Between the pandemic, politics, and the nation’s reckoning with racial inequity, it has been an extraordinary summer. And now comes the start of one of the most disruptive school years in history. On an encouraging note, it is hard not to be impressed by the many efforts of education organizations to help schools and colleges navigate the challenges they are facing.
The Pandemic
Like others, FutureEd has sought to support education policymakers and practitioners as they respond to the Covid crisis. With The Hunt Institute, we examined how governors have used the $3 billion in discretionary funds that Congress granted them in the CARES Act. Senior Fellows Andrew Buher and Mario Ramirez of Opportunity Labs, outlined a strategy to strengthen the capacity of local public health agencies, important but under-resourced partners to schools and colleges responding to the fast-changing pandemic landscape, in an essay first published by Politico.
Editorial Director Phyllis Jordan and Attendance Works Director Hedy Chang made recommendations for tracking student attendance under distance learning and our partners at Education Resource Strategies shared innovative ways that school districts can redeploy teachers to strengthen remote learning. We tracked the federal government's distribution of aid to schools and colleges, and we partnered with The 74 to profile states’ school-reopening policies. And Research Associate Rachel Grich explored the impact of the pandemic and resulting economic meltdown on the free-college movement.
Politics and Policy
As the Republican and Democratic conventions got underway, we released strategies for the next administration to improve public education for the nation’s disadvantaged students. We examined Democrat Kamala Harris’s evolving approach to student truancy during her years as California’s attorney general. And we profiled one of Joe Biden’s top education advisors, Carmel Martin, in an infographic.
In July, we released Experiments in Advocacy: What Works and Why, the latest report in our AdvocacyLabs series. Written by Marc Porter Magee of 50CAN, the report distills insights from the growing number of rigorous experimental research studies of effective advocacy campaigns.
It's a probing account of the strengths and many weaknesses of the massive education research enterprise by FutureEd research advisor and McCourt associate professor Nora Gordon and Carrie Conaway of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The event starts at 2 p.m., Eastern. Register here and read an excerpt from the book here.
