Reopening K 12 Schools During The Covid 19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented unprecedented challenges to the nation's K-12 education system. The rush to slow the spread of the virus led to closures of schools across the country, with little time to ensure continuity of instruction or to create a framework for deciding when and how to reopen schools. States, districts, and schools are now grappling with the complex and high-stakes questions of whether to reopen school buildings and how to operate them safely if they do reopen. These decisions need to be informed by the most up-to-date evidence about the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19; about the impacts of school closures on students and families; and about the complexities of operating school buildings as the pandemic persists. Reopening K-12 Schools During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Prioritizing Health, Equity, and Communities provides guidance on the reopening and operation of elementary and secondary schools for the 2020-2021 school year. The recommendations of this report are designed to help districts and schools successfully navigate the complex decisions around reopening school buildings, keeping them open, and operating them safely.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented unprecedented challenges to the nation's K-12 education system. The rush to slow the spread of the virus led to closures of schools across the country, with little time to ensure continuity of instruction or to create a framework for deciding when and how to reopen schools. States, districts, and schools are now grappling with the complex and high-stakes questions of whether to reopen school buildings and how to operate them safely if they do reopen. These decisions need to be informed by the most up-to-date evidence about the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19; about the impacts of school closures on students and families; and about the complexities of operating school buildings as the pandemic persists. Reopening K-12 Schools During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Prioritizing Health, Equity, and Communities provides guidance on the reopening and operation of elementary and secondary schools for the 2020-2021 school year. The recommendations of this report are designed to help districts and schools successfully navigate the complex decisions around reopening school buildings, keeping them open, and operating them safely.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented unprecedented challenges to the nation's K-12 education system. The rush to slow the spread of the virus led to closures of schools across the country, with little time to ensure continuity of instruction or to create a framework for deciding when and how to reopen schools. States, districts, and schools are now grappling with the complex and high-stakes questions of whether to reopen school buildings and how to operate them safely if they do reopen. These decisions need to be informed by the most up-to-date evidence about the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19; about the impacts of school closures on students and families; and about the complexities of operating school buildings as the pandemic persists.

This open access edited volume is a comparative effort to discern the short-term educational impact of the covid-19 pandemic on students, teachers and systems in Brazil, Chile, Finland, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. One of the first academic comparative studies of the educational impact of the pandemic, the book explains how the interruption of in person instruction and the variable efficacy of alternative forms of education caused learning loss and disengagement with learning, especially for disadvantaged students. Other direct and indirect impacts of the pandemic diminished the ability of families to support children and youth in their education. For students, as well as for teachers and school staff, these included the economic shocks experienced by families, in some cases leading to food insecurity and in many more causing stress and anxiety and impacting mental health. Opportunity to learn was also diminished by the shocks and trauma experienced by those with a close relative infected by the virus, and by the constrains on learning resulting from students having to learn at home, where the demands of schoolwork had to be negotiated with other family necessities, often sharing limited space. Furthermore, the prolonged stress caused by the uncertainty over the resolution of the pandemic and resulting from the knowledge that anyone could be infected and potentially lose their lives, created a traumatic context for many that undermined the necessary focus and dedication to schoolwork. These individual effects were reinforced by community effects, particularly for students and teachers living in communities where the multifaceted negative impacts resulting from the pandemic were pervasive. This is an open access book.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, efforts have been made to monitor both school closures (and re-opening) and the measures put in place to ensure continuity of learning. These include the Survey of Ministries of Education on National Responses to COVID-19, jointly supported by UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank. However, to date, no systematic evidence has been available on how students' learning is being affected by the disruptions caused by the pandemic or on the impact of education response measures initiated by governments. This report contributes to filling this evidence gap and includes a series of simulations of potential learning losses due to COVID-19 and exploration of their longer-term implications. The analysis is based on the Enabling learning for all framework, which outlines access, engagement and enabling environment as the three crucial enablers for learning, while the simulation assumptions are informed by the evidence on school closures and governments' education-related responses, collected through the joint survey.

"The global disruption to education caused by the COVD-19 pandemic is without parallel and the effects on learning are severe. The crisis brought education systems across the world to a halt, with school closures affecting more than 1.6 billion learners. While nearly every country in the world offered remote learning opportunities for students, the quality and reach of such initiatives varied greatly and were at best partial substitutes for in-person learning. Now, 21 months later, schools remain closed for millions of children and youth, and millions more are at risk of never returning to education. Evidence of the detrimental impacts of school closures on children's learning offer a harrowing reality: learning losses are substantial, with the most marginalized children and youth often disproportionately affected. Countries have an opportunity to accelerate learning recovery and make schools more efficient, equitable, and resilient by building on investments made and lessons learned during the crisis. Now is the time to shift from crisis to recovery - and beyond recovery, to resilient and transformative education systems that truly deliver learning and well-being for all children and youth."--The World Bank website.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the Second International Conference on Technology and Innovation in Learning, Teaching and Education, TECH-EDU 2020, held in Vila Real, Portugal, in December 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held in a fully virtual format. The 27 revised full papers along with 15 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 79 submissions.The papers are organized in topical sections on ​digital resources as epistemic tools to improve STEM learning; digital technologies to foster critical thinking and monitor self and co-regulation of e-learning; Covid-19 pandemic, changes in educational ecosystem and remote teaching; transforming teaching and learning through technology; educational proposals using technology to foster learning competences.

COVID-19 and the Classroom presents social science research exploring how schools navigated the disruptive COVID-19 pandemic from March 2020 through the 2020-21 school year. This book also serves as a history book, documenting what this period was like for those involved in the enterprise of educating children.