COVID-19 K-12 Edu Impact: Policy, Equity, and Implications for a Generation of Students

001good afternoon my name is Michael Morris I'm the superintendent schools here in a mesh Massachusetts and thank you for joining us for our stream I want to talk a little bit about the origin of the stream is about a month ago I was talking to one of our panelists and we were talking a bit about this situation about school closures about koban 19 and about the vast and unevenly distributed implications that would have on students and what could be done to mitigate them and we stopped and we realized that given the current situation given K to 12 education and higher education x' current state of reactiveness based on the public health crisis that there wasn't enough conversations weren't enough conversations happening between researchers and practitioners and that we had an educational crisis as well as

002a public health crisis so we thought maybe having another researcher on and having a more public dialogue would be helpful and we hope you agree as you you're on today start with a quote from the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami and once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through or how you managed to survive but one thing is certain when you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in that's what the storm is all about and for me and for us the impacts of the storm of copán 19 in the short and medium term will undoubtedly have a long-term implications on the education in the future of our students and returning to normal is not something that I feel like is is going to happen

003anytime soon it's not a paradigm I think it's appropriate for many years even once the public health crisis is thwarted so the goal of today's event is to promote dialogue to push forward conversations about what k-12 education will look like during and after the storm Town Manager in my town in Amherst recently used this Winston Churchill quote to describe where we are with Kovac now is not the end it's not even the beginning of the end but it is perhaps the end of the beginning I think that's accurate for where we are and I think it's the perfect time to have the conversation and start having more conversations between researchers and practitioners no one has all the answers right now you're going to get all the answers from from the panel from us today and

004there's no playbook for this scenario but we're looking to engender the type of dialogue and creative thinking and development of ideas they'll be so essential for our nation students in the future as such the live chat feature is enabled and we hope that all of you watching will you use it we'll be breaking the session into sections and we want this to be as interactive as possible so please utilize that feature throughout today's session I'm quite fortunate to have two researchers with me who to contribute to the dialogue we've had numerous couple well numerous conversations over the last couple weeks and really informed my thinking and I think really helpful to inform many practitioners thinking about next steps as we as we enter uncharted waters so the first is Katie McDermott katie is the a

005professor in the College of Education and the school of public policy at UMass Amherst she is also the chair of the department of educational policy research and administration and our other panelist is Michael Bowman Heim he is the Donald C a Potter knee seventy-four chair in the Department of Economics at Cornell University so thank you so much for our ongoing dialogue with both of you and thank you so much for coming on the show today and just want to give the opportunity for Katie and Mike to share anything that they think they'd like to share before we get rolling with some of the dialogue well hi everybody and thank you for at least in Western Massachusetts being indoors on a beautiful day listening to this I'm a political scientist by training I do research on

006the connections between education policy and educational inequality and equality and I'm in the last three weeks of my career of having kids in K through 12 school so it's it's it's been an interesting month at my house great hi everyone thanks for tuning in so it is similarly very nice here in upstate New York so thank you for tuning in and being indoors I am an economist by training as Mike said I am in the economics department at Cornell as well as in the school of industrial labor relations and in the department of policy analysis and management I do work generally in in k12 and higher education policy issues in you know the economics of Education with a particular focus on on both the role of resources in in driving student decisions about how much

007to invest in an education as well as the effect of different educational decisions students make on future outcomes like labor market outcomes and end earnings great thank you both again for being here and we wanted to start with a set of four questions and you know as in much dialogue between practitioners and researchers you know they're related they're not the same but they're all related questions and again I want to encourage folks that use the chat feature as we go but the first question we're simply was what are some of the long-term costs of schooling missed during the pandemic one of the the unique parts of this particular situation is that schools closed for months on end across our country when we think of other natural disasters for instance it's more localized than across the

008country and this is unique for our country anyway in recent years and I think so much energy has gone rightfully so into how do we salvage as much as we can this spring and certainly as a practitioner I think tremenda I know I've seen tremendous amount of energy of teachers staff members administrators go to that and I think we're at the time to pause and talk about those long-term costs of the miss schooling and think about what other models might we use to compare of this unique situation to so I want to open it up for for our research panel to jump into that dialogue okay well if you want to start you can or I can I have just in front of me some bits of information from a recent survey that the newspaper

009Education Week did within the past month and it's interesting that the teachers they surveyed say that their workdays only gotten about an hour shorter even though they say that their kids are getting about 3 hours of learning time every day so what that suggests to me is that teachers are doing you know at least an hour offline for every hour that they're doing actually presenting material to students but as far as thinking about the long term costs of in terms of educational attainment of the pandemic the teachers say that they're spending less time presenting new concepts that they're doing a lot of review and that's particularly true of teachers who are working in high poverty schools and they also report that many of their students are disengaged and there was a higher proportion of students

010disengaged the second time that Education Week did the survey then the first time that Education Week did the survey and about a quarter of students are sort of online truant in the sense that their teachers aren't seeing or hearing from them so that that makes me think of something that researchers know a lot about which is the referred to a Summer Slide the ground that kids lose academically over summer vacation and you know Summer Slide would really kind of be the best-case scenario right if kids came back to school in the fall and they're only as far behind as they would have been just from summer vacation so it could be really quite bad yeah I like to think about this from in some sense like the long-term perspective of you know what are we

011what are the costs gonna look like 30 years from now 40 years from now if we do nothing right and one of the dominant trends in society particularly the US economy over the past thirty years or so is a shift towards more of a skill based economy a lot of us probably heard a lot about that right we're increasingly to you know get a high paying job you know be in a middle class or above you know requires more education right because that's a core way we get these skills that are valued in the labor market and in particularly labor market that is more skill based and so you know the cost to society of this pandemic if we do nothing to address the lost education could be enormous right so kind of the back

012of the envelope number that economists often use to think about you know the return the economic return to year of education is about 10 percent right so you know on average an extra year of education increases your future wages by about 10 percent and we think that reflects you know productivity right you're earning more because you're more productive worker and so if you think about it you know students are losing up to maybe a half a year of education or more by the time this is all over uh you when you multiply that through every single student in the United States through their entire working life it's an enormous amount of money and it's enormous amount of productivity right we're losing it's not just about you know counting the money it's about thinking about how

013productive our workforce is and so I think the long-term costs here are absolutely enormous and I think one of the problems we face is that the the benefits from remediating this are way in the future right in in terms of the the productivity of the workforce but the costs are need to be incurred now and if we don't do something soon about it it's going to be very problematic in the long run because these things are harder to deal with you know when students are older right we we want to we want to try to use the schooling system in the educational system to handle this problem rather than waiting for when you know people are actually in the workforce and you know it's harder to deliver skills to them yeah and one of the

014things on a practitioner said that I wear a lot about something that Katie mentioned was the disengagement and for some students there's not the on/off switch it might be a very slow dimmer in terms of engaging with academic work be engaging with being with groups of people you know as students there's the academic side and this being in school but there's also the for many students the social side and not just the social emotional side but literally the social learning that happens in school and and so there's this concerns I have in a practitioner level the complement what you're saying they really do I worry about students not Rhian gauging even when it's they've to be back in school I think the other thing that there's some articles that you that were shared with me

015by my researcher partners talked about you know particularly in mathematics and the expected loss nor expected retention of content like best-case scenario being on average 50% of what a typical years growth would be and to have huge concerns about math being a very cumulative subject area and being a gateway to your point Mike about future careers and jobs how do you how do you make up for that and is that the right paradigm even to use to make up for it how do you address a year where a significant you know all the students to varying degrees have not gained all the content knowledge that they would typically gain in a year and that's a unique problem that we're facing and there's been individuals you think of students who have accidents that you know the

016it's not that it's novel to think about an individual level but on a kind of district state national level how to address those needs and I don't see and maybe I'm not reading the right thing I don't see that being as much the focus and I think it's because we're all in reactive mode it's not because of the lack best intentions by our state or other folks but really getting into the curricular side how are we going to make up for that because the stakes as you said both of you said are so high yeah and and unevenly distributed as well that the you know the I like to tell students in my education policy class that that any generalizations about public education in the United States that anybody makes are likely to be inaccurate

