COMMENTARY

What we need: A Marshall Plan for public education’s COVID-19 response

Amber Arellano
Elementary school classroom

Michigan leaders, parents and educators are doing their best to respond to the COVID-19 crisis that has taken hold of the global economy and every aspect of American life. Lives are at risk, as well as millions of jobs and livelihoods. Children’s education also has been severely disrupted. 

While it will take months or years to recover from the economic disruption, the student learning recovery also will take months and possibly years. Just as summer leaves a learning loss for students, the current pandemic will leave a corona learning loss that will require an educational recovery that is just as important as immediate health concerns. For millions of students, future academic outcomes are at stake, as well as life outcomes such as lifetime job earnings. 

Amber Arellano, executive director of The Education Trust-Midwest

Indeed, already the COVID-19 pandemic is magnifying the profound differences between what affluent, high-capacity and well-organized districts can offer their students compared to chronically under-resourced, low-capacity districts. Many high-poverty and even middle-class school districts are struggling to deliver consistent and rigorous online instruction to students, if at all. Poorer districts often lack the internal infrastructure and staff capacity to respond to their students’ needs even in the best of times, much less during a global pandemic. 

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So what can state policymakers, the Michigan Department of Education, district and school leaders, educators and parents do?  While it will be easy for all of us — myself included, as a mom working and homeschooling my seven-year-old daughter during this crisis — to focus on what’s happening this very moment, we all must look ahead and plan for the educational recovery that requires a response equal to, and perhaps greater than, than what our governments are doing now. 

We need to prepare for a redesign of public education for the next school year and summer, and perhaps two school years thereafter. And we must invest and plan now. To mitigate negative effects, it’s critical that schools do everything in their power to ensure that closures do not exacerbate educational inequities and the loss of access to learning for thousands of children. 

While we don’t know when life will return to normal, we know Michigan students will be academically behind; it’s just a question of how much. Even before the current crisis, 54.9% of Michigan third graders were not reading at grade level, and 64.3% of seventh graders were below grade level in math. On the national assessment, Michigan ranks 36th in improvement for fourth-grade reading among all students from 2003 to 2019. We know COVID-19 will exacerbate our state’s educational inequities and overall learning challenge. 

So what can we do now? First, it’s clear all levels of leadership and government need to invest.

A Marshall Plan for education’s COVID-19 response is needed, with significant investment at local, state and federal levels. Already federal policymakers are discussing a K-12 federal stimulus to invest in schools during this period.

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Michigan policymakers also need to do their part by quickly finding new dollars to invest, particularly in school funding that weights students’ and communities’ needs as the nation’s leading education state, Massachusetts, does. Without doing so, the impact of immediate state and federal investments will fade away in a few years — and rural, working-class and urban school districts will yet again will find themselves chronically under-resourced — and students will pay those costs with their futures and earnings.  

Second, state leaders can play an essential role in providing high-quality, consistent virtual instruction aligned with college- and career-ready standards to Michigan students whose districts are not consistently providing such online instruction now. To ensure students and their families have food on their tables through this spring, Michigan’s policymakers can act now to expand food security to the thousands of Michigan students who rely on their schools for breakfast and lunch each day.  The near and farther futures of students should not be sacrificed for their immediate needs — and vice versa.

Third, we can plan now to invest in bolstering and accelerating teaching and learning, including with dramatically expanding effective instructional time to all students. We suggest optional summer school be offered by all districts for all students for at least two to three summers, as it will take multiple summers to both catch up and accelerate learning.

Extended-day learning options aligned with Michigan’s college- and career-ready standards — which will be essential to provide students with both the academics and social services they need — also should be integrated into the school day, and not only via traditional after-school programs. Planning for such efforts needs to begin now.  

Summer school for students can be an opportunity for educators, too. If we ask more of educators who step up to take on summer and extended day teaching, we should invest more in them. Teachers who take on more leadership and other responsibilities should be paid accordingly. Indeed, in leading education states such as Tennessee, summer reading institutes that embed standards-aligned professional development led by the state’s most effective educators have been a cornerstone for improvement.

Once schools are reopened, students need to be evaluated to determine their level of learning loss, with plans developed to address any needs. This is not only true for students who are behind but also for students who need and are ready for acceleration. Many school districts have reported they had to cut their gifted and accelerated programs during Michigan’s Great Recession; many still do not have the capacity to resume this important opportunity for students. Michigan’s summative assessments should be resumed next school year, too. It is critical for parents to know how their children are performing compared to their peers across the state and when possible, across the country. Comparative data is essential for policymakers to target future interventions and investment, too. 

Fourth, high school students will need a particular focus on college readiness, perhaps delivered through extended day and college remedial coursework that’s ideally paid for by federal stimulus dollars.

Finally, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, state Superintendent Michael Rice and legislative leaders can model and support students, educators and district leaders by encouraging them to set a tone of inclusivity, compassion and support for one another. That includes addressing head-on the growing racism and damaging xenophobic bullying reports that have been growing across the country, including in local classrooms. MDE can support educators by providing tools and encouraging districts to utilize classroom resources developed by respected organizations such as Teaching Tolerance. 

Leadership matters, particularly in times of great crisis. As our elected officials continue their efforts to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, let’s ensure that what is best for children — especially Michigan’s vulnerable students — remains high on their agenda.

Amber Arellano is the executive director of the Education Trust-Midwest, which is affiliated with the national think-tank, the Education Trust.