SALINAS, Puerto Rico — Fue poco lo que su familia pudo rescatar. Solamente unas sillas plásticas, algunas fotos, su uniforme escolar.

La inundación el pasado otoño que devastó el hogar de Deishangelxa Nuez Galarza, estudiante de quinto grado en esta área costera del sur de Puerto Rico, también provocó en el cierre de su escuela primaria, El Coquí, durante tres días mientras el personal limpiaba un pie de agua lodosa de cada salón del primer piso. Deishangelxa siempre cuidaba sus útiles escolares.

“Cuido mis cosas de la escuela”, dijo, “porque un día yo quiero ser enfermera”.

Deishangelxa perdió dos semanas de clases, algo que le disgustó.

Se trataba de la más reciente pausa en una educación que ha sido caracterizada por interrupciones casi constantes. Deishangelxa comenzó el kinder en la Escuela Ana Hernández Usera en el 2017, año en el que el huracán María azotó la isla. Las escuelas en todo Puerto Rico permanecieron cerradas por un promedio de cuatro meses.

Ana Hernández Usera nunca volvió a abrir. Como más de 260 escuelas en Puerto Rico con una matrícula baja, cerró de manera permanente como parte de medidas más amplias para reducir costos. Deishangelxa se trasladó a El Coquí, pero la isla no tendría tregua de los desastres naturales. Tenía 8 años en enero del 2020 cuando terremotos estremecieron la isla, obligando el cierre de su escuela durante tres meses mientras los ingenieros inspeccionaban las estructuras físicas del edificio para asegurarse de que no hubiera peligro para que los estudiantes regresaran.

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Cuando se reanudaron las clases, no fue por mucho tiempo. Pocas semanas después, las escuelas volvieron a cerrar por el Covid-19. A Deishangelxa, que tenía 9 años en ese momento, se le hizo difícil el aprendizaje virtual y se retrasó considerablemente. En agosto del 2021, después de olas sucesivas de infección durante las que las escuelas abrieron y cerraron, la instrucción en persona se reanudó para los estudiantes de la isla, pero duró poco. Apenas un año después, el huracán Fiona desató su furia contra la isla, causando inundaciones extensas y daños a la infraestructura. Deishangelxa tenía 10 años cuando las escuelas volvieron a cerrar en septiembre del 2022 — en esta ocasión por dos semanas.

Los percances que ha tenido Deishangelxa se reflejan en todo Puerto Rico. Desde el 2017, varios desastres naturales han golpeado a la isla — diezmando casas, devastando la red eléctrica y destruyendo la infraestructura. Ese trauma recurrente, lo que un residente llama el “TEPT colectivo de la isla”, ha sido agravado por la pobreza extensa y los desafíos burocráticos.

El sistema escolar de Puerto Rico es excepcionalmente vulnerable a los desastres naturales que se están volviendo más comunes en los Estados Unidos debido al cambio climático, y al mismo tiempo está extraordinariamente mal preparado para ayudar a los niños a recuperarse de los contratiempos de aprendizaje que conllevan. La isla ha enfrentado corrupción y mal manejo por parte del gobierno local, miles de millones en deuda y emigración masiva que ha resultado en una pérdida crítica de profesionales y en esencia ha reducido a la mitad la población estudiantil de la isla, de casi 550,000 en el 2006 a 276,413 en el 2021.

El distrito escolar de Puerto Rico, el sexto más grande en los Estados Unidos, suele ser ignorado en conversaciones sobre la educación en el país. Sin embargo, los expertos dicen que se trata de un aviso temprano del cual otros distritos podrían aprender a medida que luchan con los efectos del cambio climático en el aprendizaje, la salud y la infraestructura.

“¿Cómo compensamos el impacto de esas interrupciones de escuela y cómo hacemos que las escuelas sean más resistentes?” dijo John King, ex secretario de educación de EE.UU. que es co-presidente de This is Planet Ed, una iniciativa del Instituto Aspen que trabaja en soluciones climáticas a través del sector educativo. “Es un problema agudo para Puerto Rico hoy en día, pero es un problema que estamos viendo en otras partes del país que va a seguir creciendo”.

La población estudiantil de Puerto Rico se ha reducido por casi la mitad en 15 años, de aproximadamente 550,000 en el 2006 a 276,413 en el 2021, una disminución causada por los desastres, la mala administración y la emigración.

Miguel Cardona, el secretario de educación bajo el Presidente Biden, prometió “un nuevo día” para Puerto Rico. Entre los últimos dos años, ha aprobado más de $6 mil millones en fondos federales para el sistema escolar de la isla. Casi mil millones de ese financiamiento se hicieron posibles revirtiendo una decisión de la administración Trump de restringir asistencia por la pandemia a Puerto Rico por lo que ha sido caracterizado como “problemas de largo tiempo” con la mala administración de fondos federales en la isla. El gobernador de Puerto Rico, Pedro Pierluisi, prometió implementar “una mayor rendición de cuentas” y contratar a un tercer partido independiente para administrar los fondos.

Hasta ahora, el dinero se ha utilizado para costear aumentos temporales en los salarios de los maestros, contratar a cientos de profesionales de salud mental escolares y financiar programas de tutoría. Pero, pese a la Ley de Reforma Educativa de Puerto Rico del 2018 que permite más control local, el departamento de educación de Puerto Rico sigue estando fuertemente centralizado, lo que impide que se reparta el dinero rápidamente.

Chris Soto, asesor senior de Cardona que encabeza el esfuerzo federal por mejorar las escuelas de Puerto Rico, dijo que es importante abordar no solamente las necesidades del sistema a corto plazo, sino también alguno de sus problemas sistémicos, como una burocracia sofocante y la infraestructura deteriorada, que han plagado al departamento durante décadas.

“De esa manera no estaremos hablando de lo mismo en 20 años”, dijo.

“Antes teníamos tiempo para recuperarnos, ahora no hemos tenido para recuperarnos. Entonces crees que estás saliendo adelante y pasa otra cosa. Es una crisis”.

Yadira Sánchez, psicóloga escolar y directora de Lectores para el Futuro

Puerto Rico, que ha estado bajo control de Estados Unidos desde que terminó la guerra hispano-estadounidense en 1898, por largo tiempo ha ocupado una posición nebulosa como un “territorio no incorporado”. Sus residentes son ciudadanos estadounidenses, pero no pueden votar por el presidente y no tienen representación en el Congreso. Las políticas federales aún ponen en desventaja a la isla, el resultado de una “relación cuasi-colonial”, dijo King.

La porción federal del financiamiento del Medicaid, por ejemplo, tiene un límite de 55 por ciento (si Puerto Rico fuese un estado, podría recibir 83 por ciento), a los residentes se les niega ciertos beneficios por discapacidad y se restringe el acceso a otros fundos, como el crédito tributario por hijos. La pobreza infantil es extensa: En los 50 estados, 17 por ciento de los niños viven debajo del umbral de pobreza; en Puerto Rico, esa cifra es de 55 por ciento y aún más alta en áreas rurales.

Los resultados académicos en Puerto Rico son bajos y han ido disminuyendo a un paso constante desde el huracán María. En un examen de matemáticas que toman niños en todo Estados Unidos (la Evaluación Nacional de Progreso Educativo, comúnmente conocida como la Libreta de Calificaciones de la Nación), aproximadamente a un tercio de los estudiantes de cuarto grado y a un cuarto de los estudiantes de octavo grado en Estados Unidos continental se les consideraba “aptos” en el 2022. En comparación, tan pocos estudiantes estuvieron a la altura de los estándares en Puerto Rico en cualquiera de los dos grados ese año que el porcentaje se redondea a cero.

“¿Cómo compensamos el impacto de esas interrupciones de escuela y cómo hacemos que las escuelas sean más resistentes? Es un problema agudo para Puerto Rico hoy en día, pero es un problema que estamos viendo en otras partes del país que va a seguir creciendo”.

John King, ex secretario de educación de EE.UU. y co-presidente de This is Planet Ed

Entre el 2017 y el 2022, el porcentaje de niños con un rendimiento considerado a nivel de grado en español, matemática, inglés y ciencia disminuyó por al menos 10 puntos porcentuales en cada materia, como lo mide la evaluación local, META-PR. En el 2021, funcionarios escolares revelaron que 13,000 estudiantes habían reprobado todas sus materias.

