In response to the educational challenges posed by COVID-19, a partnership between The Accelerated Schools (TAS) and the expanded learning provider, arc, aimed to revamp learning strategies for older students in South Los Angeles. Recognizing the inadequacy of a one-size-fits-all model, they reimagined a student-centered approach tailored to address the complex needs of older students in a virtual learning setting. Amidst pandemic disruptions, they observed that older students, often juggling familial and economic responsibilities, struggled with remote learning. The collaboration utilized a mix of synchronous and asynchronous models, leveraging community-based organizations (CBOs) to reinforce instructional content, support student needs, and enhance engagement. Lessons highlighted the need for robust collaboration between schools and CBOs, shared grading systems for consistency, and ongoing student input in shaping educational strategies. Their experience underscored the value of this partnership in creating innovative, adaptable learning approaches that better serve students during unprecedented times.

The commentary is a guidebook for districts, schools, and expanded learning providers in better serving California's 60,000 foster care youth amid the pandemic. For these vulnerable youth, COVID-19 worsened existing trauma, isolation, and educational disruptions due to frequent home and school changes. Collaboration among public systems and community partners is crucial to create caring systems acknowledging individual strengths and needs. To bolster pandemic recovery, the approach should prioritize tailored programs by consulting foster youth about their needs, amplifying community expertise, employing staff knowledgeable about schools, and ensuring accessible health services and multilingual resources. Creativity, flexibility, and continuous learning are vital in addressing the immediate and long-term needs of foster care youth, emphasizing constant evaluation through their perspectives for effective support.

The impact of the pandemic on California students' learning, gauged from 18 school districts in the CORE Data Collaborative, highlights significant learning loss in English Language Arts (ELA) and Math, primarily affecting younger grades. The equity gap is pronounced, notably among low-income students and English language learners (ELLs), experiencing more substantial setbacks than their counterparts. Socioeconomically disadvantaged students faced slower growth, while others accelerated their learning, intensifying existing achievement disparities. Upper-grade ELLs encountered severe setbacks due to challenges in virtual language development. These findings underscore the urgent need for targeted support to redress these disparities, emphasizing the gravity of unequal experiences during the pandemic. Yet, data limitations call for deeper investigations into absent student groups to refine learning loss estimates. Addressing this crisis necessitates a student-centric approach, prioritizing social-emotional well-being and systemic educational reforms to accommodate diverse student needs.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, environmental education faces severe risks, jeopardizing its role in student development. Approximately 11 million US students could lose access to crucial outdoor learning experiences, raising concerns about the field's future. Pandemic-driven safety priorities led schools to sideline environmental education, often perceived as non-essential. However, research underscores nature's vital role in physical, emotional, and intellectual growth, particularly crucial during the pandemic's isolating measures. California's wildfires compounded these challenges by limiting outdoor access. Environmental education offers rich stimuli for children's development, fostering resilience and learning. Integrating outdoor experiences, even amid remote learning, is crucial, especially for young learners. Environmental educators possess the expertise to reimagine learning, suggesting restorative nature experiences, supporting families in outdoor learning, and restructuring educational norms. Leveraging their skills can redefine schooling, emphasizing outdoor classrooms and partnerships with local resources. Despite being seen as a luxury, environmental education is vital, nurturing well-being, resilience, and a positive future amid crisis. Experts advocate for environmental educators' pivotal role in shaping a brighter, nature-rich future, especially crucial during this transformative educational phase.

In California, over 700,000 individuals reside in multigenerational households, an essential consideration for educators and policymakers, particularly during the pandemic and potential school reopenings. Research underscores the impact of diverse household structures on families' decisions regarding students returning to school. With a significant portion of students living with elderly family members, concerns arise about their education and health risks. Urban districts, particularly in southern California, serve substantial populations in multigenerational settings, as indicated by data from the American Community Survey. The top five districts housing such households show a higher representation of Latinx and low-income students, hinting at potential socio-economic and demographic trends. Importantly, students with greater educational needs might hesitate to return to physical classrooms due to residing with vulnerable family members, posing a challenge for districts in designing equitable and safe reopening strategies. Policymakers and districts are urged to identify these students, offering tailored support and allocating additional resources to address health risks and ensure continued learning in an environment responsive to diverse household compositions and concerns amid the pandemic's uncertainties.

