The Case for Optimism

In the July 16 New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote an article with a provocative title: “We Interrupt This Gloom to Offer…Hope.”

Kristof’s basic point is that things have gotten so awful in the U.S. that, in response, with any luck, we could soon be able to make progress on many issues that we could never make in normal times. He gives the example of the Great Depression, which made possible Social Security, rural electrification, and much more. And the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which led to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Civil Rights Act.

Could the crises we are going through right now have even more profound and long-lasting consequences? The Covid-19 pandemic is exposing the lack of preparedness and the profound inequities in our health systems that everyone knew about, but that our political systems could not fix. The Black Lives Matter movement is not new, but George Floyd’s killing and many other outrages caught on video are fueling substantial changes in attitudes among people of all races, making genuine progress possible. The shockingly unequal impacts of both Covid itself and its economic impacts are tearing away complacency about the different lives that are possible for rich and poor. The attacks by federal troops on peaceful demonstrators in Washington and Portland are likely to drive Americans to get back to the core principles in our Constitution, ones we too often take for granted. When this is all over, how can we just return to the way things were?

What is happening in education is appalling. Our inept response to the Covid pandemic makes it literally murder to open schools in many parts of the country. Some districts are already announcing that they will not open until January. With schools closed, or only partially open, students will be expected to learn remote, online lessons, which author Doug Lemov aptly describes as “like teaching through a keyhole.”

The statistics say that a tenth or a quarter or a half of students, depending on where they are, are not logging into online learning even once. For disadvantaged students and students in rural areas, this is due in part to a lack of access to equipment or broadband, and school districts are collectively spending billions to increase access to computers. But talk to just about any teacher or parent or student, including the most conscientious students with the best technology and the most supportive parents. They are barely going through the motions. The utter failure of online education in this crisis is a crisis in itself.

The ultimate result of the school closures and the apparent implosion of online teaching is that when schools do open, students will have fallen far behind. Gaps between middle class and disadvantaged students, awful in the best of times, will grow even larger.

So how can I possibly be optimistic?

There are several things that I believe are highly likely to occur in the coming months in our country. First, once students are back in school, we will find out how far behind they have fallen, and we will have to declare an educational emergency, with adequate funding to match the seriousness of the problems. Then the following will have to happen.

1. Using federal money, states and districts will contract with local agencies to hire an army of tutors to work individually or in small groups with struggling students, especially in elementary reading and mathematics, where there are many proven programs ready to go. Frankly, this is no longer optional. There is nothing nearly as effective as one-to-one or one-to-small group tutoring. Nothing else can be put in place as quickly with as high a likelihood of working. As I’ve reported in previous blogs, England and the Netherlands have already announced national tutoring programs to combat the achievement gaps being caused by school closures. My own state, Maryland, has recently announced a $100 million program to provide tutoring statewide. Millions of recent college graduates will be without jobs in the recession that is certain to come. The best of them will be ideal candidates to serve as tutors.
2. America is paying a heavy price for ignoring its scientists, and science itself. Although there has been rapid growth in the evidence base and in the availability of proven programs, educational research and proven programs are still paid little attention in school policies and practices. In the education crisis we face, perhaps this will change. Might it be possible that schools could receive incentive funding to enable them to adopt proven programs known to make substantial differences in learning from Pre-K to 12^th grade and beyond? In normal times, people can ignore evidence about what works in reading or mathematics or science or social-emotional learning. But these are not normal times. No school should be forced to use any particular program, but government can use targeted funding and encouragement to enable schools to select and effectively implement programs of their choice.
3. In emergencies, government often accelerates funding for research and development to quickly find solutions for pressing national problems. This is happening now as labs nationwide are racing to develop Covid vaccines and cures, for example. As we declare an education emergency, we should be investing in research and development to respond to high-priority needs. For example, there are several proven programs for elementary students struggling in reading or mathematics. Yet we have few if any proven tutoring programs for middle or high schools. Middle school tutoring methods have been proven effective in England, so we know this can work, but we need to adapt and evaluate English models for the U.S., or evaluate existing U.S. programs that are promising but unevaluated, or develop new models for the U.S. If we are wise, we will do all three of these things. In the education emergency we face, it is not the time to fiddle around the edges. It is time to use our national innovative capacity to identify and solve big problems.