El aprendizaje virtual se le hizo particularmente difícil a los estudiantes puertorriqueños. Aun en el 2017, antes del huracán María, aproximadamente un cuarto de los niños de la isla carecían de acceso al internet y la mitad no tenían computadoras en el hogar. A los que cuentan con esos recursos hoy en día los entorpece un servicio eléctrico intermitente.

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A los estudiantes les costó encaminarse cuando se reanudó el aprendizaje en persona: Más de la mitad de todos los estudiantes estaban “desinteresados” entre febrero y mayo del año pasado, según un cálculo en un reporte del Departamento de Educación de Estados Unidos. En El Coquí, la escuela de Deishangelxa, el director Jorge Luis Colón González dijo que un tercio de sus estudiantes tienen dificultades ahora, pese a que reciben algo de ayuda adicional.

Fondos federales le pagaron a una compañía privada para operar un programa de recuperación académica extraescolar en El Coquí durante el presente año escolar. Más de 75 niños, incluyendo Deishangelxa, se quedan después de la jornada escolar todos los días para recibir dos horas de tutoría adicional en español, inglés, matemática y ciencia. Colón dijo que espera que este apoyo adicional les permita a sus estudiantes ponerse al día. “Me preocupa mucho su aprendizaje”, dijo.

Yiria Muñiz, maestra en una escuela católica para niñas, Academia María Reina, en San Juan, dijo que los estudiantes de Puerto Rico han tenido cinco años completos de aprendizaje interrumpido, y que se nota. Muñiz dice que antes les enseñaba el sistema métrico decimal a sus estudiantes en una semana; ahora, le toma más de dos meses.

“Los niños del 2017 y del 2022 no son iguales. Si piensas en mis estudiantes de séptimo grado ahora mismo, han estado pasando por algo desde el segundo grado. Entonces, han perdido muchas, muchas oportunidades para desarrollar destrezas sociales, académicas, de conducta y emocionales”, dijo.

Muñiz se ve obligada a cambiar su currículo constantemente para acomodar a sus estudiantes. “Todo lo que había hecho anteriormente ya no sirve”, dijo.

Maestros en todo Puerto Rico dicen que han recibido poca asistencia para satisfacer las necesidades cambiantes de sus estudiantes. El desarrollo profesional suele ser irregular, opcional u organizado apresuradamente, y muchos maestros no han recibido ese tipo de apoyo en años, dijo Víctor Manuel Bonilla Sánchez, presidente de la Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico, un sindicato que representa a los maestros.

Algunas organizaciones sin fines de lucro han intervenido para llenar la brecha. Por ejemplo, una coalición de organizaciones enfocadas en la alfabetización, encabezada por la organización de fines de lucro Flamboyan Foundation, realiza talleres para entrenar los maestros sobre cómo enseñar la lectura, llena las bibliotecas escolares con libros culturalmente adecuados y educa a la comunidad general sobre la importancia de la lectura. Yadira Sánchez, una psicóloga escolar que también encabeza la organización sin fines de lucro Lectores para el Futuro, dijo que los maestros están “hambrientos” por este apoyo; una reciente sesión de capacitación que ayudó a organizar estuvo atestada. Ahora, la coalición está luchando por expandir su alcance a más maestros gracias a una esperada infusión de nuevos fondos federales.

Quizás aún más preocupante que las interrupciones académicas es la crisis de salud mental entre los niños de la isla. En una evaluación reciente, el Programa de Trabajadores Sociales del Departamento de Educación de Puerto Rico determinó que más de 500 niños habían perdido a un familiar durante el año académico del 2020-21 y que aproximadamente 68,000 niños, casi un tercio de todos los estudiantes, fueron identificados como necesitados de ayuda debido a una situación emocional, mental o de comportamiento.

El trauma compuesto por el torrente de desastres perdura. Los maestros cuentan de niños que se echan a llorar cuando un camión que pasa hace vibrar el suelo, porque les recuerda un terremoto. Algunos niños se distraen en clase al más leve sonido de gotas de lluvia, mientras que otros esconden comida en sus bolsillos y sus medias.

El plan de Puerto Rico incluía el uso de los $6 miles de millones proporcionados por el departamento de educación federal para fortalecer los equipos escolares de salud mental, en parte con la contratación de más de 420 enfermeras y 110 psicólogos escolares para abordar la severa escasez de empleados entre el personal de salud escolar. El dinero también ayudará a pagar cientos de facturas atrasadas por evaluaciones y terapias que ya se les realizaron a niños en programas de educación especial.

Dinelys Rodriguez, de 14 años, estudia en la Escuela Delia Dávila de Cabán en Toa Baja, aproximadamente a 25 minutos de San Juan. Recuerda haber hecho fila con su madre por más de tres horas simplemente para entrar a un supermercado después del huracán María. Ahora, cada vez que hay una tormenta, se preocupa por no tener suficiente para comer. Fueron tiempos difíciles, pero ella y su hermano, Jadniel, de 11 años, también recuerdan que jugaron a las cartas en familia después de los huracanes y se bañaron en la lluvia, recuerdos que los hacen sonreír.

Pero a medida que han ido creciendo, se han empezado a preocupar por perder tantos días de escuela. Dinelys quiere ser abogada. “Quiero ser alguien en la vida”, dijo. “¿Cómo voy a aprobar mis exámenes y graduarme si no puedo ir a la escuela?” Jadniel también se preocupa. “Es difícil estudiar cuando los adultos a mi alrededor siempre están preocupados”, dijo. “Siempre estoy en alerta”.

Ambos niños participan en un programa de salud mental que se ha ofrecido por mucho tiempo en su escuela, que es administrado por la organización sin fines de lucro Instituto Nueva Escuela. Luz Rivera Ocasio, una trabajadora social que pertenece al programa, dijo que apoya a las familias, sea que necesiten consejería o ayuda práctica como dinero para alimentos o ropa. Pero el programa, Casa Familiar, solamente está disponible en 13 escuelas, brindándole ayuda a sólo una pequeña fracción de quienes la necesitan.

Rivera describe su función como “el pañuelo que seca todas las lágrimas”. Los niños entran y salen de su salón para darle — y recibir — un abrazo caluroso y acogedor. Entre huracanes, la pandemia y todo lo que ha pasado, “le ha afectado emocionalmente”, dijo. “O sea, esto han seguido rastrando, poco a poco.”

El Coquí emplea a una trabajadora social escolar; hace dos años, sumó a una psicóloga escolar. Colón, el director, dice que los estudiantes aún se están recuperando emocionalmente del aislamiento del aprendizaje virtual. Y las maestras también. No podían dar con los estudiantes que no tenían internet, o que estaban haciendo cuidado a sus familias, y fue difícil. “La ansiedad fue una de los factores que afectó a nuestros maestros”. No solamente anima a los maestros a que hablen con la psicóloga de la escuela, sino que a veces él mismo se desahoga con ella.

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Sánchez, la psicóloga escolar que encabeza Lectores para el Futuro, dijo que la gente de la isla se enorgullece de su fortaleza, pero que los implacables desastres naturales han hecho imposible sostener esa actitud. Aconseja a maestros que se culpan por no estar con familiares que se están muriendo, que se sienten muy mal por haberles gritado a los estudiantes en un momento de frustración, y hasta a los que han dejado la profesión.

“Antes teníamos tiempo para recuperarnos, ahora no hemos tenido para recuperarnos. Entonces crees que estás saliendo adelante y pasa otra cosa”, dijo. “Es una crisis”.

“Los niños del 2017 y del 2022 no son iguales. Si piensas en mis estudiantes de séptimo grado ahora mismo, han estado pasando por algo desde el segundo grado. Entonces, han perdido muchas, muchas oportunidades para desarrollar destrezas sociales, académicas, de conducta y emocionales”.

Yiria Muñiz, maestra, Academia María Reina, en San Juan

Aunque las escuelas públicas de la isla habían visto una disminución constante en las matrículas durante casi dos décadas, en el año escolar inmediatamente después del huracán María hubo un bajón abrupto de más de 42,000 niños. Los funcionarios escolares ya habían cerrado 167 escuelas el año anterior y decidieron seguir consolidando otras 260 escuelas locales. Los maestros fueron reasignados, los viajes diarios de los niños se hicieron más largos y los edificios escolares quedaron vacantes. Desde entonces, la matrícula ha seguido disminuyendo, cayendo por otros 16,878 desde el 2021.

