Online course instruction remains one of the fastest growing sectors in the higher education industry but has been historically stigmatized with poor quality and low standards. Early distance education programs were heavily teacher-centric in design and were used as a means to disseminate information to students at a distance. However,…

In anticipation of the 2020-21 school year, states have been creating and updating guidance for district and school reopening plans. This policy update outlines how state guidelines informed by public health guidelines and existing data on the state spread of COVID-19 established a process for engaging stakeholders, a menu of approaches to…

Through no fault of our own, higher education and the world writ large were metaphorically without vision and clarity of sight for the initial few months of the COVID-19 global health crisis as we all tried to stand up protocols, processes, and systems to better identify how our institutions could continue forward safely -- supporting both our…

The School Survey Dashboard provides insights into learning opportunities offered by schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey collected data five times, once a month from January through May of 2021 and will contribute to the Institute of Education Sciences' response to the Executive Order on Supporting the Reopening and Continuing…

Due to COVID-19, all courses at a regional comprehensive university in the southeastern United States transitioned online and were delivered remotely in the latter half of the spring semester of 2020. In this study, students' performance data from four graduate programs in social sciences and two graduate mathematics programs for the spring…

The school reopening debate has reached an inflection point as districts weigh both the safety and learning implications of returning to in-person education this fall. Challenges with transitioning to distance learning during the spring made it clear that teachers, parents and students needed more and different resources to make supportive,…

P. K. Yonge Development Research School (PKY) is a single-school, K-12, public school district and "Virtually PKY" is the name of our efforts during emergency remote teaching necessitated by COVID-19. Our ability to plan and execute "Virtually PKY" was predicated on years of district-wide leadership and professional learning…

When public schools closed their doors in the spring of 2020, an estimated 3 million students went missing from formal schooling of any sort. During the beginning of the 2020-21 school year, a mixture of public confusion and mistrust of guidelines coming from state and federal authorities led to a churn of reopening and reclosing schools. However,…

COVID-19 changed the experiences of K-12 students and teachers in ways that are not yet well-documented. This report provides initial insights into teaching and learning during the pandemic from the perspectives of teachers and students at 31 public schools in three states. The analyses indicate that about two thirds of the teachers surveyed…

Individual teachers, administrators, and parents made tremendous efforts to continue educating the Commonwealth's children between March and June of this year. But no amount of dedicated individual effort could have overcome fundamental challenges: weak guidance to districts from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) against…

The clamor around current hot topic phrases such as "equity through the standards" or "equal access for all" could not be more accurate when considering the statistics linked to exceptional student education (ESE) services. According to the National Center for Education Statics, as recently as SY15, only 69% of students with…

Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS) began the development and planning of various models for the reopening of schools in 2020-2021 following school closures and distance learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Reopening of Schools Teacher Survey was developed and distributed to MDCPS instructional personnel. The survey asked various…

As the state and city begin to reopen following the COVID-19 pandemic, Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS) conducted an online Districtwide survey of parents of students who currently attend and who plan to attend M-DCPS during the 2020-2021 school year. The Reopening of Schools Parent Survey gathered information from parents regarding their…