If America does declare a national education emergency, if it does mobilize an army of tutors using proven programs, if it invests in creating and evaluating new, ever more effective programs to solve educational problems and incentivizes schools to use them, an amazing thing will happen. In addition to solving our immediate problems, we will have learned how to make our schools much more effective, even in normal times.

Yes, things will someday get back to normal. But if we do the right things to solve our crises, we will not just be returning to normal. We will be returning to better. Maybe a lot better.

This blog was developed with support from Arnold Ventures. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Arnold Ventures.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, just send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org. 

Let’s Learn from Peer Countries How to Open Schools Safely

*Guest blogger Nathan Storey is a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University

The time to develop and finalize plans for the reopening of U.S. schools in the fall is closing. Labor Day is little more than a month away. How are states to determine the best methods of reopening schools? What issues should receive the most attention when developing plans? Students’ physical health and safety is always a concern in schools, but teachers, administrators, and staff are particularly at risk, especially staff over 50 and those with certain health conditions. Many school districts are grappling with this question.

One potential source of information about school opening may be the experiences of other countries that have already opened their schools.  Fortunately, a number of other countries have been conducting a natural experiment, whether they think of it that way or not, and the United States has the opportunity to draw important lessons from their experiences in order to create plans for safe instruction. Increasing numbers of schools have decided to close this fall, in light of the high and rising rates of new cases in most states. However, when schools do open, we should learn from the experiences of peer nations.

While we wait for more data to come in, the experiences of other nations demonstrate what approaches may work best and what approaches are too expensive, labor intensive, insufficient, or downright unsafe. For instance, we have seen some nations initially open in a phased approach or using alternative day attendance, but later loosen school processes due to lowering COVID rates or implementation challenges. The Washington Post recently reported that Belgium and Japan reopened following an alternative day attendance structure, and recently loosened protocols in schools. Both French-speaking and Flemish-speaking parts of Belgium opened in phases, first for key grades (grades leading to a certification) in primary and secondary education, and later, following an open letter signed by 269 pediatricians, for all grades in kindergarten and primary schools. But each section of the country took different approaches in the opened schools. French-speaking Belgium implemented “bubbles” of classes that stayed together throughout the school day, not interacting with other students, and entering and exiting the building through different doors or according to staggered hours for instance. Within the classroom, students were not required to wear masks or socially distance from one another. In Flemish-speaking Belgium, classes were split into two groups, with each attending school in person two days per week, with Wednesday as a cleaning day.

Belgium was one of the hardest hit countries in Europe, but by early June, had largely contained the coronavirus. The reopening of schools was considered a success: there were only 15-20 Covid cases among the children from 2,500 schools in the French section, apparently not linked with school but rather with home conditions. No case involving children required hospitalization. A national increase of 66% in mid-July did not appear to be linked to schools. Nationwide, just four schools partly closed, and only one school needed to close completely, as the bubble concept allowed schools to quarantine single bubbles where infections occurred instead of closing and quarantining the entire school population.

These moves towards normalizing and adjusting as necessary are possible because Belgium and other countries, including Denmark, have done the work to minimize spread in the population and have put into place protocols in case of infection spread, such as contact tracing and quarantines. Similarly, Australia reopened schools and eventually loosened social distancing within schools, but when cases increased, in the Victoria (Melbourne) region, they returned to lockdowns. However, school closures are a small part of this. Israel began limiting class sizes when they reopened schools in May, and required masks to be worn by anyone over seven years of age. As cases spiked in the past weeks, the country moved all instruction for fourth grade and up to remote instruction. Israel now has plans to reopen schools for all grades with smaller class sizes, additional teachers, and hybrid education for middle and high school students.

Some hope for U.S. states may be found in Sweden. Sweden has essentially stayed open throughout the pandemic, without restrictions on class sizes or social distancing requirements for all except grades 10 and up, which were closed from March to mid-June. COVID cases among students connected to schools have been similar in prevalence to those in nearby Finland, and teachers of all grades appear to be at the same risk of infection as other adults. It is unknown, though, why this might be the case. One journalist speculated that naturally smaller class sizes and the exclusion of older students may play a role.