Ana Díaz, maestra de tercer grado en la Escuela Delia Dávila de Cabán en Toa Baja, ha presenciado el desplome en la matrícula de primera mano. Hace cinco años, antes del huracán María, tenía 28 alumnos en su aula. Comenzó el presente año escolar con apenas 14.

Díaz dijo que muchos estudiantes se han ido a Estados Unidos continental, usualmente a la Florida a hospedarse con familiares. Pero no es un camino fácil — no solamente deben acostumbrarse a un nuevo lugar, nuevas amistades y un nuevo idioma, sino que el currículo no está alineado con el de Puerto Rico, y los niños suelen tener problemas académicos, dijo. A veces regresan a la isla, y se les dificulta reajustarse y ponerse al día con lo que se han perdido.

“Es bien frustrante porque yo veo el potencial que ellos tienen”, dijo Díaz. Esta transmigración también podría tener consecuencias para el empleo de Díaz. Si se van más estudiantes, es posible que sea trasladada a otra escuela.

Los educadores también se han visto afectados por medidas de austeridad. Una junta de supervisión establecida por el gobierno federal para reestructurar la deuda masiva de Puerto Rico anunció en enero del 2022 que los educadores ya no recibirán una pensión garantizada, que sus beneficios serían reducidos y que ya no serían elegibles para recibir beneficios de retiro antes de los 63 años. Fue un golpe para los maestros de la isla a los que ya se les pagaba poco: El sueldo promedio en el 2018 fue de $27.000; los maestros en Estados Unidos tuvieron un sueldo promedio de $61.730.

La insuficiencia del pago de los maestros se manifestó de forma severa a principios del 2022, cuando un maestro falleció en un accidente automovilístico luego de quedarse dormido mientras conducía a casa de su empleo nocturno como guardia de seguridad, uno de dos trabajos adicionales que necesitaba para hacer alcanzar el dinero. En respuesta a la tragedia y otros sucesos, los educadores llevaron a cabo huelgas masivas, incitando al gobierno a aprobar un aumento temporal de $1.000 mensuales para todos los educadores y bonificaciones para algunos maestros, pagados con fondos federales.

Pero no está claro qué sucederá una vez que se agote el dinero. Dijo que nunca va a poder jubilarse.

“Nunca me voy a rendir. Siempre voy a estar buscando estrategias. Las que no funcionan, las cambiamos.”

Jorge Luis Colón González, director de la escuela El Coquí en Salinas

Bonilla, del sindicato de maestros, dijo que la máxima prioridad del grupo es mayor apoyo para la salud mental de los maestros. El departamento de educación de Puerto Rico recientemente firmó un acuerdo con una universidad local para brindarles terapia virtual a los educadores, pero Bonilla dice que debe hacer mucho más, por la escala del problema.

El secretario de educación de Puerto Rico, Eliezer Ramos Parés, quien está comenzado su segundo año en el cargo, reconoce que les espera un camino difícil. Pero se siente optimista de que el dinero federal ayudará y que el gobierno estadounidense, las organizaciones sin fines de lucro y el departamento de educación local encontrarán la manera de trabajar en conjunto. Ramos Parés dijo que su departamento ya ha hecho algunos cambios — por ejemplo, están usando más récords electrónicos, en lugar de papeles; recopilando más datos y documentando sus actividades.

“La confianza es importante y para que haya confianza, tiene que haber transparencia”, dijo. “Puerto Rico no lo puede lograr solo; tenemos que ser un equipo”.

Afuera de El Coquí — la escuela lleva el nombre de la pequeña especie de rana con voz grande que es tan querida en la isla — miles de mariposas amarillas y blancas aletean como confeti. Pero a pesar de la belleza que los rodea, los residentes del área exudan una ansiedad palpable, temerosos del próximo desastre natural. Los residentes locales están en estado de alerta por señales de advertencia: Aquí en el sur de Puerto Rico, si de pronto aparecen ciertas aves marinas en el interior, la gente cree que viene otro desastre, dijo Colón.

La ansiedad podría ser un factor en el reciente aumento en los casos de asma entre los estudiantes de El Coquí, dijo la trabajadora social de la escuela. También ha aumentado el número de estudiantes en El Coquí con problemas de la piel. Los padecimientos podrían ser consecuencia del molo al que los niños estuvieron expuestos en sus hogares después de las inundaciones, o de la contaminación ambiental que ha sido una preocupación en esta área durante años, agregó.

Algunos de los fondos federales se utilizarán para remover moho, asbestos y plomo de los edificios y proveerles a los estudiantes pupitres que estén libres de moho u óxido. También hay planes para reemplazar sistemas de aire acondicionado anticuados.

El ingreso por cápita en esa región costera de Salinas es menos de $10.000 al año; apenas un poco más de un tercio de las personas de edad para trabajar forman parte de la fuerza laboral. Colón, quien se crio pobre en un pueblo cercano, dice que la educación fue su salida. Es un camino que anhela con fervor para sus estudiantes.

“Es la única herramienta que tienen para salir de la pobreza”, dijo. “Puede cambiar vidas”. Es por eso que, pese a los desafíos de los últimos años, Colón dijo estar más decidido que nunca a seguir trabajando en el ámbito de la educación.

“Nunca me voy a rendir”, dijo. “Siempre voy a estar buscando estrategias. Las que no funcionan, las cambiamos”.

Este artículo acerca del sistema escolar de Puerto Rico fue producido por The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente sin fines de lucro enfocada en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación. Lea sus otros artículos en español.

The post ¿Son las dificultades de las escuelas en Puerto Rico un avance de lo que enfrentarán otros distritos? appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

For those of us in the trenches of the community school movement, an increased federal focus on community schools couldn’t come at a better time.

City leaders and others are increasingly aware of the power of community schools as an equity strategy. And equity is needed now more than ever as schools face hardships exacerbated by the pandemic.

No wonder local calls for community schools are growing louder and more frequent. Community schools become hubs for students and communities. Often open evenings and over weekends and summers, they bring together families, students, teachers and local organizations to identify and provide health, social and out-of-school-time support.

Headlines promoting the effectiveness of community schools sit atop research studies, op-eds and other forms of media.

In recent weeks, the U.S. Department of Education has invited applications for $68 million in grants for community schools, representing almost four times more money than was made available in 2018. And the Biden administration said it aims to dedicate as much as $468 million to community schools in 2023.

Our current predominant school design is akin to a traditional telephone: a simple two-way system of delivery wherein teachers teach and students learn. Community schools are more like smartphones.

The more school systems that apply for these grants, the greater the benefit to our nation’s education as a whole.

The ultimate goal of community schools is to ensure open pathways to academic success. Research from the RAND Corporation and the Learning Policy Institute and National Education Policy Center (LPI-NEPC) show that community schools are a good investment and an effective change strategy.

Some community school proponents say that our current predominant school design is akin to a traditional telephone: a simple two-way system of delivery wherein teachers teach and students learn.

Community schools are more like smartphones. They have collaborative leadership structures that help educators connect, pool resources and think more expansively. Ultimately, they help kids succeed in school and beyond.

And if community schools are like smartphones, promoting them citywide is like an upgrade to a stronger, more powerful operating system.

Related: OPINION: To the rescue — The schools we need now are community schools

As a former public school teacher in Boston and an advocate of community schools, I’ve seen positive results when school systems adopt this holistic approach.

Consider these examples from different parts of the country: Education and community leaders in Cincinnati have worked together over the past 20 years to build a system of community learning centers that now supports all the schools in the district. New York City houses the nation’s largest community school initiative, with 317 of its schools working in long-term partnership with public and private community resources. Oakland is close to finalizing its vision of becoming the nation’s first community school district.

All three districts have developed strong and sustained community engagement and systems of support at the district level with the help of university or nonprofit “backbone” partners (including, for example, the United Way and Children’s Aid for New York City; the Community Learning Center Institute and United Way for Cincinnati; and the Urban Strategies Council and Alameda County Public Health Department for Oakland) to help build capacity, manage shared data and help maximize funding.

What the three districts also have in common is a shared community-wide vision of what their schools should look like — and success in improving outcomes for students and families.

Three elements are vital to achieving such community-wide visions, according to a study I conducted.

The first is the sharing of data with local leaders to build political will and clarify goals, including studies showing that strong community schools can lead to better student and school outcomes. This data, in combination with pressure from community leaders, generates momentum.

