushing school systems from the top as well.

Moving to a RISE to Thrive model also creates another source of pressure and momentum – lateral, or peer-to-peer, pressure within the teaching profession. In our 125+ teacher and school system leader interviews we found that many teachers want systemic transformation like we describe. Adopting RISE to Thrive practices raises the status of the teaching profession, putting more responsibility on teachers to exercise expertise in service of each child and to collaborate with others as part of a team that is held accountable for shared goals.

NS: Final question for you, Liz. There’s a lot of fatigue in the system right now, understandably so. This vision is both inspiring and massive. What’s your advice for a school, district, or community leader who wants to move from idea to execution? How do they get started and who can help them?

LC: We hope RISE to Thrive kickstarts strategic planning conversations with school system leaders and stakeholders about what might be possible next year. It provides system leaders with a model so they aren’t staring at a blank page, and it gives people permission to think beyond summer school and tutoring to structural reform.

The system leaders we’ve engaged plan to look at RISE to Thrive, look at their local needs and capabilities, and tailor RISE to Thrive to their local context. They plan to build a full RISE to Thrive model over time to ensure (1) that implementation doesn’t outstrip capacity building, (2) that they can pilot and scale up what works, and (3) that they’re building the financial and operational systems needed to sustain the model over the long haul.

NS: Thanks, Liz, to you and your team for building out a vision for educators across the nation to engage with. I’m looking forward to how schools and districts can begin to shape the ideas and plan for the year ahead – to plan for something other than a “return to normal” in public education.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash