What is Minnesota’s plan to address the educational needs of our “lost generation” of students in the wake of COVID-19?

Minnesota adults—all of us, collectively—bear responsibility for the welfare of our state’s children. Yet too often over the last year the educational needs of our children, especially the most vulnerable, have not been given the priority they deserve.

Even now, more than a year into the pandemic, there is not a comprehensive plan to remediate the harms our children have suffered as many school buildings remained shuttered for a full academic year.

Minnesota has long struggled with opportunity and achievement gaps that are among the worst in the country, with far too many children of color and lower-income children throughout the state left behind. Now the havoc wreaked by the pandemic—with many distance learners floundering—has worsened these inequities.

Unless we act now, this will lead to a “lost generation” of students.

We can—and must—do better by responding to the pandemic and improving education for all Minnesota children.

Making it a top priority to get students safely back into classrooms as quickly as possible

Simply put, students have already lost too much learning time, and we need to prioritize their return to the classroom. This is especially true for younger students: research has demonstrated that young children may be less likely to spread the coronavirus, and many public health experts express deep concern about the wide-ranging toll beyond learning loss, including social and emotional harm, that children will suffer as a result of prolonged absence from the classroom. Federal health officials have weighed in with a call for returning children to the nation’s classrooms as soon as possible, saying the “preponderance of available evidence” indicates that in-person instruction can be carried out safely as long as appropriate precautions are maintained. As Dr. Anthony Fauci put it: if a choice must be made, we should “close the bars and keep the schools open.”

Implementing statewide assessments to provide data on how far behind students are

Once we get students back into school, we need to know how far behind they’ve fallen in order to help them catch up. With the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) cancelled in the spring of 2020, Minnesota lost valuable data on how the pandemic affected academic outcomes. This makes implementing the state exams more important than ever. According to the Center for American Progress, the main reason to administer assessments this year—particularly the state academic assessment—is to “better understand and address the extent of the gaps in education among students and student populations that have been made worse by the coronavirus pandemic.” As the Washington Post editorial board wrote, “How can schools create plans to make up for covid-related learning losses if those losses haven’t been measured?”

Investing significant resources in providing academic tutors to combat COVID learning loss

Given how far behind many students will be, we should develop a corps of academic tutors to help students catch up. A recent report from a team of economists showed that even lightly trained volunteers can drive significant academic gains. According to the paper, tutoring offers the potential for transformative academic impacts for the millions of students who have fallen behind. Recently, national education leaders have called for a massive investment in tutors for struggling students, with one noted academic calling on President Biden to create a “Marshall Plan” for tutoring to provide hundreds of thousands of jobs to recent college graduates while also providing one of the “most effective strategies” for supporting struggling students.

But we cannot wait for Washington to act. Minnesota should provide an example for the rest of the nation to follow by instituting a robust tutoring corps.

Aggressive remedial plans, an extended school calendar, and safe and productive spaces for students to learn

Students will never catch up if we simply go back to “typical” school schedules and classroom learning environments. Schools and districts must develop aggressive plans to provide remedial instruction for students, enact an extended school calendar (longer school days and an extended school year, according to researchers at Michigan State University), and safe and productive spaces for students to learn—both during the remainder of the pandemic and beyond. During the pandemic, communities across the country developed learning pods, including for students from low-income backgrounds. There’s no reason to think students won’t continue to require these types of settings. As outlined in an August 2020 StarTribune op-ed: “The prior way of doing things has been disrupted — we can’t allow status quo thinking to constrain our response.”

Outreach plans to get students back in schools, and better engagement with families, even after students return to classrooms

One positive development of the switch to predominantly remote learning is that many families became more engaged with their children’s schooling, with parents having to provide at-home support with academic instruction. Many parents gained first-hand knowledge of how students are struggling and where they need help. Continuing to engage families even after students return to classrooms will be critical, and that engagement must be authentic: “building parents’ knowledge and skills in ways that honor their strengths and are personalized and continuous.” What’s more, schools and districts must listen to what parents are saying about how they want schools to change going forward: a new poll found that a majority of parents want school leaders to “develop new and better ways of teaching, prioritize high-quality distance learning now and continue to offer virtual instruction even after COVID-19 recedes.”

Drawing on other lessons learned from innovative schools and districts across the country

In addition to all of the above, Minnesota’s education leaders should learn lessons from schools across the country that have achieved remarkable success in the face of the pandemic, transitioning quickly and effectively to remote learning in spite of the barriers. One school district serving predominantly students from low-income families moved with speed and creativity to develop learning pods (called “equity hubs”) at 45 schools serving more than 1,000 students. As one analysis found, “with little to no state and federal guidance about high-quality options for learning during a pandemic, school leaders urgently need ways to learn from the struggles and triumphs of their peers.”