The second element, clear communication strategies shaped by multiple stakeholders, ensures that everyone understands those goals. Public testimony in school committee meetings, for example, is one great way to spread the message.

Finally, a local steering committee helps drive political will and spread that clear communication. A committee that gathers key stakeholders around the same table can also fill service gaps and establish policy. Members may include the superintendent, school leaders and community advisers, as well as the heads of the housing, public safety and health services departments.

Such committees are vital to ensuring coordination among traditional governmental entities in service of education. The coordination gives schools more time to do what matters, including time to build and foster relationships with families and nonprofit partners. In fact, one subcategory of the federal grant program asks states to discuss how they will use a steering committee to govern, and to outline how they will scale community school districts.

Developing these larger visions in pursuit of the community school grants will amplify positive outcomes for students, their families and their communities.

Paul Reville, a Harvard professor who formerly served as the Massachusetts secretary of education, recently noted that “the community school philosophy is absolutely what we need in this moment. The challenge is . . . to systematize this approach rather than work it one school at a time.”

I could not agree more.

Emily Woods is head of education for the Richard K. Lubin Family Foundation. Her research focuses on school districts that have addressed the adoption of community school policy.

This story about community schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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NEW ORLEANS—Before the 2020-21 school year, Christa Talbott, a 20-year veteran of New Orleans schools, had never considered leaving the profession she loved this early.

But then came a dispiriting spring trying to stay connected to her students while Covid-19’s first wave ravaged her hometown. George Floyd’s murder that May left her reeling, exhausted and eager for racial reckoning on her home turf. Talbott, who is Black, began to push for change at a school that, despite its reputation for progressive politics, bore the last name of a Confederate official and dedicated proponent of school segregation, Robert Mills Lusher.

In the summer of 2020, Talbott and her colleagues asked for a meeting with the charter school’s leaders to discuss racial justice at Lusher, one of the city’s most coveted for families and teachers alike; they also created an antiracism group for teachers. It did not go over well. By the end of 2020, the 44-year-old was agonizing over whether the school year might be her last teaching there.

“I was tired of being quiet,” she says. “I was tired of sitting back so that white people could feel comfortable.”

Lusher, like America, has long had a teacher diversity problem: Slightly more than 20 percent of public school teachers—who include those at charter schools— in the U.S. identify as people of color, compared with more than half of students. Only 7 percent of teachers identify as Black. At Lusher, in 2020, 13 percent of teachers were Black compared with 22 percent of the students.

The research has been clear for years that many of our schools struggle less with recruiting diverse educators than retaining them: between 1988 and 2018, the number of teachers of color hired by the country’s schools increased at a faster rate than the number of white teachers, yet those diverse educators also left their positions much more quickly, on average.

Now, as Talbott’s story underscores, the problem could be poised to get worse, with Black teachers in particular feeling increased strain.

Into a burning house

Black teachers were more than twice as likely as other teachers in the winter of 2021 to say they planned to leave their jobs at the end of the 2020-21 school year, according to a report released by the RAND Corporation. And a slightly higher percentage of nonwhite teachers than white ones—45 percent vs. 42 percent—said that they were considering leaving their position last school year, researchers at the University of Arkansas’ College of Education & Health Professions found. (The gap was 30 percent vs. 22 percent, when teachers were asked if they were considering leaving because of reasons related to Covid-19.)

Despite all the recent and increasingly dire warnings of a teacher shortage in some parts of the country, we have too often failed to clarify who is most at risk from the departures: Black and Latino educators and the students of color who rely on them. Students of color perform better academically, and are more likely to stay in school, when they are exposed to teachers of their race or ethnicity. Meanwhile, many districts and schools continue to believe they can hire their way out of the teacher diversity problem—if they acknowledge it’s a problem at all—and fail to take on the hard work of transforming school culture.

“I think my voice was heard at Lusher—until it was something they didn’t want to hear.”

Christa Talbott, a 20-year veteran of New Orleans schools

“A lot of school and district leaders take the approach, ‘We don’t care how messy or untidy or oppressive our house is—just come in anyway,’” says Sharif El-Mekki, CEO of the Center for Black Educator Development, whose organization last fall co-released with the teacher leadership and advocacy organization Teach Plus a report that lays out steps school leaders should take to retain more Black educators.

“They have not spent a second thinking about what kind of environment they are recruiting people to,” says El-Mekki, who invokes Martin Luther King Jr.’s worry, expressed shortly before his death, that he had integrated Black Americans “into a burning house.” “That could stand for teachers of color entering racially hostile school environments today,” El-Mekki says.

Related: Black teachers ground down by racial battle fatigue after a year like no other

Starting several decades ago, several powerhouse groups and individuals invested in recruiting a more diverse teacher workforce, says Richard Ingersoll, a professor of education and policy at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and an expert on teacher demographics. In the 1980s, the Ford Foundation partnered with other organizations to recruit and prepare more teachers of color. About a decade ago, former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan set out to recruit 80,000 Black male teachers. And more recently the Kellogg Foundation partnered with several historically Black colleges and universities to boost the numbers of Black male educators.

Partly because of these and related efforts, the number of teachers from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups more than doubled over the last 30 years—from about 327,000 in the late 1980s to 810,000 in the 2017-18 school year. Yet research by Ingersoll and others has shown that teachers of color disproportionately serve in some of the most challenging schools, including those with high poverty rates and lower academic performance overall. And they leave at higher rates largely because of poor working conditions—including a lack of input in key decisions affecting their classrooms—not because of dissatisfaction with teaching more broadly.

“Recruitment is great,” says Ingersoll. “But if you don’t keep them, it’s like putting water in a bucket with holes in the bottom.” Federal and state data on teacher departures lag by a year or more, meaning we won’t have a conclusive picture of the pandemic’s impact on teacher diversity for years to come. Yet early data suggests that the pandemic is aggravating the leaky bucket problem.

The RAND study was based on surveys completed in early 2021—nearly one year into the pandemic—by more than 1,000 teachers across the country. Teachers of all racial groups reported high rates of frequent job-related stress (ongoing stress for teachers was far higher than that of the general population—78 percent compared with 40 percent).

Racial stress fatigue

For all the attention paid to teacher stress and shortages during the pandemic—perceived and real—too few people are talking about the special strains on teachers of color, says El-Mekki, including pushback against the teaching of racism in America. “So many are speaking of Covid-related stress, but we should strongly consider the ramifications of Covid-related stress on top of racial stress fatigue for teachers of color,” he says.

According to the RAND study, nearly half of Black teachers reported in the winter of 2021 that they were likely to leave their jobs at the end of the school year, compared with 23 percent of teachers overall. “That is concerning from a workforce diversity perspective,” says Elizabeth Steiner, the co-author of the report. “It’s crucial that school and district leaders address it.”

Prior to the pandemic, Talbott had spent a dozen mostly satisfied years teaching at Lusher. She arrived as an elementary teacher in 2008, drawn by the school’s racial diversity and stellar record in academics and the arts. Lusher enrolls students in kindergarten through 12th grade across its two buildings.

Sometimes, Talbott says, she was the first Black teacher her students had had at Lusher, even after she began teaching sixth-grade social studies in 2013; it meant a lot to her to provide students with that self-recognition and affirmation. She started the Black Student Union at the middle school and formed enduring friendships with several colleagues and Lusher families. One of Talbott’s daughters graduated from Lusher in 2021; the other still attends the high school.

Talbott experienced microaggressions at times. When teachers expressed concerns nearly a decade ago about a new textbook they’d been told to use, Talbott says an administrator told her, “I just feel like you like being difficult and contentious.” (Among other things, Talbott says the book contained grammatical errors and introduced instructional ideas that teachers did not think supported students’ needs.) Teaching during a pandemic was exhausting and frustrating, particularly during the stretches when Talbott had to do it remotely.

“I’m a teacher who thrives on connection,” she says. “The camera didn’t allow me to make the connections like I’m used to. That did something to my teaching spirit.”

Related: To increase and maintain teacher diversity, listen to teachers of color

Yet she never contemplated leaving the classroom until the summer of 2020. Not long after the murder of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer, Talbott and colleagues began pushing for a meeting with administrators to discuss the need for more dialogue about race at Lusher, where the share of white students has inched up in recent years, to nearly 60 percent. White students account for less than 10 percent of the city’s public school population overall, and they are concentrated at a handful of selective admissions schools like Lusher.