017for most places most of the time because it's a hugely diverse system there's huge variety and who's in the system and the same the same kinds of people low income people essential workers immigrants african-americans that were often not serving well in our public schools anyway are also those are the people who the pandemic is hitting the hardest so you know kids and those kids in those communities aren't just missing out on the school they're likelier than other kids to be having much more difficult experiences at home when they're not in school right and I think this is one reason why the Summer Slide is your timeout KD is is kind of a best-case scenario right it is we've talked about before because of the fact that some students are learning a lot and are in

018either our districts or households where there's a lot of learning going on and and some are not and that's likely to you know the students who are going to be struggling the most are the most disadvantaged students right and so the this over the summer very few students are actually in school right and so students differentially kind of lose knowledge over the summer but because no one's expected to be in school wouldn't expect it to be you know as large a difference but here some students are actually you know moving forward and and a lot of students are not and that's likely not happening evenly across the socio-economic distribution right and so this is going to I mean almost unquestionably exacerbate inequality in in really dramatic ways that they're going to require some policies to

019address right by state governments and end federal and the federal government I think as well as individual districts but I think this will probably get to there are strong constraints about what individual districts can actually do in this environment right because I think any real way to address these issues are going is going to be expensive right and far beyond the the means of any one district to really address yeah I'll say on the practitioner side one thing that won't address the larger picture but one thing that we are and by we I mean practitioners not just you know me and my particular job have benefited from is the federal government did relax some of its rules on how much title one money can be moved from one year to the next so usually there's

020a cap on if you don't spend one year there's a cap on how much can be transferred to the next year and they remove that cap and since we were spending much less that spring on kind of one resources we are able to offer more more resources to our summer program now our summer program in that way and 4ll and and one through the elementary levels gonna be virtual but we're talking about working with one to three students and a much different way than we would typically usually our summer programs more students and it's private it doesn't have the same intensive focus and one of the things that a very strong educator in our district said when we started talking about this is the first thing we have to do is actually understand where they

021are and and that's true no matter what your summer program or fall but I think in this case trying to get a sense of where students are at the beginning of July I think are it's hard to estimate where that is much more than a typical year we'll we have many many years experience of being able to predict what summer learning loss is or what happens at the end of the school year before summer school and I think that was a really valid point and trying to think about what assessments can be used to help drive our instruction in a small group setting because are exactly what you said we were anticipating a much wider variation on student readiness for the next grade level than we would in a typical year which was huge you

022know and my practitioner lends huge implications for what what we actually do and how we structure school next year even separate from the public health guidance which I know we'll get to a little bit later um but but I think you know it's shifting resources as the current current policy seems like position of the federal government for the most part or allowing us to shift resources we've already been granted I think there's gonna be some larger interventions that are hopefully come to play because I think there's gonna be some limitations of what we can do with existing funds right and I think I mean it's helpful to just get a little bit of credit have asked the scope of this problem right so if we think that students let's say I've missed a half a

023year of schooling right we have to make up that half of your schooling we have to pay to do that we can't just do that for free let's not like school districts are sitting on extra funding that would just let them do stuff right I mean it would be negligent for them to have done that where are these reserves coming from it's not about financial mismanagement or or any of those issues not that I'm sure not an amorous poem regional schools that's not happening but in in sub school districts money is mismanaged but that's not the reason why we don't have the money to do this the reason is is we have to invent another half a year of schooling somewhere right and that's going to take resources to you know pay teachers administrators bus

024drivers cafeteria workers right all the people who service schools you know needs to be paid for the time that they're going to be working and that's going to be very expensive to do right and and so it's not really about you know I think it's great that the federal government's letting school just be more flexible but I don't think that's anywhere near the right way to think about this problem the way to think about this problem is students have lost some you know large fraction of a year of schooling and we need to find a way to make that up to them right so whether that comes from you know lengthen school years lengthen school days right there's there's many ways to think about how we might do that and then move yet in the

025point you made Mike which is that your students are gonna be much in much different places when they re-enter school right and so then schools are gonna have to deal with the added difficulty of you know how to bring the students who fell behind up to speed while still not you know boring the students who who are on grade level or above right and so the the variation across students is going to widen particularly within a certain grade right and so that creates additional challenges and so you know I'm I'm I'm not trying to just be negative I am a distance scientist but I do think like we we do need to look this in the eye here right and say what is the really the problem we have that we need the policy problem

026that we need to overcome I think the probably policy problem we need to overcome from the education sphere is students are losing a lot of learning and that learning is going to be that is that loss is going to be extraordinarily detrimental to them and to society in the long run unless we do something about it you know soon and and that's going to take a large volume of resources outside of the scope of things the federal government in particular could do right you know we're not talking about 300 trillion dollars or something right we're talking about levels of funding that that I think the federal government could could stomach and certainly is in line with some of the recent stimulus packages that they've passed but you know focused on education yeah so we have

027a couple comments and questions why don't we create some of those we like those so Lauren asks how can we extrapolate from the students who receive summer support to the general population many students will be by you know by by design will not be in this programs so I think just to give a little local context you know we're doing a lot of outreach and I think the point is well-taken that no matter what out which we do for some students accessing even virtual programming even if they have Wi-Fi and or a hot spot or a Chromebook is not necessarily going to be possible given other responsibilities and other factors and their homes so what I really like about this question I'd love to pick your brain about what I'm one of the things I'm

028taking from even if the question is you know how do we frame our summer services so we learn from it and actually informs our work in the fall so I'd love to hear your your perspectives on that or your thoughts about how districts and states could think about using that as almost a laboratory I'm gonna look right at the economists here oh gosh I was looking at you yes well I mean it's I mean all look all evaluation is hard in this environment right because you know what we love is like a randomized control trial or something that that's not gonna happen and nor really should it right now you know I do think this is some of the lessons from from summer support we can glean just from sharing information right and I think

029this is actually true when we move beyond the summer and go into the fall and and hopefully restart schools which is it all schools or a lot of schools are going to do things differently right states are going to have different policies different school districts are gonna implement things in different ways and I think we need to really be very transparent about what we're doing and about what the outcomes are so that we can study the different policies right we're gonna have different policy variation just that naturally arises because people are gonna different ideas about how to how to recover from this pandemic and so I think you know one of the key things is that yeah we need to have data on what's happening we need to share information across schools and hopefully as

030a researcher I would say with researchers you know who can help interpret those data and and really learn from each other right what are the best practices here and you know how do we communicate that to one another and you know roll this out more generally right and I think that is that's I'll also make a plug this since I'm mostly a qualitative researcher that it's I think also going to be important to hear from the kids for the older elder kids and the parents who are participating in these programs to get a sense of what feels accessible and doable I know that in my role as a department chair from listening to our graduate students I've learned things about their situations that I wouldn't have understood if I hadn't actually heard them from a

031participant so I think you know a combination of of how an economist reviewed this and how a more qualitative evaluator would view it is probably worth doing yeah I agree I completely and I let me also say I think a lot of this as well it it's hard but we all need to be kind of humble here sense of like you know the more dogma we approach these questions and issues with the harder it's going to be to learn from our mistakes to learn from the data read and to learn from each other and I think we should just all take a step back and remember this is uncharted territory for everybody we're all groping around to try to figure out what to do and and in that environment right we're gonna some people are

032gonna make mistakes some people are gonna happen upon you know really good stuff and and we shouldn't be I mean I would hope that as the policy community we can all kind of get together and say you know we're gonna try things and if they don't work we'll move on to the next thing but not try not to be dogmatic about our responses because I think then we you know dig in our heels and we just nobody really knows what to do here right I think that's that's I mean it's hard to say but it's true we've just never been in this situation before right the last time we had a pandemic on this order was 1918 and that was before the common school movement right okay we didn't have compulsory schooling back then so

033we literally don't know how to do this because it's never happened you know in in modern times and and by modern I mean after we've had compulsory schooling and so in that sense like that it's not a it's not a failure that we don't know what to do it's just we're right so because of that we need to be open to new ways of doing things and to learn from each other and I think as a policy person that's exciting right to learn these new lessons but it's also a daunting challenge and why I'm happy I have my job and not Mike's job yeah I'm going to scroll there's a couple questions some are probably longer larger response to the other but this one getting to unanswerable questions how do we make up half year

