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Using testing data from 2.1 million students in 10,000 schools in 49 states (plus D.C.), we investigate the role of remote and hybrid instruction in widening gaps in achievement by race and school poverty. We find that remote instruction was a primary driver of widening achievement gaps. Math gaps did not widen in areas that remained in-person (although there was some widening in reading gaps in those areas). We estimate that high-poverty districts that went remote in 2020-21 will need to spend nearly all of their federal aid on academic recovery to help students recover from pandemic-related achievement losses.

As the COVID-19 crisis disrupted schooling, recovery efforts to ensure educational continuity in California included the adoption of Senate Bill 98, which mandated local educational agencies (LEAs) to complete Learning Continuity and Attendance Plans (LCPs). These plans act as critical snapshots of sensemaking in the midst of crisis; however, their details have yet to be explored statewide, concealing the potential trends that arise in local planning when traditional schooling is disrupted by crisis. Through a multiphase, mixed methods approach, this study examines the legislative requirements of an educational policy that orchestrated large-scale local planning. Results suggest that, during a crisis, equity is centered in both policy and the plans of public school districts, threaded through accessibility to instruction as well as academic and social-emotional supports. [For the Policy Brief, see ED624610.]

Building on the findings of Cedefop/ReferNet thematic perspectives for EU Member States, Norway and Iceland, this synthesis report identifies recent trends and policy developments in Europe on the initial and continuous professional development of VET teachers and trainers. The report points to the different types of VET teachers and trainers in Europe; their evolving and complex role in mastering new technologies, supporting the integration of refugees, identifying and supporting learners at risk of early leaving, and understanding changing labour market needs, to empower and equip students with skills for the future. Their qualifications and opportunities for continuous professional development vary across countries but the challenges policy-makers face in supporting them are shared. The report concludes with key messages for designing effective policies in Europe. [This research paper was produced by Cedefop's Department for VET and skills.]

Digital technologies can be used to support the inclusion of diverse student groups in education in a number of ways including enhancing accessibility of educational content, increasing personalisation and providing distance learning opportunities, as was the case during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, persistent digital inequalities can undermine digital equity and inclusion and equity and inclusion in education generally, particularly for the most disadvantaged students. This paper explores the themes of digital equity and inclusion, and maps some of the policies and practices adopted in OECD countries for the equitable and inclusive use of digital tools in education. It highlights the importance of inclusive design and implementation of digital technologies, as well as the need for education systems to focus on capacity building such as teacher training, as well as adequate resourcing of digital tools. It discusses advantages and disadvantages of different approaches, and concludes by highlighting research and policy gaps.

After schools closed in March of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students, families and teachers had to shift learning from in-class to online. But the switch to remote learning was hasty and disorganized in many school districts. Families struggled with the technology and coordinating schedules at home, while teachers tried to shift the in-person model to teaching through a computer. The dissatisfaction caused many families to believe that the remote learning they were experiencing was what takes place in full-time virtual schools. In fact the two are much different. This report includes information on how to distinguish between questionable and quality virtual programs.

If assessment is about improving learning and facilitating better teaching through research and helping students learn what higher education purports to value, then the often-invisible institutional barriers that do not always embrace the ways in which classroom assessment can teach an institution about student learning within individual courses--and even individual sections of courses--need to be examined. This occasional paper focuses upon connections between institution-level and classroom practice as related to basic writers and basic writers' perceptions of agency, assessment, and their own writing. While faculty in higher education consistently lament inadequate student writing, this paper explores whether students are even aware that their writing is an issue. The paper explores if institutions would benefit from asking students what they understand of and think about the ways in which their writing is assessed, or if they are even aware that their writing is being measured against a set of criteria or learning outcomes. In other words, should composition specialists engage with students to better understand their perceptions of how their writing is assessed? And would this sort of investigation be a productive means to help students succeed? By asking a group of basic writing students what they thought and how they felt about the ways in which their writing was evaluated, the paper explores student agency in the writing process and argues that instructors will need to design their courses--including those that use remote teaching technologies--in ways that strengthen individualized student-to-teacher interaction and see students as individuals with unique strengths, challenges, and perceptions.