The teachers wanted to discuss the need for more anti-racist professional development at Lusher and the possibility of increasing diversity among Lusher’s leadership, including on the board of directors, whose seven members include two people of color, according to school administrators. They also wanted school officials to send a clear message to the community that Lusher supported Black Lives Matter.

They encountered mostly silence. Officials told us “they were not there to talk but only to listen,” according to Talbott. “They sat there stone-faced. It wasn’t a conversation—it was more us trying to encourage a conversation.” Over the next several weeks, the teachers tried to follow up but say they were stonewalled.

“They didn’t think we deserved an explanation,” says Jake Gleghorn, 33, who is Asian American and worked alongside Talbott. “They didn’t think we deserved a conversation. They didn’t think we knew anything they didn’t know.”

Talbott and Gleghorn say they believe some administrators were sympathetic to their concerns but ultimately took direction from the school’s long-time CEO, Kathy Riedlinger. (Riedlinger did not reply to a request for comment on Talbott and Gleghorn’s statement.)

Not long after the meeting, Talbott, Gleghorn and other colleagues created an anti-racist working group aimed at helping the school’s teachers become more knowledgeable on subjects of race and equity. Administrators called it secretive, according to Talbott, and told the teachers not to communicate about the working group using Lusher email.

“I think my voice was heard at Lusher—until it was something they didn’t want to hear,” Talbott says.

At the same time, many in the school community were pushing for change, including abandonment of the school name. Robert Mills Lusher had been a tax collector for the Confederacy and had resigned as state superintendent of schools in Louisiana rather than oversee a system that would not remain 100 percent segregated. (In the fall of 2021, Lusher’s board agreed to change the name, although a new one has not yet been selected.)

As the school year continued, the situation grew increasingly tense. Throughout the fall and early winter, Talbott thought more and more about resigning, even though she did not have another job lined up. “Ultimately it boiled down to me being a Black woman who had a voice and things to say that could make us stronger, and that not being valued and appreciated,” she says.

Talbott was not the only teacher of color questioning their future at the school. After agitating for change, Gleghorn found himself removed from leadership positions on two key school committees, focused on learning and diversity. “I was told they didn’t trust me,” he says, “which I’ve since interpreted as them not thinking I was loyal.”

“Because I was speaking my mind—and not white—they didn’t know how to work with me in a way that made them feel comfortable,” Gleghorn adds. “Had I been a white teacher, I think that there would have been more direct communication.”

A principal weighs in

Several of Talbott’s and Gleghorn’s concerns were corroborated in a grievance letter to the board sent by former Lusher High principal Steve Corbett, which was obtained by the The Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate.

The letter, written in December, 2020, said Riedlinger told administrators to “not engage in any dialogue” when teachers, including Talbott and Gleghorn, brought forward their concerns in the wake of Floyd’s death. It also says that Riedlinger at one point instructed administrators to stop speaking with the Anti-Defamation League; told Corbett to cancel a staff book club meeting to discuss White Fragility, about white people’s discomfort discussing race; and expressed concern that Lusher had provided teachers with a resource library of antiracist materials.

A Lusher spokeswoman did not address specific statements regarding Riedlinger but detailed several steps she said the school has taken toward racial equity over the last year and a half. “Corbett’s allegations were fully investigated by an independent firm and found not to merit any action by the school,” a Lusher spokeswoman said in a written statement.

Corbett has since left Lusher and now serves as CEO of New Orleans’ Audubon Schools.

Gleghorn and Talbott, too, are gone.

Up until the 2020-21 school year, Gleghorn says he had been in the pipeline for an administrative position at Lusher. “The events of the summer and fall of 2020 really cleared up for me that I didn’t want to work for these people,” he says. In the spring of 2021, Gleghorn accepted a job at the New Orleans Career Center, a nonprofit that provides high school students and adults access to career and technical training, as well as academic coursework.

Related: New Orleans’ uphill battle for more black and homegrown teachers

In April, Talbott announced at a community meeting that she would leave at the end of the school year. She made the specifics public—particularly the fact that she had no new job lined up—because she didn’t want school leaders to dismiss the departure by implying she left for something “bigger” or “better.”

“Real change would be open and honest conversations with all of the stakeholders in our school,” Talbott said at the meeting, reading from a prepared statement. “Real change would be immediate feedback to our students that have the courage to share their experiences. Real change would be me feeling that my voice, as a Black woman, is important.”

In a written statement, a Lusher spokeswoman, Cheron Brylski, described Talbott and Gleghorn as “quality and valued teachers” and said both had expressed a desire to leave for other opportunities before the pandemic. (Talbott denied this, as did Gleghorn. “There was no plan prior to the pandemic, prior to George Floyd,” she said. “I had talked to no one about leaving Lusher, period.”) Gleghorn and Talbott had numerous leadership opportunities, the statement said, but it did not address Gleghorn’s concern that he was removed with little explanation from leading the learning and diversity committees.

“I was tired of being quiet. I was tired of sitting back so that white people could feel comfortable.”

Christa Talbott, a 20-year veteran of New Orleans schools

Brylski denied that Lusher leaders obstructed teachers’ efforts at open conversation of race at the school in the months after George Floyd’s murder. “Our administration listened with respect and consideration, and no follow-up conversations were stonewalled,” she said, portraying the teachers as demanding “immediate action” while Lusher leadership adhered to a slower, “well-established and proven process.”

As a result of that process, administrators sent a school-wide communication in July 2020, which read, in part: “We affirm that Black lives matter (sic).To that end, we have defined an initial set of target concerns and action steps…We will continue to refine these as we hear and learn more.”

Takeru Nagayoshi, the 2020 Massachusetts Teacher of the Year, says it’s not surprising that teachers of color are feeling especially strained these days. They have long faced an “invisible tax” that for many has steepened over the last two years, says Nagayoshi, who’s known to friends as TK. “When you work or navigate predominantly white spaces, you feel the need to unpack race and racism,” he says. “If I’m not going to be the one who brings up DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) or center conversations on George Floyd or Stop Asian Hate, no one else is going to do it.”

Nagayoshi, 30, decided in August to leave his job teaching Advanced Placement English in the city of New Bedford for a job at an education technology company. He continues to love many parts of the teaching profession but cited burnout stemming from different factors: increased work hours and responsibilities; coping with decreased morale and a traumatized community; low pay; and a rigid schedule that made it difficult to find sufficient time for exercise or personal relationships.

“The balance of what was acceptable wasn’t there for me anymore,” Nagayoshi says.

Finding a better way forward

Schools may be struggling more than ever to retain teachers of color, but in some places, recruitment of diverse candidates has gone up during the pandemic. Mississippi, Massachusetts, and New Jersey are among states that, fearful of teacher shortages and facing hiring challenges due to the pandemic, temporarily removed or changed some barriers to entering the field—such as extending emergency licenses or adjusting test score thresholds—that often disproportionately hurt Black candidates, who are more likely to face barriers such as less access to college prep curriculum at their high schools.

A year and a half ago, officials in Mississippi temporarily waived many of the licensure exam requirements for new teachers, as well as test score requirements for students entering teacher preparation programs. The changes enabled Mari Williams, who is Black, to enter a teacher-preparation program for the first time. She has worked in Mississippi for years, first as a tutor and then as an assistant teacher. Yet her ACT score fell one point short of the minimum required to train for a teacher job. The waiver reignited her dream of running her own classroom.

“One of the things that convinced me to go back is that we have such a low number of African American educators across the board,” she says. “This is something I can do to bring diversity to the classroom.”

“If I’m not going to be the one who … centers conversations on George Floyd or Stop Asian Hate, no one else is going to do it.”

Takeru Nagayoshi, the 2020 Massachusetts Teacher of the Year

Preliminary data show that the waivers, which were due to end in 2022, have significantly boosted the diversity of teacher candidates in Mississippi. Between 2018 and 2020, the number of people of color entering educator preparation programs jumped by more than 500 percent. (The growth in the number of white candidates was about 44 percent.)

“We were already looking at a huge teacher shortage and we did not need to compound that crisis more with COVID,” says Debra Burson, the director of educator preparation at the Mississippi Department of Education. “We opened the gate rather than closed the gate.”

