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eSchool News
Virtual learning will stick around after COVID fades
By Laura Ascione, Editorial Director, Content Services
January 12th, 2021
A survey finds that district leaders hope to offer virtual learning for
the long haul, and shows they're focused on inequities in learning
opportunities
About two in 10 U.S. school districts have already adopted, plan to
adopt or are considering adopting virtual learning after the end of the
COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
The survey of district leaders indicates that virtual learning was the
innovative practice that most district leaders anticipated would
continue, citing both student and parent demand for continuing various
forms of online instruction.
District leaders who mentioned plans to continue offer virtual learning
and instruction after the COVID-19 pandemic has abated said they want
to do so to offer students more flexibility, meet parent or student
demand, meet the diversity of students’ needs, and maintain student
enrollment.
District leaders were united in their concerns about students’ unequal
opportunities to learn during COVID-19, which was among their top-rated
challenges for the 2020-2021 school year.
However, in districts where at least 50 percent of students are Black
or Hispanic/Latino or at least 50 percent of students qualify for free
or reduced-price lunch rate, leaders also continued to rank
fundamentals like internet and technology access as greatest needs. In
contrast, leaders of the remaining districts more heavily emphasized
student mental health and high-quality instructional resources rate as
greatest needs.
“We found three common concerns: disparities in students’ opportunities
to learn, students’ social and emotional learning needs, and
insufficient funding to cover staff,” said Heather Schwartz, lead
author of the report and director of the Pre-K to 12 educational
systems program at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “But just
as reopening plans differ based on local approaches to both schooling
and the pandemic, district leaders’ opinions differed on the degree to
which they prioritized these needs and concerns.”
Professional development needs are also a priority, with a majority of
surveyed leaders (at least 68 percent) saying they have moderate or
great needs in six professional development categories covered in the
survey.
“The top-ranked professional development need among the six topics
about which we asked was addressing students’ social and emotional
well-being,” according to the report. “Nonfocus district leaders ranked
this professional development need especially high, with 37 percent of
nonfocus leaders deeming this professional development topic a great
need.”
Addressing unfinished learning related to COVID-19 is another big professional development need, too.
RAND fielded the survey to the new American School District Panel
(ASDP) September through November 2020. The ASDP is the
first-of-its-kind nationally representative, longitudinal panel of
school districts across the United States, providing opportunities for
district and charter management organization leaders to inform policy
and practice. It is the newest member of the American Educator Panels
(AEP), which includes two other standing panels of educators: the
American Teacher Panel and the American School Leader Panel.
RAND, the Center on Reinventing Public Education, Chiefs for Change,
and Kitamba partnered to develop and deploy the ASDP. The Center on
Reinventing Public Education developed case studies of six districts’
approaches to remote learning during COVID-19.
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