The Technology Alliance, which has long been active in driving private/public projects to support K-12 education, charged the Remote Learning Task Force with exploring the problems arising in public K-12 education from the current COVID-19 pandemic and envisioning a system that is better prepared for the next major disruption, whether in the next year or the next decade. Task Force members agreed to spend three months studying the issues and then make recommendations on how best to prevent a major event from disrupting our students’ learning in the future.
Executive Summary
First, we looked at the impact of the pandemic on our children, schools, educators, families, and communities. We found that the pandemic served to shed a bright light on the ways, despite good intentions and a lot of hard work, significant educational opportunity gaps persist for too many students in our state. After gathering information on how remote learning is working—and not working—in Washington, we focused on what can be done over the next five years to create a public school system that is empowered and resourced to provide high-quality education to all of our children during a calamity.
Underpinning our work was the deeply held belief that all students deserve the opportunity to maximize their academic and personal potential and that all our schools should be built around the “North Star” of helping every single child succeed. We strongly recommend you read the full report to understand the context and rationale behind our recommendations. At the end of the report, there is a list of issues we believe need further study or attention but proved to be beyond the scope of this Task Force.
The Task Force organized its work and recommendations around five topics: Internet Connectivity, Learning Devices, Student Learning and Educator Readiness, Information Technology Support, and Family Communication. Read our recommended action steps for each of these categories in the full report and sign the petition.