Related: Tears, sleepless nights and small victories: How first-year teachers are weathering the crisis

Yet without a plan to support the new teachers coming in, teacher diversity is unlikely to improve significantly in the long term. “We talk about cultural competence, and many Black educators are trying to navigate their colleagues’ and supervisors’ cultural incompetence on top of everything else,” says El-Mekki.

White educators and school leaders, as well as school-district and state policy-makers must do more to support teachers of color, according to the report released in the fall of 2021. They “are not expecting perfection, but they are expecting a commitment and plans to do better—and that it’s not just on them,” El-Mekki says.

The report advises putting in place curriculum rooted in students’ cultures and life experiences, and ensuring that Black teachers have access to affinity groups and mentorship. Schools have long been held accountable for all manner of data—everything from student test scores to suspension rates and number of hot school lunches served. They must now also be held publicly accountable for recruitment and retention of teachers of color, the report concludes. That includes school districts’ establishing, and publishing, clear goals when it comes to teacher diversity, and releasing school-climate and teacher-exit surveys, with results broken down by race.

“Very few districts have goals as it relates to teacher diversity,” says El-Mekki. “You can’t move forward if you don’t know where you want to go.”

In July, Lusher families sent the school’s board a letter—now signed by more than 250 parents—pushing for the exact things that El-Mekki encourages. “We are dismayed with the administration and board’s response to student and faculty calls to confront racism within our school community,” it said in part.

Lusher, through its spokeswoman, has repeatedly insisted on the school’s commitment to diversity, equity, and staff well-being. Fewer than 9 percent of Lusher’s academic staff has left since the start of the pandemic, Brylski said in her statement. And the departures include just two of 33 African American educators. More than half of new hires are people of color, as are two out of three principals. Lusher’s recent efforts, according to the statement, include the adoption of a K-8 antibias curriculum, development of a “micro-aggression reporting system”and a partnership with a Louisiana State University professor to shore up the school’s approach to diversity and wellness.

When it comes to the recent teacher departures—including Talbott’s and Gleghorn’s—the school says it “encourages all staff to pursue career advancement.”

Both Gleghorn and Talbott are happy in their new jobs but say it wasn’t career advancement that precipitated their decision to leave.

After she gave notice, Talbott began overhauling her résumé, which hadn’t been updated in 20 years, and she met with a job coach. Early in the summer of 2021, she started a job with a company working to build a new social studies curriculum for public schools and districts. “My hope is to center the voices of the indigenous, of women, of Black people,” Talbott says. “Normally, when you are looking at history, the voices that are centered are those of landowning white men.”

Talbott has no regrets about the job move. “It’s a selfless profession, but I had to be selfish,” she says. “I didn’t want to be in a job where I dreaded getting up every day and going to work.”

Yet she cried on the first day of the 2021-22 school year last August while watching students across New Orleans returning to school. She missed the kids. Her departure had never been about them. It had been about following her mother’s lifelong advice: Go where you feel valued.

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Learn more at hechingerreport.org.

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When I started my career as a fourth grade bilingual teacher, I was given two binders. One included academic standards for my state. The other was filled with the English language development (ELD) standards.

My job was to ensure that my students, all of whom were categorized as English learners (ELs), met these grade-level and proficiency standards by the end of the year.

This required extra time to create my own lesson plans, adapt our school curriculum and find supplemental materials to help my students connect with the grade-level content. That’s because the curriculum I was given didn’t consider their language needs and was devoid of the cultural richness EL students bring to the classroom.

Twenty years later, not much has changed.

Though English learners are the fastest-growing student population in U.S. schools, their needs are often seen and treated as secondary rather than as of equal importance to their peers’. And that has resulted in policies, textbooks, training and assessments for our nation’s 5 million ELs that seem like an afterthought. They are subpar compared to what their non-EL peers receive.

With a new secretary of education, Miguel Cardona, who was once categorized as an English learner himself, we hope these students will no longer be sidelined by our education system.

Related: OPINION: Creating better post-pandemic education for English learners

While there are no quick fixes that will immediately improve the education of our nation’s ELs, there are concrete steps that Cardona and the Department of Education can take.

The first, and most immediate, is to provide direct guidance and strong expectations for how states and school districts should include English learners in their Covid-19 recovery plans.

English learners have been among the students most impacted by inequitable instruction during this pandemic. Most state reopening plans did not include explicit guidance on remote learning for ELs, causing many school districts and schools to figure it out on their own.

The result has been very little language support for ELs, on top of compounding factors like limited internet connectivity and ineffective communication with parents, and a drop in EL enrollment and attendance.  Guidance from our new secretary of education would send a strong message to school districts and states: Teaching and learning plans and budgets must include integrated supports for English learners to address the academic impacts this pandemic has had on them.

This is not a time to return to the status quo, but rather to innovate and build a new system for our English learners – one in which they are no longer an afterthought.

Plans should include, but not be limited to, high-quality materials, support services to work one-on-one or in small groups and afterschool and summer learning opportunities for English learners.

Second, Cardona must elevate and strengthen the way the Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) advances EL education. Cardona can create a task force or convene EL experts and educators to work with OELA to provide real-time guidance on what quality EL instruction and materials should look like.

To date, most of the innovation on this topic has been driven by state leaders, such as those in Rhode Island and California. The U.S. Department of Education has an important role to play in highlighting what works so that other states do not have to start from scratch.

Cardona and his team can also move the needle when it comes to how we view the role of educators and education in the lives of English learners. Historically, our approach has focused too much on compliance and testing, with funding incentives that put teachers under pressure to reclassify their English learners as “Fluent English Proficient” as quickly as possible.

While English proficiency is important, the heavy emphasis on reclassification often gets in the way of meaningful learning and tending to what English learners actually need. And often the supports stop once a student is reclassified.

Instead, we need a new system that incentivizes real learning in the classroom. For example, math departments can collaborate with EL departments to build activities and lesson plans that ELs can relate to. And curriculum should have integrated language support so that ELs have access to the same grade-level concepts as their peers.

For the first time, we have a former English learner in the Department of Education; he can not only guide education policy, but lead it.

This is not a time to return to the status quo, but rather to innovate and build a new system for our English learners — one in which they are no longer an afterthought, but deserving of an education that allows them to thrive.

Crystal Gonzales is executive director of the English Learners Success Forum in Washington, D.C.

This story about post-pandemic EL education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona is refusing to back down on a federal requirement that states administer standardized tests this year, although a letter to state leaders from the U.S. Department of Education last month said that states will have flexibility on how to apply results. States concerned about the safety of administering a test during a pandemic may implement shortened versions of assessments. 

This relief from the hammer of accountability, if not from the tests themselves, has gotten a mixed reception from anti-testing advocates, school leaders and teachers who are still trying to ready schools for face-to-face learning. They’re right: Greater accountability and standardized testing won’t give students the technology they need, give teachers the necessary PPE to stay safe, nor will it give families the income to better house and feed themselves during the pandemic so that kids can focus on learning. And if there was ever a time to see how misguided our accountability systems are in relation to addressing root causes of achievement disparities, it’s now.

On its face, relieving students, teachers and families from the grip of test-based accountability makes sense. We know student achievement, particularly in low-income schools and districts, will dip due to circumstances related to the pandemic and social distancing. We know the source of the decline.

And we currently use standardized tests well beyond what they were designed to do, which is to measure a few areas of academic achievement. Achievement tests were not designed for the purposes of promoting or grading students, evaluating teachers or evaluating schools. In fact, connecting these social functions to achievement test data corrupts what the tests are measuring. In statistics this is called Campbell’s Law. When a score has been connected to a teacher’s pay or job status, educators will inevitably be drawn toward teaching to the test, and schools toward hiring to the test and paying to the test, rather than making sure students get the well-rounded education they need and deserve.

When the effects of structural problems on student learning are ignored, teachers and school boards are blamed for any deficiencies in student performance.

However, there is still a role for testing and assessment. We need to know the full extent of the damage from the last 12 months, beyond the impact on academics. For one, the federal government should have states take a roll call to see who hasn’t been in school; the government must also assess families’ technological needs if it is to properly support the states financially. In other words, states should be using multiple assessments to address the range of needs of students and their teachers. This is what the focus of academic and non-academic assessment should have always been, not a means to punish the people who are dealing with conditions that erode the quality of an education.