034at school how do we approach learning a completely different way how to prioritize what students learn you know I think this is this is the question right and if people have ideas please feel free to put them in the comments too as I said at the beginning not all the answers are gonna be on this call he's not from the three of us I what I would say what we're doing locally and I can share that is that at the elementary level for instance some sort of meeting in the last week with principals and and some of our math specialists whose role it is to really help teachers with their math curriculum and we ask them to stop doing what they're doing which was many many things to make distance learning go well and actually

035start crafting what a curriculum map would look like for the next academic year without the explicit goal explicitly without the goal excuse me of catching up and doing a year and a half and a year's worth because we know that that's going to be there's no evidence that's a good strategy but really think about starting to develop a multi-year plan of how would you address these learning standards that were explicitly taught to all students in the typical way from March 13th in our case until September and we're doing similar we're starting to do similar work and literacy so one of the things that I found when I lifted up is you know there's not great models to do this in a large scale wet like in a whole class way you could look at Reading

036Recovery and other interventions that do this in a very individualized basis so I do think a multi-year approach is going to be required but I think if students walk in day one and we're teaching the fifth grade curriculum on the first day of school students haven't been in school nor have they had explicit teaching in the last quarter of the year or in the same way that's not going to be a recipe for success so I don't know if either of you have things you want to add about making up half a year piece well there is that the cut we when we talked yesterday we we realized there's this there's this tension in the literature because it there's research on extending learning time which suggests that that's good and that helps students learn more

037but then Mike I know you've done research on grade retention which points something not quite the opposite direction but in a different direction yeah so the the evidence on on grade retention is is suggest that that particularly in older students holding the back so you need to turn about like eighth graders right so many districts and states have regulations you have the high stakes exams before you move on to 9th grade and the evidence is that the students who fail those exams and are held back you know relative the students who are who just passed sit like students who you know differ by a couple points that they do worse the students who fail and and we think a lot of that it's just you know it's disruptive to be held back right that there

038are social gains that are happening in school as well and that students actually just disengage with learning in ways that you know kind of aligned with some of the concerns Mike was raising earlier so right we haven't ever had the experience where we've held such a large group of people back right that might be different in this environment right if we if we decide to only move some students to the next grade that might not be a generalizable finding and and the other piece of this is that it seems like holding students back in earlier grades does not have the deleterious impacts that holding them back in older grades her higher grades has but it doesn't also seem to have positive effects either so it's more neutral but in the long run so I think

039you know greater tension is is tricky but it doesn't from from their literature for the research we have does not seem like it's a panacea by any measure and and is something we should approach with some trepidation because of some of the evidence I mean I I would argue that that we kind of either need to extend the school day or extend the school year or some combination right we just it's about time we need more time in school because the students lost the time right and so I mean I mean it's it sounds straightforward I it's hard to do right and this is where you know academics can say oh we just need more time and practitioners like Mike will be like crazy so but I think it's you know if we if we

040had the resources to to produce a longer school day a longer school year it wouldn't be as big a problem to do right and so that's you know it's an economist I hate to keep coming back to resources though that's my training and so I'll do it I'll play the type so but but I think like those are kind of the the most straight forward in a sense ways to address this this problem I think trying to cram in the lost learning into existing school days is going to be very very challenging I skeptical that would work because I just don't think you know it's not like there's a lot of slack in those days right schools are teaching students all day long and you know I just don't know how you make up a

041half day of school or a half year of school without more time I guess and also just it's probably important to be flexible about how any of this happens you know one one weird it's not I wouldn't call it a silver lining but at least in this instance the students who everybody everybody missed the last third of the school year so that you could start a fifth grade class with the content that's you know roughly toward the end of what you might have been teaching in fourth grade in a normal year and you can just do that and call it fifth grade and not pin the stigma on some kids of you know your your neighbors in fifth grade but you're still a fourth grader because everybody everybody's not going to be in the same

042place that everybody does have that common experience of the educational disruption I'm gonna go through couple questions I'm just going to roll through before we transition some are great segues to the next next topic how are schools taking attendance and and with the local data say about that and you know I think schools are taking antenna slots I think it's it's a good actually conversation because schools are taking attendance in really different ways because there isn't one way that you would typically do that and the stages told us that you know attendance is one of our accountability markers in Massachusetts and they're like everything after March 13th is doesn't count because of all the factors in in my district we take it both in terms of what's being done digitally in terms of live you

043know like we use Google's of Google meets but also asynchronous work that gets handed in and any student who's not engaging we have a decision tree that goes to the principal the counselor our Family Center try to access which students are participating which aren't and that feels really different in 12th grade just because of the age of students so there's some acknowledgement of that as well this is a really good comment about the trauma students are experiencing and that absolutely has to be managed and we actually have work groups now working you know what's next fall gonna look like academically we have a specific group working actually we one group on the mental health and social emotional needs of students we've another one on staff support because I think it's been traumatic for everybody involved

044and that absolutely has to be part of our planning and people want to tune in back we're gonna have a session in early June with someone who's a psychologist who's gonna help talk and help families about how do we talk to children about the fall and we don't know if the fall is going to look like and starting support families in that way so great question and we'll come back to that sometime soon I think it's June whatever that Wednesday is I think it's June 3rd and some of these other questions we're gonna address it was the federal role in funding extra learning time and community-based looks so I'm going to come back to those they're spot on you know this is an interesting one I do want to address lease from the practitioner lens

045if there are students who are digitally truant again that's not my practitioner term to be really clear it's not how I frame it but I understand that the terming that the periodical or the author used I think one of the things that we found in our district is students ability to access online learning looks really different in small groups versus the whole group so when you have kids of any age one of the things that we've heard is when there's smaller groups when there's four to five students students find a lot more value and the digital learning that happens and they're much more willing to access the digital learning when it's 20 students and the ability to engage and participate is low particularly I think it mirrors the in-person empowerment but I think it magnifies

046it it's a real challenge for many students to engage in a group of 24 students taking a high school course if they're doing a four and five student the accountability can be much higher the teacher can check in and an assessing as they go so it's a good question we're going to find out this summer if there's a difference but we perceive based on even teachers experimenting with different office hour models in our district this spring that there is a distinct difference but it's small group versus large group I'm just gonna plug this one summit strategies for addressing learning loss could have been tossed around creating half grades could also increase academic tracking is that a worry are there are ways around that that's that's a big question probably about an hour left and that

047time on but I think for the practitioner viewpoint this goes back to the trauma that we're very conscious of that students to be able to access the learning experiences that we need they need to have that they have to be fully able to be emotionally engaged in the work and they're gonna be highly you know I find our students here and I think it's true everywhere they're really quick to read the intent of they're perceiving time which is often the real intent of the adults around them and the decisions the adults made about them and so it's certainly something that were conscious of and I think we have to marry the academic needs of students given this situation particularly the the you know we use Gloria ladson-billings term of educational debt I know other people

048use achievement gap to be able to talk about this with what what do we need to do so students are able to access the learning alright and there's no good formula but I know of yet to to consider that on/off Katie or Mike want to jump into that question today it is a tough one I did want to jump in with just something that they came up and one of our preliminary conversations which is that you would probably want to do flexible grouping at least with younger kids as they're catching up in math and reading but we'll probably talk more about the CDC guidelines in a couple minutes if you look at what the Centers for Disease Control are recommending for keeping a school environment safe they explicitly say to keep the same little pod

049of about 15 kids together all day long which is not particularly compatible with flexible grouping yeah I think I mean if you think about the policy problem here that kids are gonna come back to school and and within a grade the they're gonna be at much different places than they were beforehand right that the variation across students in in where they are academically is going to widen there's kind of three options right one is in and you can choose some combination of them but I wanted to do nothing and then you have to teach a class you know you have teachers teaching classes where the variation across students is much larger in terms of where they are and that's challenging you can track students that has you know benefits and and oh you know or