Educators throughout California are deeply engaged in strategizing to bolster student attendance, whether in remote or in-person learning setups. Addressing absenteeism, they highlight the absence of conducive learning conditions and advocate for increased support, especially for students facing challenges like internet access or COVID-related trauma. Emphasizing a non-punitive stance, this commentary introduces a multi-tiered strategy, categorizing interventions into three tiers based on students' needs. It stresses data-driven decision-making, proactive outreach, tech assistance, expanded learning programs, mentoring, mental health services, and personalized attendance plans as pivotal elements. Tailored interventions for varying levels of absenteeism (Tiers 2 and 3) encompass tech support, expanded learning programs, mentoring, mental health services, and personalized attendance plans. The authors underscore early identification of at-risk students while advocating collaborations with community agencies for extensive support, punctuating the importance of engaging students, families, and communities in crafting solutions amid the pandemic's challenges.

Monitoring attendance, especially during COVID-19, holds immense importance, reflecting educational disparities. Chronic absence predicts future academic challenges. Student absences signal inadequate learning conditions and require systemic solutions. Senate Bill 98 mandates daily attendance tracking and participation documentation in distance learning, ensuring early interventions for absent students. Measuring attendance in remote settings is complex, but vital. Attendance Works suggests a multi-metric approach, identifying at-risk students and barriers to participation. Different responses address various challenges—connectivity, relationships, or instructional engagement. Tracking absence rates per learning opportunity helps pinpoint support needs. Recommendations include publishing chronic absence data, collecting connectivity statistics, and providing guidance for asynchronous learning data collection. Detailed attendance tracking aids targeted interventions and ensures equitable learning experiences.

In preparing for the next school year, California state policymakers must set clear statewide expectations for teaching, learning, and student support, regardless of whether instruction is online or in person. This spring, local school districts scrambled to adapt to COVID-19 with a wide range of responses largely focused on securing delivery of online resources. Now is the time to shift the conversation back to the core purpose of school: learning. The state should establish a minimum amount of instructional time; create an instrument of diagnostic assessment and require its use; adopt instructional continuity plans; and advocate for and secure additional funding.

The pandemic has shifted the role of educators, urging them to go beyond traditional boundaries, ensuring student well-being through new challenges in remote learning. Teachers have adapted to online tools, engaged with trauma-exposed students, and provided one-to-one tutoring and emotional support. Administrators have coordinated food distribution, coached teachers, communicated policy changes, checked student well-being, and supported families. Essential lessons learned emphasize prioritizing social-emotional care for students and staff. To address this, maintaining connections through weekly office hours, redesigning learning strategies, allowing flexible guidelines, and investing in professional learning and collaboration are crucial. The shift demands bold transformations in educational practices, requiring inclusive policy decisions that value educators' insights and experiences to serve communities equitably amidst the crisis.

English learners (ELs) face diverse challenges during the pandemic, with varied educational needs and health concerns. The forthcoming academic year will likely amplify the academic gap between EL and non-EL students due to limited access to distance learning. To address this, several policy recommendations are proposed. Universal basic income, health care, and tech access are vital for EL families, especially for those in low-income or undocumented situations. Distance learning must cater to ELs by providing devices, multilingual content, and non-tech learning options. Improved communication with EL families and leveraging their cultural assets are crucial. Extending learning time for ELs, promoting collaboration among teachers, and hiring bilingual family members as aides or tutors are recommended. Assessing returning students' academic status and monitoring funds allocated for ELs' needs are vital. These policy suggestions aim to address EL education challenges amidst the pandemic, stressing equity, resources, and inclusivity in education.

Governor Newsom's commitment to enhancing early childhood education (ECE) was overshadowed by economic challenges caused by COVID-19. The state's limited resources for ECE demand a focus on identifying and delivering the most crucial quality aspects for children, especially considering increased poverty and stress due to the pandemic. This involves re-evaluating Quality Counts California (QRIS), currently used to rate program quality. A PACE report highlights weak connections between child outcomes and QRIS elements like teacher qualifications and program environments. To improve QRIS's accuracy in gauging child development, strategies include refining observation measures, employing comprehensive assessments for literacy and math skills, and considering factors like staff pay and curriculum implementation. Ensuring ratings suit various age groups and settings, exploring diverse rating rubrics, and aligning points with child outcome predictors are vital. Amid challenging resource allocations ahead, policymakers must use robust data to enhance critical program dimensions for children effectively.