This report, from researchers at ChildObesity180, an initiative of the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, explores the impact of the Boston Foundation's investment in four nonprofits that provide structured physical activity to students. The report finds that investments in "Build Our Kids Success (BOKS)"; "Community Rowing, Inc."; "Playworks"; and "Sportsmen's Tennis and Enrichment Center" had a notable impact on the amount of physical activity students received in school. Once the pandemic forced a remote learning environment, the programs pivoted and innovated to take their work to the online space, with some success. However, the overall amount of physical activity students received in remote learning was, not surprisingly, significantly reduced.

This report focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic in the Kalamazoo Public Schools District in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which closed its doors to students from mid-March 2020 to June 2021. During this time, instruction transitioned from face-to-face to virtual, with students having three options for virtual instruction. In addition to individual KPS student data, the study looks at the NWEA national sample as presented in several publications and technical appendices. The study addresses three basic questions, as well as examining students' race/ethnicity and poverty status, summer learning loss to determine the change in achievement gains, and attendance rates as an example of students not receiving face-to-face instruction. The first question asks whether the pandemic, which began in March of 2020, adversely affected student enrollment. The second question examines how achievement gains based on the NWEA math tests during the 2020-2021 pandemic school year compared to prepandemic and post-school-closure trends. The third question examines the variability of NWEA math test scores during the pandemic compared to the school years before and after the 2020-2021 pandemic school year. We find that student enrollment declined during and after the pandemic school year for at least two years, which is more than appears to be the case in all but the first few years of the century. In addressing the second question, we found that achievement gains rebounded after KPS schools opened, although achievement gains are not as high as in the prepandemic school year. It also appears that the lower grades were more resilient than the upper grades during this period. Regarding the third question, we found that test scores were more variable at the low end of the distribution than at the high end and that variability increased in the year following school closure.

Before the 2020-21 school year, educators, policymakers, and parents confronted the stark and uncertain trade-offs implied by the health, educational, and economic consequences of offering instruction remotely, in person, or through a hybrid of the two. Most public schools in the U.S. chose remote-only instruction and enrollment fell dramatically (i.e., a loss of roughly 1.1 million K-12 students). We examine the impact of these choices on public-school enrollment using unique panel data that combine district-level enrollment trajectories with information on their instructional modes. We find offering remote-only instead of in-person instruction reduced enrollment by 1.1 percentage points (i.e., a 42 percent increase in disenrollment from -2.6 to -3.7 percent). The disenrollment effects of remote instruction are concentrated in kindergarten and, to a lesser extent, elementary schools. We do not find consistent evidence that remote instruction influenced middle or high-school enrollment or that hybrid instruction had an impact. [Student work on this project was funded by the Brown Institute for Media Innovation.]

This report, commissioned by the Bay Area Geographic Leads Consortium, explores how five county offices of education and local school districts pivoted to reach, teach, and support the holistic needs of students experiencing homelessness during the COVID-19 pandemic. The report documents the rising number of students experiencing homelessness as well as the causes and consequences of childhood homelessness. It also describes how educators faced unique challenges and creatively found solutions to educating students without a stable home or an appropriate place to attend school remotely. Each county offers promising examples of ways to provide instruction and learning supports to students without homes and meaningful ways to deliver urgently needed social-emotional, mental health, and well-being assistance to students and families, including meeting basic needs such as food and shelter. The report also describes innovative ways that the counties addressed technology and connectivity gaps that resulted from the shift to distance learning and collaborated with community-based partners.

The decision about how and when to open schools to in-person instruction has been a key question for policymakers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The instructional modality of schools has implications not only for the health and safety of students and staff, but also student learning and the degree to which parents can engage in job activities. We consider the role of instructional modality (in-person, hybrid, or remote instruction) in disease spread among the wider community. Using a variety of regression modeling strategies to address unobserved heterogeneity, we find that simple correlations show in-person modalities are correlated with increased COVID cases, but accounting for both pre-existing cases and a richer set of covariates brings estimates close to zero on average. In Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) specifications, in-person modality options are not associated with increased spread of COVID at low levels of pre-existing COVID cases, but cases do increase at moderate to high pre-existing COVID rates. A bounding exercise suggests that the OLS findings for in-person modality are likely to represent an upper bound on the true relationship. These findings are robust to the inclusion of county and district fixed effects in terms of the insignificance of the findings, but the models with fixed effects are also somewhat imprecisely estimated.