050you can retain students and we already talked about that right so the you know who are far below grade level I think as Katie mentioned this kind of flexible grouping model seems like it gets at a lot of the benefits of you know tracking without necessarily you know fixing kids in place right and allowing basically adaptive growth and what groups you're in but then you know that has public health concerns potentially depending on how it's done so I think it so it I mean just keep coming back to it it's a really hard problem so we learned here but it is a very challenging problem I mean part of it too is like there's no perfect solution right and where individuals or school districts or parents come down on on you know which of those

051options seem least distasteful or most exciting I think there are going to be there's going to be a lot of variation in in who does what and I think that's also an opportunity to study this right that as a scholar I'm very interested in because I think that you know we're gonna be able to learn a lot about what the right way to reintroduce kids to schools if something like this happens again from what schools do when when we do come back yeah there's a couple comments that actually segues I think to then the next kind of large area which is what to do right we've sort of touched on that but what are some policy things both at you know there's a you know about program with the federal Department of Education what should

052be looking at at the local level there's another comment that's you know families are asking districts to start talking about the fall and you know especially with the CDC guidance which is about essentially not having students mix with other students as much as possible at the elementary level that's a lot more feasible and it gets progressively more challenging the middle school level it's less feasible at the high school level it's particularly challenging so I'm trying to think of the best way to we're doing this live right it's inscripted so I'm trying to be the best way to organize the conversation and whether we start from the local and go up to the federal or vice-versa I don't know if you had thoughts about that because we certainly intend to address both [Music] where you'd like

053I mean it's interesting because the problems kind of roll up from the local level and the money kind of is gonna have to roll down from the federal level yeah and because the the federal government as its been doing is in a position to deficit spend and states and localities I think there's one state that doesn't have to balance its budget but I can never remember which one it is and then local communities don't have to balance their budgets so I'm not sure how many different ways we can we can come up with just say more federal funding but yes actually Mike those numbers you had earlier today we're really interesting if you've got them handy oh yeah yeah I'm happy yeah I just went through to some of the different federal bills that have

054been passed and and thought about comparing them to what was done in the Great Recession so just to give you a just scale here about what we're talking about the height of the Great Recession for unemployment was October 2009 and the unemployment rate was 10% now there's other measures of how bad things were that that's not just the unemployment rate but it's a nice way to think about it currently the unemployment rate sits at about fifteen percent it's a fourteen point seven and growing so you know this is a lot worse and I think the other thing to remember when I'm about to say these numbers is that in the Great Recession schools didn't shut down right kids didn't miss learning days I mean some students did because of economic hardship and that was important

055but it's not like you know lots all students in the US were out of school for three to six months right so you know this is this is a deeper recession and has as more direct implications for education than the Great Recession had so currently the cares Act which is the only Act that was passed by the signed into law and that was the most recent one that was signed into law has financing for hire for education that totals about twenty seven billion dollars so that's that's the amount that the federal government is allocated to directly help education both k12 and higher ed and it split about evenly the heroes Act which is the May 15 fact that the House passed but that does not look like from everything we've seen like it has much

056legs in the Senate or with the White House that has another 90 billion dollars so that would bring us up to 120 billion dollars if that were passed in the great recession the American Reinvestment Recovery Act ARRA had in real terms now a hundred and thirty billion dollars right so in a in a weaker recession or in a less dramatic recession that had less implications for for education we spent currently you know there was a hundred and thirty billion and currently we're at twenty seven billion so there's it's it's very different and so I think that's just important to kind of have a sense of of what the scope is of what the government's done in the past and as well like the research in front and the Great Recession is that that money went

057a long way to help shield school districts but even then it wasn't enough that that lower income school districts or school teachers that serve more disadvantaged children school districts that rely more on state funding saw declines in spending even with that support by the federal government and that those students in those schools at-risk experience learning losses right and so you know even with a large you know when the federal government did step in with a lot of money it helped but it wasn't enough and here they so far have not stepped in if anything close to that amount of money and I think the problem here is a lot worse than it was in the Great Recession yeah and I think to hop on that theme one of the cuts conversations that I had with

058the Emmer School Committee last night is we run budget and or but it looks different than today in March and that's true for every district that I know of and one of the challenges is that we talked about budget directly after we talked about koban 19 and thinking about fall and the juxtaposition of thinking about fall the CDC guidance that's gonna have very small numbers relatively small numbers of students in classrooms the guidance on how many students can be on a bus all that that's come that came out last weekend the juxtaposition of that and then reducing our budget was a hard conversation and it wasn't just hard in the in the immediate sense it was hard because many of my school committee members noted that there's probably rarely a time in the history of

059schools that income you know in I know we have to think about inflation but that there would be more that there would be fewer needs right in essence they've never been a moment where we needed more resources to address the needs of students you know if you look at the requirements it looks you know next to impossible to have full classes you know full complements of every student in the school in school at the same at the same moment in time from a public health perspective that triggers a lot a number of financial implications and decisions that have to be made right is it right there's a number of models that have come out saying well you know should should we do in every other day of school model and I've seen that there's other

060models and other writers who have been saying well really we should prioritize elementary students to be in school as much as possible because their access to distance learning is reduced and the implications I'm not getting foundational skills may may last longer than older students who maybe have more access then there's the financial impact on the communities that you know if six year olds are in school every other day that means many people can't go to work people most people don't work every other day schedules that's more on your end of the things especially Mike then behind more in education but you know I think the models are so diverse that are out there that I think they're you know one of the terms I use a number of times last night is it got to

061be some forced choices choices that we haven't had to make before as school districts and some of that's financial and summer that's just space right it's you know we that that's going to be its own unique challenge so I know if your any thoughts about not a solution but even how to start thinking about when we have these forced choices from the research you know what are the types of things that you think would be the highest yield for for all students but particularly focus as we talked about about the educational debt and achievement gap that I know both of you care deeply about certainly in my district it's a priority how do how do we manage those and how do we juggle those when we have some forced choices to be to be making

062in the next couple months and I think this gets to just commenting one of the questions came up was really thinking about you know families already asking the district and looking at private schools and and I think that could also have implications from an equity front as well and what are the constraints that the public schools have the private schools own and vice versa so long-winded very long-winded question her or comments to get the conversation going but I'd love to hear your thoughts on those things Sarris a mouthful yeah you know yeah go ahead I was just gonna say there's a in public policy there's a one of the models of thinking about how policies get enacted makes a mix the point that you often ideally you would start with the problem and then compare

063different potential solutions and choose the solution based on some rationale criteria but politics often doesn't work that way and what you often have is advocates and policy entrepreneurs who've had their favorite idea you know since 1994 and they're just you know this is this is the idea that they think will solve education problems so and I've even noticed this tendency and myself you know I'll think oh the pandemic is a perfect opportunity to do this thing that I think schools should be doing anyway and so you know Mike Morris I'm sure you're going to be getting a lot of a lot of these emails from different companies that say you know we have the solution hire us now more than ever and you know Michael lovin hime you could you know help us mobilize economists

064to help understand how we might make some of these decisions but there's probably not data to make a lot of these decisions either right I didn't that's a big point right yeah I think that's a again this is we're in really uncharted territory and we can we can you know extrapolate the best we can from existing evidence right but the existing evidence on what happens when every kid in America or in the world misses you know X months of school that happened before so we you know you can extrapolate it from specific events where kids have missed you know snow days or you know there have been you're out of school not usually in the US but in other countries from strikes or from you know closing of school districts for whatever reasons for you

065know there have been some experiences like that in the u.s. you know around desegregation many years ago so you know I mean there are bits and pieces of evidence here right I mean you look at you know New Orleans post-katrina right so but but they're really hard to extrapolate to the scope then we're talking about in this in this environment so that makes it very hard to just say oh I've looked at the data and the research and this is what we say to do I mean I think anyone who comes at you with that kind of certainty you should be very concerned about but at the same time we need to do something there's an ongoing debate when you think about federal education policy about should the federal government be more or less prescriptive