Amid the pandemic, California schools are undergoing extraordinary efforts to support students and families during the pandemic, but the forthcoming academic year poses unprecedented challenges. Without conventional metrics like grades and attendance data, educators face a monumental task amid reduced budgets, varied learning opportunities, and unequal access to resources among students. To aid teachers in this complex scenario, system leaders must shift their focus from traditional professional learning structures to include cognitive science and emotional learning. Creating safe, collaborative environments where teachers can self-reflect and learn collectively is crucial. As schools grapple with the crisis and opportunity gaps, a successful response necessitates prioritizing the learning experiences and insights of frontline educators, fostering conditions for meaningful collaborative learning, and focusing on the student experience. This approach centers on listening to both students and teachers, ensuring a sense of belonging, and promoting adult learning in collaborative spaces.

California's schools are facing a staggering $19 billion deficit over two years, a sum that might climb higher as new tax filings arrive. As schools grapple with the complexities of reopening amidst the pandemic, districts find themselves burdened with escalating costs amid dwindling resources. Drawing from lessons learned during the 2008 crisis, a multitude of strategies, while not a singular remedy, could offer relief. However, with 1100 districts and 1200 charter schools, each with distinct challenges, proposed cuts range from 10% to LCFF and potentially exceeding 50% in other programs, excluding special education. The state's reserves, comprising $12 billion, around 17% of the budget, provide some respite, but relying solely on these reserves isn't a viable long-term option. Districts are contemplating various approaches, including staffing reductions, truncated school years, payment deferrals, and federal aid, among other measures, although each poses its own set of challenges. These options, though not a complete solution, can be strategically employed by individual districts with state support to mitigate the impending financial crisis, requiring thoughtful, adaptable solutions as schools aim to revert to pre-crisis financial commitments post-recovery.

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, PACE Executive Director Heather Hough offers an approach involving multiple phases, transitioning from immediate action to re-entry and eventual recovery. The closure of schools due to the pandemic is expected to result in substantial learning loss, especially among disadvantaged students, necessitating a comprehensive assessment of their academic and emotional needs upon their return to school. This crisis has highlighted disparities in distance learning and accentuated existing inequalities, making it imperative to address diverse impacts and support students effectively. To address these challenges, proposing a state-level diagnostic assessment using existing resources like SBAC emerges as a unified and cost-effective means to identify learning gaps and guide resource allocation. The upcoming school term brings uncertainty, demanding clear guidelines, adaptability, and adequate resources for schools to embrace novel learning models. Immediate measures include safeguarding education funding, urging federal support, and targeting assistance for vulnerable students. Additionally, there is an opportunity to overhaul California's funding system to better reflect the critical importance of public education. This commentary is modified from testimony delivered to the California Assembly Budget Committee on April 28, 2020.

In this podcast (transcribed) for the California Association of School Business Officials (CASBO), Heather Hough highlights research and perspectives related to the fundamental importance of public education, school funding levels and policies, and proactive approaches that should be on the table as California plans its recovery from the COVID-19 crisis.

As the UC Board of Regents approaches a crucial decision on the use of SAT and ACT in admissions, a faculty task force report has drawn criticism for distorting key issues and offering recommendations lacking substantial evidence or potential for improving admissions fairness or diversity across campuses. The report acknowledges problems with these tests but suggests a ten-year continuation without viable replacements, viewed as a waste of time and public funds. Three comprehensive analyses accompany this commentary, urging a reevaluation of the report's stance. They highlight concerns regarding heavy reliance on SAT scores affecting underrepresented groups, propose restructuring the Eligibility in the Local Context program for improved diversity, and advocate for considering Smarter Balanced assessments alongside GPA for fairer admissions. Criticizing the report's swift dismissal of valid options, the analyses emphasize aligning high school and university expectations while urging evidence-based decisions. This commentary seeks to steer the Regents' attention beyond the task force report, advocating for a more inclusive and thorough assessment of the available perspectives.

The aftermath of COVID-19 poses a serious threat to California's education, expecting a drastic decline in tax revenue. School closures will harm all students academically and emotionally, highlighting educational inequalities. Policymakers must reimagine the system as Governor Newsom's proposed budget investments face uncertainty amidst growing needs post-pandemic. The education funding system shifted in 2013 with the Local Control Funding Formula, providing additional funds for districts with high-need students. However, the pandemic has rendered the new support system, reliant on the California School Dashboard, irrelevant. Issues such as inadequate timing and inconsistent district identification for assistance surfaced in a pre-pandemic report. A revised support system should engage diverse expertise, span multiple years, involve stakeholders, and address emerging post-pandemic needs. Simply patching the existing system won't surpass pre-pandemic outcomes; policymakers must seize this disruption to overhaul California's education structures.

