As part of its “Public School Transformation Now!” campaign, which aims to improve equity and access within K-12 public schools, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) hosted a virtual webinar to bring equity issues front and center.
During a time of racial reckoning and as COVID-19 exacerbates existing inequalities in education, national education leaders looked at ways to transform and reinvent the public school system to better serve its students, participants said.
“We are at another new frontier in education,” said Roberto J. Rodríguez, president and CEO of Teach Plus. “We have a choice to make around how we build a new course for strong public education across our country or whether we stay stagnant in the moment that we are in.”
As part of reinventing the school system, Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, president and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute and a prominent education researcher, laid out 10 key frameworks that should be employed by school leaders. These include:
1. Closing the digital divide.
2. Strengthening distance and blended learning.
3. Assessing what students need.
4. Ensuring supports for social and emotional learning.
5. Redesigning schools for stronger relationships.
6. Emphasizing authentic, culturally responsive learning.
7. Providing expanded learning time.
8. Establishing community schools and wraparound supports.
9. Preparing educators for reinventing schools.
10. Leveraging more adequate and equitable school funding.
“This is the moment that all of these things are going on,” said Darling-Hammond, who is also the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University. “There are great examples across the country, people are inventing solutions to longstanding problems and we are sharing them with one another. That is how humanity moves forward in times of great stress that also produce these times of great progress.”
Rodríguez emphasized that schools should be more intentional about equity as the approach has been “limiting.” In the past, equity has been looked at through data, achievement gaps and dropout rates. However, he said there must be a transition from “standards-based reform to learner center design.”