Related: The four steps to safely reopen schools and save our nation

As many have said in different contexts, the pandemic exposed existing structural inequalities that are driving racial disparities. This is as true in education as it is in other sectors. Limited broadband and computer access, home and food insecurity, deferred maintenance on buildings, uneven employment benefits among nonteaching school staff and fewer resources for schools that serve children of color were throttling academic achievement before the pandemic, and they will certainly widen achievement gaps during and after.

As a condition for receiving a waiver, Cardona is requiring states to report on the number of chronically absent students and students’ access to computers and high-speed internet, a request that raised the ire of some Republican lawmakers. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., objected in a March 25 letter that the requirements for information on chronic absenteeism and access technologies as conditions are “not permitted under ESEA as amended by ESSA. They are both outside the scope of what states are seeking to be waived and violate specific prohibitions on the Secretary requiring states to report new data beyond existing reporting requirements.”

Cardona is right in his effort to use tests properly. Gathering information is essential if we really care about closing gaps in educational opportunity and achievement. When the effects of structural problems on student learning are ignored, teachers and school boards are blamed for any deficiencies in student performance. Racism ends up pointing a finger at Black education leaders, teachers and kids for disparities that result from systemic racism.

Related: The next education secretary must know about much more than education

This is why we should rethink how we use tests in the future.

States have historically found ways to starve majority-Black and -Brown districts of the resources they need to thrive. Let’s be clear: We need to hold racist policies and practices accountable.

Segregation and school financing systems that reinforce segregated housing arrangements reflect the application of racist attitudes about Black people and communities that show up in outcomes. And since No Child Left Behind ushered in an era of accountability in 2001, those accountability systems have largely failed to address those sources of inequality. Black districts in particular have felt as much pain from testing as from the negative conditions that surround schooling. School and district takeovers, mass firings and the imposition of charter schools have not been applied fairly or evenly because testing didn’t identify the real problems.

Amid a pandemic, testing is a necessary inconvenience to help us understand how we can better address structural racism and other root causes of academic disparities. But if tests aren’t used as a way to support Black districts, students and families by leading to solutions for structural inequities, then they will only facilitate the epidemic of racism that existed before the pandemic.

This story about school standardized testing was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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One of the first images to greet visitors to Taylor High School in Cleves, Ohio, is a mural dedicated to Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize recipient, who was shot in the head because she believes girls should be able to go to school.

The mural, which stretches the length of a football field, intersperses student artwork with text from the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was inspired by a group of eighth graders who, in December 2012, just months after Yousafzai’s shooting, had attended a human rights conference in Canada. Until then, “Malala” had seemed a mere headline from a faraway place. At the conference, her story brought home the importance of global awareness.

“The conference is about opening up your eyes to how big the world is,” said Scott Hannum, a  Taylor alumnus who attended the conference and who helped organize the mural project; he is now a college senior. The mural represents a communitywide effort in Cleves, a village about 13 miles northwest of Cincinnati, and was supported by the school’s athletics department, student council, parent-teacher organization and the local Kiwanis Club, among other groups.

For years, the Three Rivers Local School District, which includes Taylor High School,has relied on UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, to help broaden minds in a school environment that library media specialist Marney Murphy describes as “sheltered.”  

Murphy has regularly escorted small groups of students to UNESCO-sponsored programs such as the 2012 human rights conference in Winnipeg, Canada. In 2008, the school helped pilot UNESCO’s “Breaking the Silence: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project,” a resource for educators that addresses the history and scope of slavery. Murphy, drawing from the district’s tradition of hosting naturalization ceremonies every three years, has contributed a curriculum covering the process by which immigrants become U.S. citizens.

The Biden administration offers a fresh opportunity for the United States to return to the table and to share its resources with an interdependent global community.

The school’s relationship with UNESCO came to a halt on Jan. 1, 2019, when the Trump administration withdrew from the transnational organization, which the United States helped found in 1945.  In so doing, the former president has deprived U.S. students, researchers, scholars and teachers like Murphy of knowledge, resources and expertise that underscore UNESCO’s commitment to education as a foundation for a peaceful, just and sustainable world. 

UNESCO is perhaps best known for its World Heritage Sites, but it is much more than that. It publishes the Global Education Monitoring Report, which collects and analyzes data used by education policymakers around the world to strengthen their education systems. UNESCO also develops educational tools on topics such as gender equality, global citizenship, education in emergencies, and climate change.  

“UNESCO has been at the forefront [of] issues that a lot of American teachers … are increasingly focusing on,” says Aaron Benavot, a professor of education policy at the University at Albany and a former director of the monitoring report.

Related: STUDENT VOICE — A Biden administration will bring much-needed change for international students

Trump isn’t the first U.S. president to abandon the often-beleaguered UNESCO. Under former President Ronald Reagan, the United States withdrew in 1984, citing poor management and conflicting values. It rejoined about 20 years later during the administration of George W. Bush. Bush described re-entry as “a symbol of our commitment to human dignity.” In 2011, after UNESCO recognized Palestine as a full member, the Obama administration cut funding but maintained its membership.

The reasons given in 2017 by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for withdrawal were “mounting arrears,” the need for fundamental reform and, perhaps most significantly, an “anti-Israel bias” at UNESCO.

UNESCO has played a meaningful role for U.S. schools. Its Associated Schools Project Network, of which Three Rivers was a member, comprises more than 10,000 schools worldwide, and a similar network for universities supports international research collaboration. These programs have continued without U.S. participation under the Trump administration. The world has since lost access to U.S. resources and expertise, and vice versa.

In March, the organization began coordinating an education response to the pandemic, which it estimates has disrupted the lives of more than 1.6 billion learners in more than 190 countries. UNESCO aims not only to ensure that their learning continues, but also to reverse a pandemic-era rise in child labor, early marriages and child abuse.

That initiative could have been an opportunity for U.S. schools, universities and nonprofit organizations to weigh in on solutions to a global crisis that will have long-term implications worldwide. Without a seat at the table, though, the U.S. voice has been muted.

That is one reason why “it is crucial for the U.S. government to rejoin UNESCO and support UNESCO’s work — to ensure that every child has access to quality education,” said Jennifer Rigg, executive director of the Global Campaign for Education-U.S., a Washington-based coalition that promotes education as a human right.

The Biden administration offers a fresh opportunity for the United States to return to the table and to share its resources with an interdependent global community. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joe Biden played a key role in shepherding the United States’ return to UNESCO in 2002. The newly inaugurated president’s swift reversal of several of Trump’s nationalist policies, along with his more recent announcement that the United States will rejoin the United Nations Human Rights Council, offers hope that he will also restore the U.S.-UNESCO relationship.

Writing in Foreign Policy magazine, Kristen Cordell  proposes a role for first lady Jill Biden, a community college professor who spoke at two UNESCO events during the Obama administration. In her first official event as first lady, Biden celebrated teachers in a virtual gathering: “Student by student, you are changing the world,” she told them.

Back in Ohio, the mural that runs along a prominent hallway in Taylor High School attests to the impact UNESCO has had. After two years with no UNESCO connection, library media specialist Murphy says she is “hanging by a thread,” but hasn’t given up. Murphy still found a way for some students to attend a nuclear nonproliferation conference in Winnipeg, Canada, in 2019, and for others to volunteer in an orphanage in Bolivia last year.

“It’s important for everyone to understand that they are just one small part of this world,” Murphy said. “And we all need to play a part in contributing to [its] betterment.”

Mary Beth Marklein is a doctoral candidate at George Mason University, where she is studying issues related to diplomacy and international education. 

This story about UNESCO’s role for U.S. schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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President Joe Biden began his term in office calling for unity. To reach that end, some of his initial policies must create common ground to rebuild a society decimated by Covid-19, conspiracy theories and white supremacy. Perhaps the only thing we can all agree on right now is that we must reopen schools safely, and as soon as possible.

Among the more than 30 executive orders issued in Biden’s first week in office, the Executive Order on Supporting the Reopening and Continuing Operation of Schools and Early Childhood Education Providers calls for a plan to do just that. It’s crazy to think we’ve been waiting for almost a year for something as simple as a plan of action. Finally, Biden and his nominee for secretary of education, Miguel Cardona, can make significant strides by getting our kids off video calls and back into school buildings. Cardona already has some experience: As education commissioner for Connecticut, he insisted on reopening schools safely during the pandemic, a position that helped him earn Biden’s nomination.

