RAND physician policy researcher Laura Faherty describes measures for reducing the transmission of COVID-19 in schools and the feasibility of implementing such measures.
Most U.S. schools are providing either fully remote or hybrid instruction as the pandemic continues to limit students' learning. Students are less prepared for grade-level work and those from vulnerable populations are most at risk of falling behind. Some 80 percent of teachers report burnout.
President Biden's plan calls for $130 billion to help schools safely reopen and identifies summer school or other supports to help students compensate for lost learning time as permissible uses of this funding. Recent RAND research can shed light on how Congress might consider divvying up these funds to support students over the next year.
Remote K–12 learning at scale is an unprecedented challenge for everyone involved. It can and would improve dramatically if educators, government, and philanthropy treated it as a work in progress, featuring evidence-based development of quality online curricula, continuous improvement, and engagement of teachers.
About two in 10 U.S. school districts have already adopted, plan to adopt, or are considering adopting virtual schools after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.
School district leaders are concerned about students' unequal opportunities to learn during the pandemic, students' social and emotional learning needs, and insufficient funding to cover staff. About two in ten still anticipate that a fully remote learning option will become a permanent public school offering.
This weekly recap focuses on allocating scarce but lifesaving resources during a pandemic, insights from America’s educators, the lopsided telework revolution, and more.
Enrollment at America's community colleges is down by nearly 10 percent compared with before the pandemic, leaving community colleges in a perilous financial position. Without intervention, these institutions may not weather the storm.
This report provides information about the sample, survey instrument, and data for the coronavirus disease 2019 surveys that were administered to principals and teachers in fall 2020 via the RAND Corporation's American Educator Panels.
This technical report provides information about the sample, survey instrument, and resultant data for the American Instructional Resources Surveys administered to principals and teachers in spring 2020 via RAND's American Educator Panels.
Stackable credential programs are designed to make it easier for students to earn multiple postsecondary credentials within a field. This toolkit provides steps for identifying issues in and making improvements to stackable credential pipelines.
The theory that children are unlikely to contract or spread COVID-19 may feel reassuring, but it's based on flawed science. Until more is known, adopting aggressive strategies to limit viral spread in schools is the best way to keep students and teachers safe.
Safely reopening K–12 schools for in-person instruction requires complicated protocols ranging from symptom monitoring to physical distancing, as well as containment of transmission in the community. State policymakers and school leaders could begin planning now to draft, pilot, and evaluate protocols for reopening schools that incorporate rapid testing.
In this remote video conversation, RAND's Laura Hamilton discusses how teachers, school leaders, and parents are navigating the challenges of educating during a pandemic. Brandon Baker hosts.
The Coleman Report (1966) first suggested that schools play a relatively small part in shaping students' achievement. The results in this paper suggest a need to update this conventional wisdom.
Reopening schools would provide much-needed child care for parents who need to work, help feed 30 million U.S. children, and prevent further inequitable learning losses. But it also means exposing more kids to the virus. How can families and employers prepare for the disruptions that lie ahead?
COVID-19 is threatening to upend the models that both public and private higher education depend on in the United States. As universities consider whether to postpone in-person classes until next year, many parents and students may be questioning the value of a traditional higher education.
School principals make countless decisions that could benefit from access to data in electronic data management systems. During the 2018–2019 school year, what kinds of student data did principals have access to through these systems? Were the data disaggregated by student race, ethnicity, and income?
This weekly recap focuses on how COVID-19 has affected U.S. schools, potential barriers to vaccine uptake, what small businesses need to survive, and more.
RAND surveyed teachers and principals to gauge how the pandemic has affected schooling, what supports these educators need, and how they are thinking about the next school year.
