The education sector is entering a new era, and the playbook has to be different than it has been for the last few years.
Coming out of the pandemic, students had fallen behind academically, and they had lost the habit of attending school regularly. Schools had lost staff and were trying to both recover and to build new service offerings. Thanks to strong state budgets and an infusion of federal funds the challenge, then, was to spend the new money in smart, productive ways that helped students get back on track.
That mission hasn’t changed, but the context has. The federal money has run out, and state budget forecasts are flat. Schools today have more staff than ever and are, in fact, at risk of having to make cuts going forward. We’re already seeing signs of schools scaling back and making cuts to after-school programs, summer programs, and tutoring programs.
Meanwhile, student performance is still depressed. Achievement levels have risen somewhat over the last few years, and student attendance is improving, but those gains are small and uneven, and not enough to fully recover from the pandemic-era lows.
So, we need a new playbook for a new era. Here at EduProgress, we’re going to be launching a series of posts looking at potential policy solutions that fit the moment. We’re going to be focused on policies that satisfy three key criteria:
- No or Low-Cost: They can’t cost much, because most places won’t have new money to spend.
- Strong Evidence Base: With fewer funds to spend, schools must be even smarter about allocating their resources well. Any new initiatives must have some evidence behind them, or at least a very strong theory of action for why they will help students.
- Feasibility: While we support policymakers who want to try implementing a grand new vision for public education, this list is going to be focused on practices that can be adopted anywhere and that can grow and improve over time.
We’re going to be neutral on the specific outcome measures, but our core belief is that schools should be focused on boosting student achievement and that schools should set students up to be successful in their next phase of life, whether that’s more school, the workforce, or the military.
Each post in the series will describe the idea, point to places that are already doing it and their results so far, and highlight any risks or downsides for policymakers to consider. Please reach out if you have ideas or suggestions that we should include in this series. And stay tuned as we begin to roll out our list of policies for the new normal.