But the new administration must understand that the United States needs to heal medically and socially. Will getting schools going heal the country? Maybe not by itself, but reopening is a crucial first step to developing a new normal post-Covid. To unify us around schools, the plan must accomplish four significant goals, some included in the executive order to reopen education facilities, some not: provide the requisite resources to reopen schools safely, systematically vaccinate school personnel and students, extend the school year into the summer months, and revive course content in civics and history, a critical step toward healing the fractures dividing our country.

Related: Rewrite the history textbooks, or the white supremacist violence will continue

First, reopen schools safely: The executive order to reopen schools calls for a couple of small but important first steps — collecting data “to fully understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students and educators,” and setting evidence-based guidance on whether and how education providers can reopen for in-person learning, including “mitigation measures such as cleaning, masking, proper ventilation, and testing.” We’ve been waiting since the end of February for this basic information, which will give K-12 schools, childcare providers, Head Start programs, and higher education institutions a comprehensive strategy to reopen.

Although simple, this first step, reopening schools, requires significant collaboration with other federal agencies, including, importantly, the Department of Health and Human Services, and with different educational institutions and a diverse array of state, local and tribal jurisdictions. And to carry out the guidance, K-12 schools and other education providers will need a lot of money. Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief bill includes a $170 billion stimulus package for education providers; without the full amount, any reopening plan will place student, teachers and communities at risk.

Students must be held accountable for learning the truth about American history and racism in this country.

The public must push Biden to do more to achieve the goals that aren’t included in the executive order to reopen schools. Because even if the money comes through, and the plans are airtight, reopening strategies will be dead in the water without a coordinated vaccine effort that makes sure school personnel are prioritized quickly and efficiently.

Therefore, second, the Biden administration must systematically vaccinate educators and others who serve our children. I have argued before that teachers, cafeteria workers, school bus drivers and other education personnel should be next in line for the Covid vaccine. I also believe school nurses can assist the vaccination plans by giving shots to children. Prioritizing schools as a site for vaccinations can accelerate the pace of distribution. Doing so would also recognize the close connection between keeping schools open and getting people back to work. An executive order can help make this happen.

Related: Teachers, cafeteria workers and school bus drivers should be next in line for the Covid vaccine

The third step in any sound reopening plan is to understand that getting the school doors open this spring will be pointless if they’re shuttered again two months later for summer vacation. Schools must be opened, and then schools must stay open for much of the summer. Students’ collective absence from in-person school means they will need extensive facetime with their teachers if we’re ever going to recoup learning losses. Although data on learning loss is still coming in, we have enough information now to say with certainty that children, especially low-income children and children of color, are falling behind in reading and math. We must make up for lost time in the summer months.

At the same time, we can’t repeat the mistakes we’ve made for the last 20 years and focus on math and reading to the exclusion of other core subjects. Last year was a hard lesson in what happens when the public lacks an understanding of science and social studies. We are ailing socially and politically. The failed insurrection on Jan. 6 was an outbreak of that sickness. The storming of the Capitol building made clear that the United States cannot afford to raise another generation of children on falsehoods.

Students must be held accountable for learning the truth about American history and racism in this country. White supremacy is facilitated by bad history and civic education. Racism is the mother of conspiracies. Racism spawned horrible ideas and beliefs like drapetomania, eugenics, “the lost cause,” and birtherism to provide cover for immoral, unjustifiable actions.

That’s why Biden’s fourth step should be to encourage schools to revive history and civics education. Our children need more time getting a quality education. Where last summer was spent in division and unrest, we should use this one to heal.

Philosopher John Dewey wrote in “Democracy and Education,” that education “is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” The only way to save our nation is to do whatever it takes to reopen our schools safely and as soon as we can, and then make sure they teach the kind of civics and history that encourages democracy and inclusion.

The executive order to reopen schools can be a start, but we the people must ultimately heal ourselves, using the information that builds community. Schools can be the common ground that we’ve been looking for.

This story about the executive order to reopen schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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For four years, opponents of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos deplored her private school priorities, so it was hardly expected she’d be hailed as a hero for a sudden epiphany disassociating herself from President Donald Trump and resigning.

The most succinct reaction to her meaningless resignation 13 days before her term ended came in a two-word statement from a longtime nemesis, the American Federation of Teachers: Good riddance.

Instead of being praised as one of the first Trump cabinet members to bow out in the wake of violence surrounding Monday’s Capitol takeover, DeVos is prompting a fresh wave of cynicism and antipathy, along with a fervent hope for better policies ahead once Miguel Cardona, President-elect Joe Biden’s appointee for the job, takes over.

“Betsy DeVos has been a total disaster for students’ civil rights for four years as Education Secretary and gets no credit now for resigning 13 days before inauguration,” The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights coalition, said in a tweet.

It was only toward the end of her resignation letter that DeVos mentioned the very constituency many believe have been harmed most by her tenure: children.

To be sure, DeVos made it clear she’s had no change of heart over her controversial and in many cases unsuccessful policies, including a push for vouchers that fell short and her failed directive ordering states to redirect coronavirus funds to private schools (three federal judges ruled against her). She’s also been excoriated for rolling back civil rights protections both for minority children and for transgender students.

DeVos “enthusiastically sent our taxpayer dollars to schools that explicitly and actively discriminate against LGBTQ+ students,” Eliza Byard, the executive director of the advocacy group GLSEN, said in a statement. “She willfully destroyed programs and approaches carefully designed to protect the civil rights of Black and Brown students and students with disabilities.”

Byard was among the critics who would have preferred to see DeVos support invoking the 25^th amendment for removing Trump from office, to “protect the nation from this President’s unhinged support for white supremacist violence.”

Instead of criticizing a president she has been unfailingly loyal to, DeVos used her farewell letter earlier this week to urge Congress to reject Biden’s education agenda. On her way out, she defended her school choice, pro-voucher agenda.

“We have sparked a national conversation about putting students and parents in charge of education, leading to expanded school choice and education freedom in many states,” DeVos noted, in a self-serving letter that touted her accomplishments in restoring “the proper federal role by returning power to states, communities, educators and parents.”

It was only toward the end of her resignation letter that DeVos mentioned the very constituency many believe have been harmed most by her tenure: children.

“Impressionable children are watching all of us, and they are learning from us. I believe we each have a moral obligation to exercise good judgment and model the behavior we hope they would emulate,” DeVos wrote.

DeVos has long been a controversial figure, enraging advocacy groups for favoring for-profit colleges that may leave students drowning in debt, and appointing several executives from the for-profit college industry to high-level positions overseeing their former companies and others.

During the pandemic, she pushed schools to reopen without offering federal support, guidelines or money, at a time when many public-school parents had little choice and were desperate for help.

In fact, she insisted it was not her responsibility.

Related: Endangered public schools need federal leadership more than ever

I asked Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, for some perspective, especially since he agrees with many aspects of her pro-school-choice agenda.

“Betsy DeVos has turned out to be a terrible champion for the ideas she cared about.”

– Michael Petrilli, Fordham Institute.

“Betsy DeVos has turned out to be a terrible champion for the ideas she cared about,” Petrilli told me. During the pandemic, he noted, “she abdicated her responsibility, and that was a real shame. She hurt the very causes she cared about so much.”

Still, some school-choice advocates disagreed with the torrent of criticism DeVos faced in her resignation.

“There is certainly reason to say she should have left Trump a while ago, but I see no cowardice in how she did her job,” tweeted Neal McCluskey, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the conservative Cato Institute. “She put up with massive, insulting personal abuse for four years. It takes guts to do that.”

The three-million member National Education Association was less forgiving.

“She has failed our students yet again when they needed her most. Her complicity, cowardice, and complete incompetence will be her legacy,” noted Becky Pringle, the organization’s president.

And Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, called her “the worst Secretary of Education in history.”

Without explanation, DeVos responded, “You know not of what you speak,” via Twitter.

Pringle struck an optimistic note, though. “We will build a new public education system to ensure it is one where all students — no matter who they are or where they live — have access and opportunity to a racially just and high-quality education,’’ she said.

Petrilli, too, said he was looking forward. “Her leaving is a very good thing for education reform,” Petrilli said. And he is enthusiastic about Cardona. “I think he sounds like the right man for the job, someone not all that interested in seeing himself in the headlines,’’ he said. “We need to bring people together and help schools and school systems to face the enormous challenges ahead.”

This story about Betsy Devos was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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