066with States at District it's about how they're supposed to spend the money and as somebody who studied desegregation a lot I think my gut impulse is always that that the federal government should put pretty strict limits on how states and localities are going to spend the money or else you know states that districts that never wanted to integrate their schools anyway are just going to take the money and do something else with it if the federal government isn't prescriptive but I feel like this is one of the few moments where I've ever really felt wholeheartedly like fewer strings are better coming from the federal government because it's a mess and it's a mess that looks different in different places and I don't think I don't think any US Department of Education would have a shot

067at knowing more about what a particular school district really needs to spend its money on but then this this particular US Department of Education has been in some disarray with staffing and turnover and reorganizations and so now now does feel like a good time to lean more on the locals and not worry about the precedent that it might be yeah I I mean first of all like you know the federal government I mean you guys know this but some of the listeners might not know as much about this that the federal government has very little statutory authority over education k-12 education in particular and so they don't have a ton of ways of attaching strings to things although they're providing money that's you know they can write they can exercise power through through the purse

068which they do repeatedly in a lot of different ways and so you know III in the one head I agree like I would I think it would be unfortunate if the policy responses to this took on a you know everyone's pet you know theory about what we should do to reorg you know to reorganize the education system and we just it's it's kind of all over the place and ideological and that's I think problematic and so I think general funds are very important with fewer screams attached however I do think the federal government could pretty easily say okay to get this money you have to submit plans for how you're gonna make up the lost time right and so in that way they can make sure that states are using it generally in the ways

069that we think it should be used I mean saying you know you deliver education the way you deliver education use this money to do it we just need more of it and and I I think in that way it would be a pretty flexible system but also with some oversight attached and that might be a nice type of balance but it it's a hard problem and if you you know you don't want you you want it you want big solutions but you don't want it to get mired in politics and put in partisanship which is very challenging you Mike since you live in New York State and Kenny and I don't so I'll let you have the first crack at this question speaking it was really a perfect segue thank you partnering with games to

070optimize the education solutions you know some pros and cons and how do you think about that yeah I mean I'm not a pedagogy person so I don't I don't you know I don't know a ton about that I mean I think public-private partnerships have a long history in this country and throughout the world and there's been some some really you know positive examples of partnerships between the public sector in the private sector you know what what you don't want is this to just be turned into a kind of a platform for Microsoft in Microsoft products yeah I use oom all the time it's so the the I think that that is one you know danger one can think about but I you know it says that the problems we face are so dramatic that I

071really feel like this is an all-hands-on-deck situation and you know to the extent that the private sector can be mobilized to help us solve some of these problems I don't think that means turning over the education system to the private sector or turning over all online platforms to Bill Gates right and so you know it's some sense the Devils in the details here is it's a kind of Oasis but I do think there's a role for for the private sector absolutely in a big role potentially right and I think it just depends specifically how it's used I will admit you you called me out on this Mike but I you know I don't know enough about the specifics of that partnership after this question I'm gonna go learn more about it but but I think

072it just seemed generally like in general you know this is a this is a society-wide problem when we need society-wide solutions historically in our country when we've had society-wide problems it has not just been one sector of the of society that has dealt with those problems right it has been a public-private partnership and all hands on deck right and that's been actually a very fruitful way to approach these problems I think this is exactly the same right and and so in that sense you know I don't think we should look away from any potential solution or anyone or any organization that can help but we also just need to be careful that you know we're approaching problems in a way that that mitigate fraud and and you know getting back to the last answer that

073make sure we're really solving problems and not just like doing pet policy projects right and I think that's the that sometimes it's a fine line but that's really what we want but yeah I real I absolutely think the private sector has a role to play a big role to play here and that we should not shy away from using them in and allowing them to play that role and also community organizations there was a great article in last week's New Yorker by gia Tolentino about me Chua lead organizations in communities and I mean that particular kind of private sector is as strapped as the public sector is right now in terms of resources but you know imagine a in a community where you know parents are still working full-time and maybe the kids are on

074some kind of funky split shift at school it would be great if a Boys and Girls Club or a YMCA or you know anything could be stepping up to provide some of the other socialization and childcare and all the other services that the kids need and it would be great to have this to have communities have an opportunity to build their own capacity use the capacity that they've got and build their capacity moving forward so that it's not you know yet another thing that comes in from outside at them yeah but there's a note I put a link to the CDC guidance because I know I referenced it a couple times another katydid as well so that link is on the chat feature for everybody so there's a this is a perfect segue to the

075next comment was about the equity and what would it look like if we prioritize a democratic society as well as individual achievement and I think that's one of the questions we're doing well on time we were going to talk about which is what are the likely achievement gap educational debt impacts we've touched on that one a couple times but we haven't talked more explicitly about what policies might be able to be used to mitigate the disparities that have only grown over the last couple months and may continue to grow from until we're back whenever that date is so I'll send that off to both of you guys I'll share my own my own thoughts about that from practitioner ones but I'd love to hear give you an opportunity to jump into that well thinking specifically

076about civic learning there is a pretty decent and evidence-based in political science that talks about the effects that the ways that policies are delivered to people can affect the messages that people get about the government and about their own worthiness to participate in the government and one of the classic flicks like administrative burden is one of the one of the issues that comes up here if if you're getting say Social Security retirement income through this relatively simple process where you've been paying in your whole working life and then the checks start to come after you retire or and you don't have to go prove that you're worthy contrasted at the other extreme with some of the say aggressively means-tested experiments that states are doing now some states with Medicaid where you have to you have

077to prove that you're meeting a work participation requirement in order to participate in Medicaid and you have to recertify every four weeks and it's it's a big administrative load in addition to the administrative load apparently over time if you look at the research people internalize this message of they don't trust me I don't trust them the system isn't working for me so on top of everything else that schools are thinking about I think the the kinds of messages that they're sending to families into kids will help them either feel more or less included in some public project that they can continue to participate in yeah I service deliveries not one of my areas of expertise I agree with everything Katie is saying I think as well.look part of this problem there's two problems here one

078is one is about the educational the the learning right the academic aspects and in some sense the social aspects of school right those those are important so put that in one bin the other is we actually run an enormous amount of redistributed social programs through schools right and actually normally that's great right because if you want to target programs to schools that's where children are so it makes a lot of sense to do that from a delivery mechanism it's just this pandemic has created unique challenges to doing that right so health programs you know run through schools there's a lot of schools in this country that have school-based health centers that you know where that's where children receive their primary care health services right school lunches right that's well known program right where we're delivering

079nutrition to kids right so there's there's all these programs we run through mental health services right guidance counseling so like these are these are very very important services that we run through schools and the absence of those services right now are again gonna have a disproportionate impact on low-income kids not only because they're they're the ones who are most likely to use these services but also because their families are the ones who can't supplement with you know private market replacements right and so I think so maybe they go back to the to the original grade like so the gaps are gonna be I think just exacerbated you know what policies I think it really a lot of that depends too on how long we're out of school right so if we can start up again

080in the fall in a meaningful way you know the the short or the very short term policy responses might need to be less dramatic just because you know over an hour and some are almost in like we're you know like we're only talking about a couple months now until we can start up and and I think a lot of the service delivery of things like you know things like school lunches right which are very important have been addressed to some extent by by many schools I don't know what the variation is across schools but from the schools I know about they've been really proactive in this I think like the the you know the real concern I have is what happens if we're not in school in the fall and you know I think everyone

081just started to sweat a little bit but yeah if you know that that's when I I start to think like we we're gonna need to figure out ways of delivering these kinds of services to students you know not just the educational services but the other services as well through zoom through small group meetings you know maybe having individual service providers you know going to specific houses but that has dangers as well and it's a very challenging problem and I think in some step wanted to be aware of it I I don't have a great I wish I just had like the thing I could snap my fingers and say this is what we should do anyone has ever met an economist isn't shocked that I can't say that but it's honest but I do think

082we need to look it in the eye and say this is a huge set of problems and we can incur the costs of shifting our social program some of these social programs outside of the schools right but that's costly too and so you know if we do that then when schools reopen you know why do we incur those costs for a short amount of time so I think a lot of what we do really depends on how long we're out of school and so then you know it's related to the underlying public health issues yeah I think I'll just jump in from the practitioner lenses is that what I think many districts have found my own included is that in a virtual environment the disparities that pre-existed Kovach 19 in our country have been exacerbated

