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Coronavirus and the Classroom: Policy, Preparedness, and Protection
Photo by Anne Ekedahl De Biasi
“If this pandemic has taught us one valuable thing about our education system, it is that we cannot just return to normal. Normal did not—and does not—work for our nation’s students from low-income backgrounds and students of color who experience inequities embedded in classrooms and school buildings so deeply that it took a world-wide pandemic to fully unmask them and for state and national leaders to call them out by name. We’ve known that these inequities have existed, but our nation and its leaders have not yet taken the steps needed to eliminate them. This is our moment to do that.”
—John B. King Jr., president and CEO of The Education Trust
Anne Ekedahl De Biasi, MHA
WE in the World consultant
Coronavirus and the Classroom: Policy, Preparedness, and Protection
From our youngest learners to those in college and beyond, students have suffered under COVID-19. All students have lost in-person learning, and many have lost access to mental health treatment they received at school. The pandemic has also exposed inequities that students living in poverty and students of color face.  Research is showing that the pandemic will undo months of academic gains for all students. Worse, it is likely to widen the achievement gap as some students continue to make academic gains and others can’t due to the barriers they face, like reliable internet access, loss of a family member due to COVID or job loss in the family.  
 
While preschools, schools, colleges and universities are making plans for the fall, knowing they will have to catch students up, they lack the resources to prepare for a safe reopening. No doubt, more funding to help schools and universities open safely will be included in the next COVID-related legislation Congress passes. To address the growing inequities in education, these resources will need to be distributed equitably among high-poverty and low-poverty schools and colleges and should be targeted to students impacted the most. We all wonder about the impact of COVID-19 on generations. We can predict the impact on students, and we owe it to them to prioritize equity in our response and recovery.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Leveraging Pre-K to Stem COVID-19 Learning Losses and Protect Our Youngest Students
by K atherine Patterson

High-quality, accessible Pre-K delivers short and long-term benefits for children, helps fight inequality, and is one of the best investments any city can make. Difficult as it may be, protecting Pre-K funding now is an opportunity for city leaders to lay the groundwork for better resident health, sustained economic growth while showing their commitment to social justice and racial equality.
Survey: Students of Color Report Greater Academic, Emotional Toll From Pandemic

In an online survey from the Global Strategy Group and The Education Trust, students of color and low income students reported greater academic, financial and emotional tolls from the COVID-19 pandemic than did the general student population.

The survey, conducted online from May 14-19, collected feedback from a pool of 1,010 two-year, four-year and undergraduate certificate students nationwide.
Photo by Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times
Research Shows Students Falling Months Behind During Virus Disruptions

New research suggests that by September, most students will have fallen behind where they would have been if they had stayed in classrooms, with some losing the equivalent of a full school year’s worth of academic gains. Racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps will most likely widen because of disparities in access to computers, home internet connections and direct instruction from teachers.
Students Will Return to Campus Traumatized—Universities Need to be Prepared
by  S ara Simons

College students have experienced a collective mass trauma since the onset of COVID-19. Millions left for spring break in March only to be told that they could not return to campus and would need to finish out the semester online. Many scrambled to access textbooks, laptops, and broadband strong enough to hold a video connection as they returned to their childhood bedrooms or secured makeshift housing.

As professors attempted to learn how to unmute ourselves over Zoom, many of our students faced terrifying uncertainty as they lost their jobs and dealt with unsafe living situations.
Photo by Robert F. Bukaty / AP / Shutterstock
What Do College Students Think of Their Schools' Reopening Plans?

Young people attend college to learn how to think, and thinking is rarely accomplished in solitude. Thinking outside of any conversation—the sort in which it is possible to look your interlocutors in the eye, unmediated by a screen—is difficult beyond measure. Learning alone is nearly impossible. As the pandemic-era explosion of online reading groups illustrates, we need others to help us understand, to articulate and repeat ideas in ways that make them stick in the memory, and to stay engaged.
Protecting underrepresented students and residents during COVID-19
by  American Medical Association

It is the responsibility of the AMA to advocate for medical students, to act to reverse the historic active exclusion of racially marginalized groups (specifically, Blacks, Latinx and Native Americans) from the practice of medicine and to drive advancement of multiple dimensions of diversity in the medical profession. Broader initiatives to foster long-term change in medicine and address inequities in the entire United States educational system are imperative and are underway.

