School Leaders Stepping Up on Plans to Help Disadvantaged Students

Education Secretary Cardona is finally seeing solid plans for community school programs focused on helping disadvantaged students to recoup learning losses. Education officials and district school leaders have been stepping up plans to hold summer school sessions and intensive tutoring programs using the billions of dollars allotted by the federal government as COVID-19 aid.

The summer and tutoring programs are for the underprivileged and disadvantaged children, many of whom live in remote rural areas. The programs are also for those with disabilities and those still at the stage of learning English, all of whom had to keep up at the same learning pace followed by their non-disadvantaged peers.

Plans Will Involve Partnership with NWEA

Education policymakers and leaders in school districts have a solid understanding of the learning setbacks experienced by students of color. Yet it is also necessary to conduct research on how learning interruptions minimized the academic achievements of the students with disabilities, beginner English language learners and those residing in remote rural communities.

According to Lindsay Dworkin, VP of Policy and Advocacy at the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), the research will mainly focus on summer classes, with the goal of making students do better over the summer period in order to perform better in the next summer.

The NWEA is a nonprofit educational services organization that partners with more than 3,500 educational institutions across the globe by providing professional developments and research-based adaptive assessments.