Reopening schools will be a work in progress. There does not seem to be one single approach that solves all COVID-related problems for schools. The countries that have had more success and had schools that have stayed open for the most part have generally been those that have contained the virus within their borders and have developed contingency plans for when infections occur. Meanwhile, in most U.S. states, COVID rates are on the increase. No country has opened schools when rates of new cases were high and rising, as is true today in the U.S. We have a long way to go before we are ready for full in-person schooling. But when U.S. rates of new cases diminish to, say, European levels (about 16 per hundred thousand; the U.S. is over 100), we should look carefully at what other countries have done and what their results have been, so that we can make wise choices to keep students and staff safe.

This blog was developed with support from Arnold Ventures. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Arnold Ventures.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, just send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org. 

Does it Take a Pandemic to Find Out That All Children Can and Must Learn to Read?

Recently, I got a “case study” from one of our Success for All schools in England, Applegarth Academy in Croydon, a disadvantaged area south of London. I’ve written about Applegarth before as the flagship school of the STEP Trust, a multi-academy trust,  which serves an impoverished, multi-ethnic student body. In the most recent national rankings, Applegarth scored sixth among the more than roughly 16,700 primary schools in all of England.

This case study, which you can see here, involves a child using a U.K. adaptation of our Tutoring With Alphie program. However, this story is not really about Success for All, or Tutoring With Alphie, or the STEP Trust. It is about something far more fundamental.

What happened is that a student I’ll call Richard moved to Applegarth in Year 6 (like fifth grade). England closed its schools in March due to the Covid crisis, and then re-opened them in June and July just for the equivalent of kindergarten, first grade, and fifth grade. Applegarth staff used this opportunity to prepare its Year 6 students for secondary school.

Applegarth tested Richard, and was astonished to find out that he had nearly zero reading skills. He scored at the kindergarten level. Applegarth was piloting the Tutoring With Alphie program, usually used with four children at a time. However, the school made a decision in this extraordinary case to give Richard 90 minutes a day of one-to-one tutoring.

In three weeks, Richard could read. He was not at grade level, but he gained 2.2 years. He could read The Hodgeheg! Richard was thrilled and now hopes to go on to read Harry Potter books.

By itself, this is a heartwarming story. But to me it is also infuriating. Tutoring With Alphie is not magic. If Richard could learn to read in three weeks, this says to me that he could have learned to read in Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, Year 4, or Year 5. He was described as a bright, sweet child, eager to learn. Yet somehow his previous school was unable to teach him to read in the five or six years they had him. Perhaps it did not occur to anyone that this was a crisis, literally a life in the balance: A bright child who obviously could have learned to read at any time but did not. If Applegarth’s staff had not noticed Richard’s problem or had not had the resources to help him, Richard would have headed into secondary school in September with no reading skills. Do you know what happens in secondary schools to kids who can’t read? Do you know what happens in life to people who can’t read?

Richard’s situation before he came to Applegarth is all too common. A while back, I wrote about a book by my friend Buzzy Hettleman, called Mislabeled as Disabled. This book presents example after example of bright, eager, well-behaved students in Baltimore who end up in high school reading at the kindergarten or first grade levels.

The problem in all of these cases is that education systems are designed to move very large numbers of students from grade to grade. That system works, sort of, for most students, but there is a large minority of students for whom it does not work. And one way or another, with or without special education services, too many of these students just slide by. Educators may be aware of a child’s poor performance, but do not have the time, resources, or support to stop the conveyor belt and say, “We have to do whatever is necessary to see that this child learns.” In Richard’s case, he got lucky. How often does any non-reading fifth grader in any school anywhere get 90 minutes of high-quality tutoring every day for three weeks, until they begin to make rapid progress? Almost never. Yet there are millions of Richards in our schools, millions who absolutely could succeed, but do not get what they need to do so.

As my readers know, England and the Netherlands are investing heavily in tutoring to help overcome losses students have experienced due to Covid-19 school closures. Perhaps someday, similar investments will be made in the U.S. As a result of the English and Dutch investments, hundreds of thousands of students will receive intensive tutoring in reading and mathematics. And even though these tutoring services will be provided to solve the learning effects of a pandemic, perhaps educators will notice that students who are in academic difficulty will make dramatic gains. Perhaps they will wonder why similar services shouldn’t be provided to all students who need them, pandemic or no pandemic.