083and I think like many districts we've done our parent organization raised money and we have mobile hotspot so you know internet access is lessen significantly less of an issue than it was a month ago Chromebooks and our s staff food service were at like thirty five thousand lunches all right so I think some of those core pieces like many districts we've we've put in place I think the larger kind of the issue that keeps folks like me up at night is is on the is the learning side and and the mental health side right you addressed that Mike but so you know I I think you're right and I think you know one of the things I've learned from some of the articles that you've said me looking at you know like there was one

084about Argentina where students are out of school for a long time the lifelong impacts have had for elementary age students who missed months of school and also the social mobility impact of that and and so you know I think it's there's no doubt that Kobe 19 is a public health crisis but it's also an educational crisis yes we'll have long long legs if we don't collectively and I don't mean the three of us or even people on this call but collectively don't take some real strong action steps to try to address that so you know again districts like mine can take small action steps relative to the context of having high quality tutoring for students who are more likely to be negatively impacted by the closure we're doing that in the summer and I think

085there's gonna be a lot of value to that and I'm not trying to minimize that at all we're talking about a multi-year incredibly complex problem that we'll need both you know financial resources we should talk quite a bit about but also technical resources you know if you've thought about how many districts there are in Massachusetts which is a lot just if you have any Massachusetts there's a lot of small districts all trying to figure out exactly how to manage that question it's a huge one and one thing we decided not to focus on today just based on time was the issue of students with special needs and students whose learning needs cannot be cannot access because of their learning needs and this ability accessing modifying or doing accommodations for the curriculum don't necessarily flow as

086well in a virtual environment and and how to how to you know make up is the wrong paradigm because I don't actually think that's that's right but how do we best support those students on reentry is going to be you know the challenge and you know I think me you know perhaps one I'm always the silver linings person you both know me a little bit so you know I always do but you know what I look at the CDC guidance and I say 10 to 12 students in class there's a little piece of me that says if we can figure out how to do that right particularly for our most vulnerable learners is there a little bit of space where if we can do it that they're getting the same level of quality instruction in

087a smaller group setting and more individualized attention and they would get another setting you know the challenge is we can't do classes of 10 to 12 students every day for the 2,600 students pre-k to 12 and my district so that's where we get to some forced choices and some uncomfortable conversation that I think I think hit on some of the politics that you know my colleague in Northampton Provost mentioned earlier is you know how do you make these decisions and you know I we live in a I'm not I'm not elected I'm appointed but i but I operate in a political sphere whether I like it or not and you could guess what I like it but a reality and so I think anything that you could offer not necessarily I'm spot of if you

088do is just how do we make decisions that are that are in you know for the greater good you know and if we're not going to be if we're gonna have to prioritize some things over other things we need some rash now and some basis for it and hopefully not swayed solely by public opinion because we know that public opinion doesn't necessarily capture the needs of all students equally or equitably I mean that's then that's why we have the legal protections in federal and state law for students with disabilities you know knowing that that's by definition a minority of the population and you know one that might not be looked out for as well well if they didn't have these guarantees so I guess you know as much as I as somebody who's trying to

089figure out how to how to get an academic department and university up and running and the fall I really kind of hope that we managed to make k-12 school happen in the fall since it's inadvertently a kind of a linchpin it's not meant to be a lynchpin of the rest of the economy but if you have young kids it actually is is it absolutely if yeah if we do have to have you know some students in school and some students out of school you know maybe the students who have disabilities students who are English language learners you know maybe they get more school than others do at the outset just because of you know there are certain disability certain kinds of education the kids with disabilities need that you can't do over Xoom they're you

090know students who are learning English maybe need more time in school speaking English with people then than they would get if they weren't in school so that would be one possible way of thinking about it but it's again none of this is going to be fun I feel like I mean I feel like I live I'm embodying the worst stereotype of social scientists as the people who gallop down onto the battlefield after the war is over and shoot the wounded but there's you know it's it is really an unprecedented situation that we're in with unprecedented challenges yeah well I'll say on a positive note and then I'll let Mike jump in before we transition to our last topic I think the thing that I've appreciated at least what I can say locally here is that

091the community has really bared with us and they highly understand the nature of a pandemic is different than anything that we've had before and so I think the patience of the community has been really helpful I think when we're making our next year of decisions that's going to be a different level of focus and you know something that I tell the two comments that my you know people work with me with say I tell them all the time one is that this is an imperfect imperfect situation we're going to have imperfect solutions so this is theory and then we're going to be able to meet everybody's needs and desires I don't think that's gonna happen I think the second thing is right now is the easiest time will have for the next year you know

092and I don't think it's the best time I think right I think kids we want kids and teachers in school I come to my office once a week it's it's not my favorite part of the week because it's sad to be in a school where no one else is there very few people else are there and I think you know I know the learning loss the first hour of our conversation and yet the decision trees get much more complicated after this but I'm sorry Mike good no no no no I think it's yeah let me just reinforce it something you said earlier which is I really believe the long-run legacy of this pandemic is going to be felt through the education system in the lost learning that students have if we don't do enough right

093and not just something but enough right and and that's that's hard I yeah I totally agree I mean I I like Katie you know run an academic department and and you know like whenever you have to make policies in this environment it's very clear right there are no good policies some are worse than others but it's not like and the reason is we're just in a really bad situation right not of any of our making but it's a bad situation and so all of our policies are gonna reflect the fact that we are in a very challenging environment right now right and so you know we're really choosing between you know policies that we hope never to have to choose between right that if you told me six months ago I'd have to choose between

094that might be like you were you're crazy what's gonna what's about to happen right I don't think any of us expect it to be in this environment and and you know again it's not like you know someone it's not like Mike you messed up as superintendent and now the schools are closed for four months right like that didn't happen right so but but it's like it's not anyone's fault right this is just it happened and so or at least it's not any local policymakers fault let's put it that way so they get happen so the you know I think that makes it on the one hand very challenging to do policy on the other hand you know as we've talked about before the three of us you know there's a freeing aspect of it as

095well we're like you can do things in here where you know you're not setting precedent because we're hopefully not gonna be in the situation again right and so you know I think in terms of choosing between difficult policies I guess the one big thing I'd say is maybe an obvious point but one it's probably better worthwhile to keep saying which is that the more resources schools have the less they're gonna have to make these really awful decisions right and you know if if the the the money scene is really important I'm not just saying that as an economist but it's true it because like you know imagine schools didn't lose a cent of tax dollars or state funding throughout this crisis right that your budget next year would be exactly what you would have expected

096it to be you know in October of this coming of last year right so but then the crisis this crisis happens it still would be you would be woefully underfunded right because you're going to need to do things like have ten person classes and potentially multiple bus runs and I you know I don't know you know there's a lot of different things but but the point is that all of the things that need to happen not to mention by the way you know extended school days and oh you know or or Senate school years these are in addition to right and states have balanced budget amendments they don't have money lying around laying around to do this it's not because they've been fiscally mismanaged it's because they why would they have the money laying around

097to do this right like they've not just sitting on reserves in case they have to spend you know twenty billion dollars on this right so you know it's same with school districts so I think it's the the point is that more money is needed because we need extraordinary things we're in an extraordinary position we need extraordinary policies that are not inexpensive right in and so the the difficulty of the choices people gonna have to face are going to be smaller when districts are properly resourced to handle the the challenges that they have yeah no I think that makes sense and for me I'll just before we transition to our last topic on assessment I'm accountable you know for me one of the things I've gotten from our multiple conversations not necessarily just today is trying

098to think through what are the long-term implications the decision we're making even if there's not a great economic base there's enough articles that both of you have shared with me that that at least open the door to be able making a research informed decision you know the information even about like virtual virtual schools and and who they work best for and by age level by disability right there is research out there to help guide some of our thinking about this and I think the temptation of making decisions in the short term seem logical because you we all hope this is a short-term problem but the implications of the decisions you know the Argentina paper really strikes out at me about you know future strikes and long you know that have lifelong impacts and have impacts