Due to current public health concerns, the Ohio Department of Education (ODE), like many state education agencies, is addressing the challenge of how to provide all prekindergarten through grade 12 students this fall with appropriate, standards-aligned, and evidence-based literacy instruction within the context of remote learning environments. Remote learning can be fully remote or some combination of a traditional in-person classroom setting and remote learning (e.g., a hybrid/blended format). The purpose of this white paper is to provide ODE and regional technical assistance staff with a multidisciplinary perspective on the challenge of providing all prekindergarten through grade 12 students with appropriate, standards-aligned, and evidence-based literacy instruction within the context of blended/hybrid learning environments. It is an initial attempt to integrate multidisciplinary information that may be relevant for addressing this challenge. This white paper also specifies implications for practice across different contexts (state and regional leadership systems, districts and schools, and educators and families) and disciplines (designing and delivering remote literacy instruction, new literacies in online research and reading comprehension, and home-school partnerships for literacy learning, likely impacting remote literacy instruction and learning).

Individual teachers, administrators, and parents made tremendous efforts to continue educating the Commonwealth's children between March and June of this year. But no amount of dedicated individual effort could have overcome fundamental challenges: weak guidance to districts from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) against a backdrop of deficient knowledge and sophistication statewide with regard to virtual learning. Digital education has been empirically proven to be most successful when schools prepare and follow best distance learning practices. However, the Commonwealth lacks even the minimum technological infrastructure for virtual learning, as exemplified by districts scrambling to obtain electronic devices and internet connections during the school closure. It is encouraging that Governor Baker and the DESE have described a fall 2020 return to brick-and-mortar schooling--with appropriate health measures to maximize safety--as a significant priority. The present challenge is how to implement this much-needed return to school, optimally balancing the importance of in-person schooling with the countervailing importance of protecting against the virus. The following paper contributes important insights, based upon careful review of other countries that have already successfully reopened their schools. [Foreword written by David S. Clancy and Dr. John G. Flores.]

Fully online and hybrid study programmes have emerged at a rapid rate across higher education. However, the negative experience of some students, instructors and institutions with emergency remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic has led to public concerns over the quality of digital study programmes. As a result, public authorities across the OECD have started to reflect on how to embed the quality assurance (QA) of digital education into their existing QA frameworks for higher education. This Working Paper aims to assist policy makers as they seek to adapt their higher education QA systems to digital education by: reviewing the advice and guidance provided by international and regional quality assurance organisations; analysing the standards and indicators for digital higher education developed by QA agencies; identifying trends and best practice from higher education institutions for the quality management of digital study programmes; and discussing how public authorities can support institutions to enhance their internal quality management policies and processes for digital teaching and learning.

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has solicited public comment on pandemic-related revisions to its important "Learning Time" regulation, 603 CMR 27.00. The revisions establish baseline procedural and substantive requirements for in-person, hybrid, and remote learning. Appreciating that the regulation is meant to set forth only the most fundamental matters, with many other matters contained in a parallel guidance document. The revised regulation states that remote learning must be "aligned to state standards." This policy brief responds to the DESE's solicitation of public comments on the regulation. The Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research continues to advocate for those recommendations, and for maximum preparedness and rigor in the actual delivery of remote learning. At this moment, Pioneer emphasizes these important areas: training for teachers and parents, which addresses both technical and substantive aspects of remote learning; highly accessible lines of communication between school personnel and families--such as online or audio hotlines--so technological and other problems can be resolved quickly and during as much of the day as reasonably possible; and a constant process of critical self-evaluation, resolving problems and making improvements wherever possible.

With Massachusetts' school closure extending until the end of the 2019-20 academic year, Pioneer Institute urges that Massachusetts schools offer meaningful online and virtual learning programs, doing everything possible to eliminate problematic inconsistencies across Bay State school districts. Pioneer further urges Massachusetts to develop and distribute for timely public comment two plans, one that will remedy this semester's educational gaps during the 2020-21 school year, and another to address future extended school closures, if and when they might occur. Relatedly, after this crisis passes, Massachusetts should take steps toward generally improving its knowledge and capabilities with respect to online learning, which Pioneer, Bay State lawmakers, and nationally-recognized experts on digital learning have long identified as a significant area of weakness in Massachusetts' K-12 education system.

