In October 2020, Missing in the Margins: Estimating the Scale of the COVID-19 Attendance Crisis estimated that as many as 3 million K-12 students across the country were at high risk of experiencing minimal or no educational access from spring through fall 2020 as a result of the pandemic. Fast-forward one year later, and available data on 2020-21 enrollment, attendance, and engagement suggest massive missed learning opportunities, especially among the most marginalized students.

Changes to practices, policies, and resource allocation can help support all students — especially those with limited access to learning opportunities in 2020-21. This blog post is the first in a series for 2021 where we will expand upon our recommendations, beginning with practices.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, young people across the country have experienced profound disruptions to their educational trajectories. This is particularly true for young people furthest from opportunity, including undocumented students and those in foster care or who are experiencing homelesness. These young people need intensive support from their schools in order to accelerate their learning and address their socio-emotional needs. How can schools, community partners, and child-serving systems work together to implement practices at a local school and community level that can accelerate learning for students with differing needs and experiences over the past year and a half?

In order to determine the most appropriate support, schools, districts, and community partners must listen to and center the needs of young people and their families, with the goal of more effective coordination of services and practices. While an individualized, collaborative case management approach for students would be resource intensive, there must be a focus on practical and innovative supports that are developed in partnership with each student’s family or support unit.

In addition to a case management approach, schools should also supplement in-person instruction with strategies that combine additional staff and resources including:

• Support outside of the traditional school day, like evening and weekend high-impact tutoring or instructional time. When designing additional instructional time, schools should consider an appropriate frequency and length of time, in addition to adequate professional development for tutors.
• Small, cohort-based intensive acceleration academies to focus on large skill gaps. As part of this strategy, small groups of students would receive support in a cohort model, typically during holiday and summer breaks and weekends.
• Structured partnerships with families to collaboratively set annual, quarterly, and monthly goals. Such a partnership is similar to the case management model for students with disabilities who have Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) or young adults receiving intensive counseling. As part of the partnership, these goals would align to a personalized learning plan that is based on the needs of the student. The benefits of such a plan include student ownership, more flexible content, and data-driven decisions.
• Evidence-based literacy instruction, especially for younger students and English language learners. This can also be coupled with effective parent empowerment resources and tools.
• Leveraging innovative instructional models, such as blended learning models, flipped classrooms, or project-based learning models.

While a safe return to in-person school will support the needs of many young people, there may also be opportunities to provide interventions outside a traditional classroom. Some of these interventions could include alternative high schools, high-quality virtual learning, mastery or competency-based learning models, learning pods, and micro-schools or homeschooling. These interventions would be especially beneficial for students whose needs were not being met by traditional in-person school prior to the pandemic.

In the coming months and years, schools, districts, and other partners must ensure that they center the needs of all students, especially the most marginalized students, when making instructional decisions. These practice-based decisions should be supported by coherent policy recommendations, up next in this series.