In the U.S., the U.K., and many other countries, millions of little Richards are entering our schools. With appropriate help, every one of them should be able to learn to read the first time they are taught, or soon after they are found to have difficulties. It’s so obvious, it’s so simple. Why does it take a pandemic to find it out?

Photo credit: Arungir / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

 This blog was developed with support from Arnold Ventures. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Arnold Ventures.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, just send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org.

When Scientific Literacy is a Matter of Life and Death

The Covid-19 crisis has put a spotlight on the importance of science.  More than at any time I can recall (with the possible exception of panic over the Soviet launch of Sputnik), scientists are in the news.  We count on them to find a cure for people with the Covid-19 virus and a vaccine to prevent new cases.  We count on them to predict the progression of the pandemic, and to discover public health strategies to minimize its spread.  We are justifiably proud of the brilliance, dedication, and hard work scientists are exhibiting every day.

Yet the Covid-19 pandemic is also throwing a harsh light on the scientific understanding of the whole population.  Today, scientific literacy can be a matter of life or death.  Although political leaders, advised by science experts, may recommend what we should do to minimize risks to ourselves and our families, people have to make their own judgments about what is safe and what is not.  The graphs in the newspaper showing how new infections and deaths are trending have real meaning.  They should inform what choices people make.  We are bombarded with advice on the Internet, from friends and neighbors, from television, in the news.  Yet these sources are likely to conflict.  Which should we believe?  Is it safe to go for a walk?  To the grocery store?  To church?  To a party?  Is Grandpa safer at home or in assisted living?

Scientific literacy is something we all should have learned in school. I would define scientific literacy as an understanding of scientific method, a basic understanding of how things work in nature and in technology, and an understanding of how scientists generate new knowledge and subject possible treatments, such as medicines, to rigorous tests.  All of these understandings, and many more, are ordinarily useful in generally understanding the news, for example, but for most people they do not have major personal consequences.  But now they do, and it is terrifying to hear the misconceptions and misinformation people have.  In the current situation, a misconception or misinformation can kill you, or cause you to make decisions that can lead to the death of a family member.

The importance of scientific literacy in the whole population is now apparent in everyday life.  Yet scientific literacy has not been emphasized in our schools.  Especially in elementary schools, science has taken a back seat, because reading and mathematics are tested every year on state tests, beginning in third grade, but science is not tested in most years.  Many elementary teachers will admit that their own preparation in science was insufficient.  In secondary schools, science classes seem to have been developed to produce scientists, which is of course necessary, but not to produce a population that values and understands scientific information.  And now we are paying the price for this limited focus.

One indicator of our limited focus on science education is the substantial imbalance between the amount of rigorous research in science compared to the amount in mathematics and reading.  I have written reviews of research in each of these areas (see www.bestevidence.org), and it is striking how many fewer experimental studies there are in elementary and secondary science.  Take a look at the What Works Clearinghouse, for another example.  There are many programs in the WWC that focus on reading and mathematics, but science?  Not so many.   Given the obvious importance of science and technology to our economy, you would imagine that investments in research in science education would be a top priority, but judging from the numbers of studies of science programs for elementary and secondary schools, that is certainly not taking place.

The Covid-19 pandemic is giving us a hard lesson in the importance of science for all Americans, not just those preparing to become scientists.  I hope we are learning this lesson, and when the crisis is over, I hope our government and private foundations will greatly increase their investments in research, development, evaluation, and dissemination of proven science approaches for all students.

This blog was developed with support from Arnold Ventures. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Arnold Ventures.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, just send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org. 

Photo credit: Courtesy of Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for American Education: Images of Teachers and Students in Action.

Changing Thoughts on School Opening in the Fall

School districts all over the U.S. are planning how they will safely open schools next fall. Depending on Covid-19 infection rates, schools in some states and districts might not open at all, at least until conditions improve. However, there will also be many schools opening when the dangers of Covid-19 are relatively low, and schools can be reasonably safe if they are careful. This is the situation state and district leaders are mainly trying to plan for.