099on social mobility which is why most of us got into this business of k-12 education to begin with so I think that that that lie therein lies the challenge of how to make the best decisions that aren't just the short-term will get through decisions but have a defensible point of view that looks at that long-term piece and that's something out of the conversations we've had is just you're able to do you know share with me long-term research you launched your research studies that show results and and those aren't things I readily have at my disposal so you know deeply appreciative of that and you know that that's how I'm going to attempt to to walk through this and you know the nature is it's a political process and the community is gonna have to come

100to some conclusions I will probably start talking about this in my local community and artists next month once we get spudge its passed and that'll be the next thing i'm a starting to have community dialogue about this and and I do think from a policy perspective you know something that I know I've learned from Katie not just in our dialogues but up to courses with Katie in the past is just the sooner you get the dialogue going the better the policy potentially is at the end if you start with the policy without the dialogue policy might be the best policy but if it's a good policy it doesn't pass doesn't not implement it it's not looks great on paper right and so that's how we intend to to try to work on it and we'll

101see where we land I just did I do think think you made the nail the point which is like has long run benefits just to individuals in society kind of across the board right and that just underscores the urgency of this problem because if we just are like yeah it's hard forget it whatever you know 30 years from now we're gonna look back and say gee I really wish we had done something like this is a real mess right but it'll be too late and so you know we need to pay attention to it when we can do something about it and the returns to it it's an investment right we need to to make sure we're properly investing in our future now despite the challenges posed by this pandemic or else you know we're

102gonna be disappointed later that we didn't do it yep so good comment I worry about the discourse about loss of learning and I wonder how we can lift up the things that students are learning at home that are also about you and and so I want to be clear from my perspective anyway that I think the distance learning has been up value and I've seen that both of my role as parent as well as my role of Superintendent I think the challenge is that it's a different type of learning and depending on the age of student based on the disability learning status learning style I mean we have we have students who are essential workers and they can't always be acceptable for the contacts at the high school because they're working we have students who

103are taking care of siblings and so their access to the curriculum is limited and schools aren't perfect and I'll be the first to say that but there is some leveling about having a thousand students at a high school all simultaneous in courses that's not replicable in my personal opinion in the current environment so I think it's a good it's a good reminder about loss of learning and being more explicit on a language that I'm using so I appreciate that and and I do think there's ways to talk about this that don't have a deficit model and I don't want to also minimize the impact that's going to have for students academic readiness and I think those of you know Amherst you know we take kind of the social emotional lens and the whole childhood very

104very seriously and our social justice commitments and I know the person writing this as you know as an expert in this area mean that we we care about social mobility we're here so that we provoke when we give a high quality education to every single student and then we get every single student choices that they can make as they leave us as Katie's is doing very soon younger and she's wrestling very soon and so anything that's a barrier to that is something that we work on and that's how we approach it and I guess the concern is that this spring has created barriers that may have already existed but it's it's it's built them up to be larger and that's what addressed I really really appreciate you and also the things that students might be

105learning at home during the pandemic that aren't academic you know maybe maybe they're you know even younger kids some of them are having to step up more or being their parents have decided to make this a learning opportunity to step up more with you know learning how to help manage the house or take care of their younger siblings or you know mow the lawn or you know all the different things that that you know parents might be in the habit of doing for their kids that they don't have this much time to do can also be a real a way that kids learn self-efficacy the you know I did I did this important stuff that helped my family right yeah and I would say you know the loss of learning I also worry you know

106kid he gave some positive examples but I really worry about and you know our Department of Children and Families in Massachusetts is deeply concerned about the the low level of reporting of abuse yeah so I just I don't mean to be the negative person but on the flip side we have a whole number of students you know whole variety neighbors and whole variety of areas who are not having not that cutting along is a lovely experience but not having you know experiences that one can say might be formative and in a positive way and so you know we worry about the trauma that's all students experiencing from the quarantine but also what is the experience and the kind of some of the disparities that already existed have been exacerbated by this as the level of

107stress for our families has gone up incredibly and the most affected families in our district in both the country tend to be families who already had stressors going on so in our area you know there's a major industry as hotels and restaurants that's been a that area has been decimated you know that sector has been decimated by this the last couple of months as kiddie knows and the university doesn't have students and they're there an economic a huge economic player in our area and so you know I think some of the worry too is the level of stress on families and the inability our counselors are reaching out and doing it but for students not being able to get out of their house and in an environment with another adult for some of those been

108very challenging I mean the evidence from the Great Recession was that educational and equality increased because of the just because of the funding issues and also the disproportionate effect of economic downturns on on disadvantaged families and this is gonna be like that but more so and so that I I think that's the dinner some kids are learning a lot and and teachers are working really hard like you know I hope nothing I said was suggested that this is because you know people are working harder don't care about the students or anything it's not they this is a really hard environment to learn to teach in some kids are learning a lot and and getting a lot out of it and are in you know great home environments and might actually like this more you know

109like but there are a lot of kids who are not in that environment and who are being adversely affected and then again like we're you know we all come back together in the school and hopefully the fall and then we have to think about how to you know teach kids that have are even more variable in terms of their their academic achievement levels than they were beforehand and I think that's just that's us that's a seer it was a serious challenge beforehand it's even more of a serious challenge now and so we're running out of time so I'll just my segue to talk a little bit about countability is you know what my six-year-old son is learned is how to pick locks it's one of the things he's learned you know learning he's learning reading

110but you know that's what's in a house and adults have to do work and there's locks and he's losing young kids he can now pick locks with Bakugan characters so that's his new his new learning this week and so heading to accountability just you know any thoughts you have quickly and then we'll open up for more questions that you have we'll end on time at 3:30 but about how even to start thinking about assessment in the kind of as we move forward there's obviously a much larger topic than and I'm in a conversation but at least you know some initial thoughts that you might have that might be helpful for people to hear I'd say we we need to keep assessing you know both the probably particularly the kinds of assessments the teachers have always

111done in the classroom to get a sense of whether what they're teaching is getting through or the students learning I've thought a lot about large-scale accountability policy and I've got to say I don't see a lot of point in attaching consequences to state testing even when state testing starts up again next year I think suspending it the spring was absolutely the right call there might be an argument for not testing again next year i if you can do it in a way that doesn't disrupt the school day any more than the school day will already be disrupted next year just because of what's else is going on I think it would be worth doing the assessments but I'll be blunt I think it would be malpractice to hold any teachers accountable for their kids test

112scores you know there's some there's some problematic ways of doing that that are in use now anyway but even even if we had a perfect way of doing it I think this is not next year will not be the year to to reinstate that because you know who knows what is got what's going into the kids learning when they're assessed next year yeah I totally agree I mean I you know I probably by the validity of some of these you know statistical models surrounding a teacher assessment or you do Katie but the you know but but even aside from that like the whole point is that in this environment there's just no way you could take students test scores and meaningfully attach them to you know the behavior of a teacher right and that that's

113what accountability is about or or a school right is to say we're gonna use you know data from test scores or other assessments and and trying to tease out you know what's the causal relate you know effect of the school or the teacher on that learning there's just no way to do that right now I mean I just don't think anyone you know even the most hardcore accountability people maybe I'll hear from some of them after this you know but I think they would also agree that like this is not you know it's it's it's wouldn't be fruitful because you wouldn't believe any of the data you'd get out of this at all but I do agree that assessment is critically important right like we we need to know where students are so that we

114can teach them appropriately right and the only way to do that I think is to have some assessment but I I think it needs to be done with care so that there's not the even an attempt or a veneer that these are gonna be used for accountability so I think doing assessment and pausing accountability is the right way to do this for you know at least the next couple years and I think it's gonna be a big test for for policy makers at the state levels not just my own in Massachusetts I think there's so much angst and disagreement about the topics that you both shared your own you know at least relative to the larger disagreement a minor disagreement about how flexible are people going to be and I think that's actually a critical