Evidence from unexpected temporary school closures and reduced instruction time suggests school closures will reduce educational achievement, both in the short and long term. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are likely to be affected more than others by school closures, with fewer family resources and less access to online learning resources to offset lost instruction time. In England, the total cost of the resources lost in each week of state school closure is more than £1 billion. Educational deficits from time lost to school shutdowns can be made up with additional hours of teaching when schools reopen, though schools might need to put back more hours than were lost and it may not be feasible to do this within the traditional school year. Compensating lost instruction time through additional resources, without additional hours, is likely to be even more expensive.

This paper provides information about noncredit instruction in the California Community Colleges and updates the 2009 paper "Noncredit Instruction: Opportunity and Challenge" to incorporate subsequent changes from the last decade. Since the passage of SB 361 (Scott, 2006), noncredit instruction has seen significant changes, including the equalization of funding for some areas of noncredit instruction, the passage of the Adult Education Block Grant that created adult education consortia including K-12 and community college adult education providers, and the passage of AB 705 (Irwin, 2017) that specifically encouraged colleges to use noncredit courses to support the needs of credit students. Despite noncredit's long history in the community colleges, a limited number of robust noncredit programs currently exist, and many colleges may be looking to or are beginning to offer noncredit courses for the first time. This paper is intended to provide information about noncredit instruction that will be useful to individuals with varying backgrounds and experience with noncredit and to provide recommendations that will help noncredit continue to serve the needs of diverse student populations. [For the original paper, "Noncredit Instruction: Opportunity and Challenge" (adopted spring 2009), see ED510579.]

Libraries are the central resource for supporting faculty and students in their research and information needs, both physically and remotely. This essential role of libraries and library faculty has remained consistent amid significant technological and pedagogical changes within the community college system. As librarians continue to determine their other roles within the California Community Colleges System and local districts in response to evolving demands, the inclusion and engagement of library faculty in college decision-making processes, program development, and other academic and professional matters are critical. Just as each student body and community is diverse with its own characteristics, needs, and goals, so are each of the libraries throughout the California community colleges. This paper provides encouragement for library faculty, administrators, and staff to apply the various recommendations outlined throughout its text to meet their individual campus needs and requirements in providing impactful and equitable library instruction and services. It outlines the importance of library faculty in facilitating student success and provides information on the core roles of library faculty in the California Community Colleges System. The content of the paper may be used to inform the development of local and external policies, regulations, and guidelines that pertain to the operation and performance of California community college libraries and assist in the ongoing dialog among library faculty, staff, and administration regarding the role, services, design, and development of libraries and librarians. [The paper was developed by the Transfer, Articulation, and Student Services Committee of the Academic Senate in partnership with the Council of Chief Librarians.]

We study the distributional effects of remote learning. Our approach combines newly collected data on parental preferences with administrative data from Los Angeles. The preference data allow us to account for selection into remote learning while also studying selection patterns and treatment effect heterogeneity. We find a negative average effect of remote learning on reading (-0.14 SD) and math (-0.17 SD). Notably, we find evidence of positive learning effects for children whose parents have the strongest demand for remote learning. Our results suggest an important subset of students who currently sort into post-pandemic remote learning benefit from expanded choice.

This paper focuses on the authors' experiences teaching on Ohio University's Learning Network (OULN), which uses interactive television and real-time face-to-face interaction as a distance-education (DE) delivery tool. One of the authors is a sociology professor, and the other is her former student and an experienced OULN system operator. The transition to DE from a traditional, less technological approach presents numerous challenges as well as opportunities. This paper compares the semester-long progress of two different sociology courses that used the OULN. It presents an analysis of each class's strengths and weaknesses, along with qualitative data based on interviews with each class's students, as recorded in a diary that the authors kept throughout the semester on the progress of each class. One class experienced more success than the other, which presented numerous teaching challenges. The paper concludes by offering guidance for integrating traditional teaching methods, including group work, into DE environments.

Digital technologies offer immense potential for transforming teacher learning and the delivery of professional development activities throughout teachers' careers. As the COVID-19 pandemic has made face-to­-face professional learning challenging or impossible for teachers to attend in many contexts, online professional learning options for teachers have been receiving renewed attention. This paper puts forward research evidence on the effectiveness of various forms of online learning for teachers and adults, and examines prerequisite conditions for enhancing teacher learning through digital technologies. Teachers' engagement in online learning activities, as captured by OECD surveys, remained limited in many OECD countries before the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper provides a basis for investigating how policies can support teachers' engagement in professional learning using digital technologies and help strike a balance between system-level provision of online teacher professional learning opportunities and the facilitation of teacher-led initiatives.