PACE Executive Director Heather Hough cautions that COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted California's education system, highlighting the state's low funding and the substantial financial shortfall necessary to meet educational objectives. Recent research indicates a need for an additional $26.5 billion annually in K–12 education to reach state achievement goals. Decades of underinvestment have left districts financially vulnerable, compounded by the economic challenges triggered by the crisis. The dependence on personal earnings for school funding could result in severe cuts, impacting critical student services and potentially leading to layoffs. School closures have underscored their role beyond education, serving as community hubs crucial for student well-being, safety, and essential services. The pandemic exacerbates existing inequalities in learning opportunities among California students. The urgent call is to recognize schools as central to communities and the state's well-being, emphasizing the necessity for significant post-crisis investments in public education as a priority for California's recovery.

The COVID-19 crisis abruptly shifted education online, prompting a swift transition often labeled as "emergency instructional triage." USC Rossier School of Education, drawing from their extensive online teaching experience, released a report addressing crucial aspects of this new teaching landscape. Tailored for teachers, administrators, and educators, it tackles pressing questions across six key areas, providing practical recommendations for engagement strategies, teaching students without reliable internet access, rethinking grading practices, accommodating special needs students, guiding student teachers, and preparing for potential future online teaching. The resource delves into engaging high school seniors, efficient feedback methods, and offers appendices with supplementary resources, Zoom instruction strategies, and guidelines for creating secure online classrooms. This comprehensive guide, crafted by seasoned faculty with expertise in virtual teaching and educational psychology, aims to support educators facing the challenges of remote instruction during this unprecedented time, emphasizing the need for accessible and engaging learning environments for all students.

The current school closures and potential future remote learning challenges have prompted the creation of the "Learning Apart, Staying Connected: A Distance Learning Playbook" aimed at aiding California school districts in developing effective distance learning plans. Recognizing the absence of a clear roadmap for this unprecedented situation, the playbook emerged as a practical resource at the request of educational leaders seeking actionable guidance amidst a myriad of options. Tailored for small- and medium-sized district administrators, it prioritizes integrating the needs of English Learners into distance learning strategies. Organized around five key questions, it offers diverse sample approaches accommodating different accessibility contexts—digital, print-based, or hybrid. The playbook also provides specific advice on supporting various student groups, including English Learners and students with disabilities, aiding teachers, and engaging with families. Collaboratively crafted by Entangled Solutions, informed by expertise in online learning and insights from California and China's educational landscapes during closures, the resource continually evolves with input from educators and leaders in the field. It aims to serve as a foundation for future preparedness in unforeseen circumstances, aiming to address local needs effectively through adaptable strategies and learnings from ongoing feedback.

COVID-19's closure of California's educational institutions has profoundly impacted learning, equity, and access. Efforts now concentrate on remote learning support, essential non-instructional services, and aiding students with special needs. PACE seeks to bolster these initiatives, gather best practices, and provide real-time research for informed decision-making. Anticipating challenges upon students' return, especially those facing trauma, PACE plans to focus on data collection, student support, system capacity, and resource allocation. This includes addressing learning loss, supporting vulnerable populations, fostering engagement, integrating services across agencies, and seeking adequate funding amid economic strains. PACE intends to employ diverse approaches—reviewing existing research, collecting new data, testing innovations, and analyzing policy options—to aid educators, policymakers, and the public in navigating this crisis and leveraging education for recovery

The 2020 PACE Annual Conference unveiled the latest PACE/USC Rossier Poll results, showcasing California voters' views on key education-related issues. Presenters emphasized the poll's value in understanding voter concerns. Key findings revealed growing pessimism about school quality, a preference for across-the-board teacher salary increases, and concerns about college affordability and fairness in admissions. Voters also stressed addressing gun violence in schools. The panel discussed the state budget, highlighting the need for enhanced higher education accessibility, increased teacher salaries, and a more nuanced approach to education funding. They debated the governor's budget's alignment with voter priorities, noting the need for more support in higher education and teacher salaries and a more effective approach to recruiting teachers.