115generalizable question how much of our historic and even recent policy decisions about things like accountability are people willing to be to say this doesn't make sense in this context or we have to rethink that given what happened and I guess my fear on a practitioner level is it's easier for some people and I'm again I'm not talking about my Department of Education or anyone else's but but as a human being it's easier who when you have systems set up to like okay I'll make this fit my system yeah right and there's some inertia and I faced that myself right I make look I'm involved in local policymaking and how we all can can get away from that sort of thing I think that thinking will actually have long-term negative impacts on both teachers and students

116if we try to fit you know our existing procedures practices and just translate them to this environment I actually think it really this isn't my own policy like I'm not trying to reinvent things like you should talk about before I don't have a policy in mind but I think as a paradigm trying to say oh yeah well you know definitely MCATs give me the same yeah there's some convenience to that right there's a policy perspective that accountability is important I so I get that I don't think it actually fits the context that we're gonna be in and so my fear on a local levels that policymakers won't actually make the changes that they'll need to make to make this whole operation be appropriate for for students in in this case teachers and they'll need to

117listen to people and jobs like yours too because you're the ones who can say no with the CDC social distancing guidelines in effect in schools on twe add in the logistical challenges of a large-scale assessment on top of that you know we're gonna have you know we need three three need three more build things to make that work and we don't have three more buildings so but but I think like that the I think assessments important okay I I'm sorry I think I do think substance for I think accountability is important too right so I very much believe you know in accountability systems but I believe in meaningful accountability system you shouldn't just do it to do it we should do it because you know when we believe that we have methods of actually gleaning

118information about what schools and teachers and some are doing you know then it becomes informative and I think the point is if you think accountability is important I think you need to recognize that you can't do it correctly in this environment right and and so you know like what we could do it because we just think it's important but like then you're actually undermining the whole idea which is that these should be meaningful measures right that that we should use and yeah it's unfortunate we can't do accountability but a lot of stuff's unfortunate I just don't see you know way around it we can't invent a way of around the problem that you know it's just not possible to really attach learning gains you know over the last couple years to teachers or schools right

119now because of all of the disruptions that have happened yeah and I think we just have a couple minutes left so I'll see if there's questions come in but but I think on that topic what we've learned so far has been what I've learned so far has been from a policy perspective policymakers are all overwhelming us myself included right and yourselves probably included as well about the number of things we have to rethink and things aren't doesn't feel like things are coming fast enough I'll say you like guidance for fall I would have liked to have that two weeks ago from deci me too I don't know what Cornell's gonna look like in the fall either right so we you know and I'm sure you Mass same things and so so I think one thing

120is to have you know a term that Mike use in an earlier conversation was that humility that we don't have this all mapped out because it's not math audible as quickly as we need it to be and everyone I know in terms of folks at deci they're working incredibly hard you know our state and Department of Education and their if you were designing a Department of State Department of Education to handle this crisis you would design it very differently than their department is it's currently designed right you'd have more people you have differentiated roles right and so I think that's a real challenge you know at the state level but the same challenge sort of applies at the local level as well so I think having that humility I think is going to be incredibly

121important as we walk through this involving stakeholders is going to be incredibly important and then the end they trying to make the best decisions for the long term and impact or interest of our students and you know I think you're right 30 years from now there's gonna be a lot of good papers for you all to write you know and you're all researchers though both qualitative and quantitative papers I think about who did this right but I think you know one things I've got to gather from our conversations is just really thinking through decisions both in the short in the long term there is research out there and you've shared many many links with me I put someone Twitter and everything that have been really impactful to help us think about you know how to

122think about this which is which is the first challenging again it's thinking about this the same way we've thought about other challenges in the past is not necessarily gonna yield the result that we want to want to want to get because the same problem-solving mechanics can't be used the context is so different yeah before we close I know if there's anything either of you want to share at the end of the end of this dream I it's this it's just been you know a great break from having to think about all the nuts and bolts that I think about every day to to be able to think more broadly about this moment that we're in because you know all my life reading history I've always wondered you know do people know that they're living through

123a big historical moment when they're living through right and now I know the answer is it for the first three weeks no you don't but we're there now right yeah that's right no and I I I'd say that you know I think that the thing that gives me some hope here that we can solve some of these problems I actually think regardless of one's political persuasion we all have the same goal here which is we want our kids to have skills and knowledge and to learn and to have good schools and so you know that the outcomes that we all want here I think are pretty uniform and or not uniform we would probably agree on them and so then the question is how to get there right and so I think that's a that's

124a very important and challenging conversation but it's it's an easier conversation then what do we even want right you know that's a that's a values say but I think people's values are probably pretty similar here and and and you know we face some really really dramatic and and and unprecedented policy challenges but I'm I'm hopeful that we'll be able to get around them but we need to meet them but we need to kind of start talking about it and really be proactive about it right cuz I the the other part of me the more negative part of me worries that you know we're just gonna be reactive and then you know because the costs of not handling this problem are gonna be felt so far in the future that we'll never get our act together

125about it and so you know I think we really need to as a society kind of take a look at this and say we need to do something now and so you know hopefully that'll happen yeah I'll just share at achates point about when we knew this was going to be history so you know and this was covered in depth and a WBUR articles I won't I won't go into the gory details but superintendent Massachusetts had a conference call in the morning of Friday March 13th at some at that point some schools in eastern Massachusetts had closed temporarily for the pandemic nobody in western mass to my knowledge or my rec maybe in one district had closed not too many and we'd a conference call and with the state and we see with Department of

126Public Health and the night before I knew this call was coming and you know all the sides you know the colleges were already closing and the signs were that that was going to be the the smart thing to do and I sort of had built up this expectation I'm gonna get in this conference called City who made for me I mean I'd already script it out you know how we were gonna make this announcement and some and this isn't to knock on the state or knock on the guidance we got is I think it's just an instructive story so the guidance we got was yeah you know we don't need to you don't need to close yet you know we're still looking at information and then Department Public Health got on they said this is

127a critical moment in the growth of you know the virus and you know and my plans you know more or less you know I was texting my colleagues in western mass and we got on a conference call directly afterwards and talked about what you know different we're different people were and so you know we went forward our plan to close to mounts closures that day ended up on Sunday when I think there was like maybe one district that wasn't closed you know the state closed all the schools across the Commonwealth but the way we closed was I did a video rather than ask all these teachers who didn't know this was coming to explain this to kids we thought that was I thought that was a bad idea right it's just unfair to teachers to

128be asking them to big news you're closed for a couple weeks and you have to explain to kids so I did a video we did it with the colleagues we didn't English and Spanish and so and it was a big deal at the time because you're closing schools haven't happened before we really thought about it and about a week or two later I was in my neighborhood with my daughter on a bike ride and so I was like oh that's the guy from the video it was a high school student oh I didn't know right and you're like oh wow maybe this is a bigger deal and I realize at the moment we're just like the right thing to do I don't want to mention folks awkwardly to have to explain they don't they haven't

129been on the conference calls I have with Department Public Health right it feels like a way to get a common message out and and so you know when you know my kids kind of looked at me but my son and wife they're like what video you know and they both have seen it but they're like whatever he's under public access all the time for school committee and and so you know how kids are thinking about it how parents are thinking about it it crystallized for me that we are in this moment in history where there's so much uncertainty and I think there are moments for leaders both in the researcher level and the practitioner level to be able to be out there and to facilitate dialogue to make for communities to make the best decisions

130and I think the reason I tell its stories I've really appreciated both this dialogue today but also the dialogue we've had on the front end and I think we should do more of it whether it's this format or I continue to pick your brains and unless published format but hopefully engenders more dialogue out there about how to approach this and how to move forward and I think you know the next big topic is going to be fall you know and and you know we'll be doing a session on that in my district a couple weeks from now I said do you get the third at 3:30 we'll have you know from much more four months a health perspective how to talk about it but we'll be having a lot of public conversations in June you

131know and I think having the research panel being able to run things you know by folks like yourself who have different access to resource materials and research materials has been a real benefit of mine I think it's going to benefit the students the more we do it so very long-winded way of saying thank you tremendously for all your support and your help and thinking on the call and thanks for everyone for spending of if you live in East Coast a pretty nice day with us and thanks for all the comments and questions as well yeah thank you this has really really been great I appreciate it thank you okay