For the past several months, I have been reading about and hearing about plans to partially open schools in the fall. These plans have involved reducing the number of students in each class to allow for social distancing among students. Reducing the numbers of students in these plans usually requires having students attend schools on alternate days (“A Day”/”B Day”), and working online at home on the non-school days. Another often-discussed plan has students attend school either before lunch or after lunch.

Such plans are likely to be educationally damaging, because it is becoming widely acknowledged that online learning is simply no match for in-person teaching, especially for disadvantaged students, who often do not have access to adequate technology for online learning. However, these plans are based on the assumption that social distancing is the key to protecting students from getting or transmitting Covid-19. Social distancing is in fact highly effective with adults, but children rarely get or transmit Covid-19, and in the rare cases when they do, they almost never die from it. Further, while it is possible to maintain social distancing during well-organized class time, it is nearly impossible to keep students apart during recess, much less waiting for busses or walking to and from school. In a news story from Sydney, Australia, an eighth grader described how his school started the school year with strict social distancing, but within a week, it completely broke down, because students found so many ways to get together at times other than class time. Based on informal stories from schools opening this spring in the Southern Hemisphere, China, Singapore, and Europe, it seems that this is a widespread problem.

Recently, a major policy document from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) came out squarely against plans that involve students being required to rely on distance learning all or some of the time:

“The AAP strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school.”

The AAP’s rationale depends in part on concerns that social distancing cannot be maintained, in part on the evidence that children are at very small risk for Covid-19, and in part on the health and mental health hazards of having many children staying at home for long periods, especially if adult supervision cannot be arranged. These dangers, note the AAP, include dangers of isolation, physical and sexual abuse, substance use, depression, food insecurity, and lack of physical activity.

The AAP does recommend as much social distancing as can be feasibly arranged within schools. It also notes the importance of maintaining social distancing among staff members, for example, by restricting meetings to electronic communications. It suggests masks for staff and students, especially in secondary school, as much as possible, as well as testing students and staff.

The AAP recommendations seem sensible and flexible, and would maximize effective learning time, not a minor factor. Their document provides additional details to consider at each grade level.

I do not know how influential the AAP guidelines have been, and perhaps other trusted organizations are making similar recommendations. However, districts around the country are beginning to announce their school re-opening plans, and some I have heard about are aligned with the AAP approach (i.e., fully open, with care). There are districts proposing A Day/B Day schedules, and other means of reducing the numbers of students in each class to allow social distancing, but many others are proposing that when numbers of new cases get low enough, they will fully open, and let schools do as much social distancing in class as they can within whatever space their facilities allow. Plans I’ve heard about are generally allowing parents to keep students at home if they wish, and will provide these students remote learning opportunities. I think all plans include the flexibility to closely monitor the health consequences of each plan, and be ready to change course, even to close schools again if disease rates spike for staff or students.

In the U.S., we have the luxury of being able to learn from the many schools around the world that have opened their schools before we will have to do so (or not) in August or September. These include schools in the Southern Hemisphere and East Asia, which open in our spring, as well as schools in Europe, where many countries have chosen to open schools in June and July. At this very moment, these schools are actually implementing a wide variety of the same strategies U.S. schools are just thinking about. Do other countries find out that school opening strategies emphasizing social distancing are effective? Which combinations of strategies turn out to be most effective, for both the health of students and staff and the education of students?

Our research group is collecting newspaper articles, government reports, and formal studies around the world, and we are asking teachers, parents, and students in these schools to tell us what they are seeing on the ground (we have friends all over). This effort will be less than systematic, but what we report will be timely and unvarnished. I sincerely hope that researchers are systematically studying outcomes of alternative plans. However, we also need immediate on-the-ground information on what other countries are experiencing.

The Covid-19 crisis has put educational leaders into positions of terrible responsibility for the lives of children and staff. They are seeking and heeding advice from medical and public health professionals, and have been struggling to balance educational and health needs. I think everyone owes these leaders enormous respect for the decisions they are having to make. As the summer progresses, I hope school leaders will be paying attention to the experiences of countries that have opened their schools, learning from their successes and setbacks, before implementing the best plans possible for all of our children.

This blog was developed with support from Arnold Ventures. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Arnold Ventures.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, just send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org.