This brief, informed by interviews with school and system leaders in the New England region, suggests some efforts to reinvent schools before the pandemic have helped schools to navigate the current crisis. To increase the odds that innovation prevails in the face of rising fatigue and pressure, we must better understand the adaptations schools…

In summer 2020, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), with support from the Barr Foundation, began observing and learning from students, parents, and educators in New England high schools as they navigated the uncertainty of the pandemic. The authors wanted to see what challenges and opportunities they faced, the ways in which they…

Across the country, the tides are beginning to turn on school reopening. Relief funding, policy guidance on safe reopening, declining cases, and increasing vaccination rates have cleared the way for students to safely return to classrooms. School districts are largely responding. The Center on Reinventing Public Education's (CRPE's) latest…

This brief gives an update on our nationally representative sample of school district reopening plans. This update comes at a critical time, as a third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic once again forces school system leaders to rethink plans to welcome students safely to campuses, and spiking caseloads raise a new round of public health fears for…