Current disruptions related to COVID-19, however, may amplify underlying inequities in our educational system, similar to the pandemic’s role in exacerbating health inequities. Recent societal unrest in response to ongoing public racist acts of violence further compounds immediate concerns. Detailed examples of pressing risks for inequity in educational outcomes are provided here.
ICE VISA ANNOUNCEMENT AND THE FATE OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS
Photo by Gregory Bull/AP
Why Trump's move to force international students to take in-person classes this fall is being blasted as harmful

ICE’s announcement is either an attempt to bully colleges into having classes in person throughout the fall no matter what public health considerations might call for or a cruel stroke to disenfranchise international students.

Making America inhospitable to international students is wrong for higher education and for our country. Some 1 million international students attend U.S. colleges and universities annually, contributing greatly to this country’s intellectual and cultural vibrancy.

They also yield an estimated economic impact of $41 billion and support more than 450,000 U.S. jobs.
Photo by Jake Belcher
Trump administration rescinds foreign students rule

The Trump administration on Tuesday rescinded a policy that would have stripped visas from international students whose courses move exclusively online amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The move comes after the policy announcement last week sparked a flurry of litigation, beginning with a suit brought by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), followed by California's public colleges and later a coalition of 17 states, among other challenges.

Judge Allison Burroughs, a federal district judge in Boston who was expected to preside over oral arguments in the Harvard-MIT case, made the surprise announcement at the beginning of the court proceedings Tuesday.
Arcadia University Students Perform Spoken Word in Response to COVID-19

In response to the coronavirus pandemic, English major and Because Arcadia blogger Daijah Patton ’22 performs an original spoken word poem, "Blink of an Eye," with and for her classmates across the country.
Dear Future Generations

Future generations,
Hear me loud and clear when I say this:
Please don't be selfish,
Don't dismiss
The pain of others, nor their anguish.
Don't dismiss
The needs of the homeless
For even though they have a heart,
They don't know where home is.
Just by caring, is a start.
Future generations,
Let's not spread hate-
The infectious disease that of suicide,
Raises the rate.
Likewise,
Let's take the reigns of racism
And stop the violent protests,
Because no problem is ever solved by a misconstrued schism.
Rather, Future Generation,
Embrace one another as brother embraces sister
And accept that you're all alike in that you are different.
―  m0n1 "Dear Future Generations"
Photo by  Diego PH  on  Unsplash
BRIGHT SPOTS
Gateway Educational Services Offers Equity Learning in Santa Barbra

Connie Alexander and Audrey Gamble are two African American women who founded Gateway Educational Services in Santa Barbara in 2009.

The nonprofit program, which provides assessment-based tutoring for K-12 students, has a track record of tremendous success in preparing kids for college and beyond.

In the Covid-19 era of remote learning the Gateway program has embraced the challenge and provided students with the tools to thrive in non-traditional learning environments.
Stepping Up and Helping Out
Universities and their students are helping coronavirus response in a myriad of ways

Whether they're producing 3-D-printed face shields, mixing do-it-yourself hand sanitizer, providing free babysitting services or organizing collection drives for safety gear, members of the higher ed community are supporting front-line workers fighting the coronavirus pandemic.
Photo by Oregon State University
TOOLS TO BUILD WELL BEING
20x30 Learning and Action Network

20x30 is focused on accelerating impactful, equitable change by learning together, building new relationships, and facilitating collective action with a network of diverse thinkers and doers to transform the lives of 20 million students in higher education by 2030. All are welcome and needed.
Child Trends Ways to Promote Children’s Resilience to the COVID-19 Pandemic 

Child Trends has complied a list of protective factors to implement in alleviating the stressors of the pandemic for children and to help them adapt positively to adversities such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Johns Hopkins University eSchool+ Initiative Reopening Policy Tracker

This analysis explores education recovery plans put forth by states, territories, and national organizations to examine the ways these plans are designed to support students and teachers.

Importantly, this ongoing analysis offers a view of state recovery plans at a snapshot in time; there may have been changes or updates to these plans since this analysis was conducted.
Community Commons Campus Well Being Guide

The Campus Well Being Guide aims to help campus leaders, working through multi-stakeholder partnerships or coalitions with students, faculty, and staff, discover their own formula for success. It helps campus leaders develop a shared understanding of campus well-being through dialogue, lifts up actionable resources and inspirational stories, provides a flexible decision support tool, and amplifies the work of committed partners in the field of student and campus well-being.
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Policy and Tools Corner

  1. States can do more to help students access nutritious school meals during pandemic-related school closures
  2. COVID-19 Planning Considerations Guidance for School Re-entry
  3. COVID-19 State Database of Resource & Policy Considerations The Hunt Institute Policy Considerations
  4. Recommendations for Prioritizing Equity in Response to COVID-19 11 Ways Governors Can Use Their Federal Stimulus Funds to Prioritize Education Equity
  5. COVID-19 Impact on Education Equity Resources and Responses
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