Resources and Examples: Learning in the Time of COVID-19

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the education field is producing a growing body of useful resources to support student learning and well-being during school closures. This page is updated regularly and curates some of these resources based on the recommendations of our research teams and our partners.

Jump to:

• Safe and Restorative School Reopening
• Restorative Approaches to Recovering Lost Learning Time
• Policy and Funding Strategies
• Distance Learning
• Social-Emotional Learning
• Student Health and Well-Being
• Supporting Students With Special Needs
• English and Multilingual Learners
• Educator Preparation
• Early Learning

---

Safe and Restorative School Reopening

• Ready Schools, Safe Learners: Guidance for School Year 2020–21 (Oregon Department of Education). Oregon’s state reopening guidance provides direction for districts to “support student-centered project-based educational experiences that ignite student agency, identity, and voice” that others can draw upon.
• Planning for Re-Entry & Recovery: A Guide for Promoting Equity, Improvement, and Innovation (FourPoint Education). This guide provides a planning tool that emphasizes the importance of family, school, and community partnerships. Specifically, the guide suggests that district and school leaders can maintain a list of key community partners to connect families with, communicate with these partners about re-entry plans, and identify how partners can deploy their resources to help with re-entry and recovery and create a more integrated support system for students.
• Guidance on Culturally Responsive-Sustaining School Reopenings: Centering Equity to Humanize the Process of Coming Back Together (Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools). This guide poses questions and practices for policymakers, district and school leaders, and school personnel to consider for engaging in culturally responsive, equitable, and sustainable school reinventions.
• School Reopening Surveys (Panorama Education). These reopening surveys can invite students and families into the reopening process as well as enable districts to determine those students and families most in need of additional in-person instruction.

---

Restorative Approaches to Recovering Lost Learning Time

Expanded and Enriched Learning Time

• A School Year Like No Other Demands a New Learning Day: A Blueprint for How Afterschool Programs & Community Partners Can Help (Afterschool Alliance). This blueprint offers building blocks for school–community partnerships to address equity and co-construct the learning day in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Afterschool Programs: A Review of Evidence Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (Research for Action). Based on a literature review of studies published since 2000, this review summarizes the effectiveness of specific after-school programs. The review uses the ESSA evidence framework to assess the evidence of over 60 after-school programs. A companion guide provides profiles of each after-school program included in the review as well as studies of each program’s effectiveness.
• Getting to Work on Summer Learning: Recommended Practices for Success, 2nd Ed. (RAND Corporation). Based on thousands of hours of observations, interviews, and surveys, this report provides guidance for district leaders and their partners for launching, improving, and sustaining effective summer learning programs.
• Investing in Successful Summer Programs: A Review of Evidence Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (RAND Corporation). This report provides current information about the effectiveness of summer programs for k–12 students to help practitioners, funders, and policymakers make evidence-based investments. The review uses the ESSA evidence framework to assess the effectiveness of summer programs and includes descriptions of 43 summer programs that align with ESSA evidence standards.
• Time in Pursuit of Education Equity: Promoting Learning Time Reforms That Cross Ideological Divides to Benefit Students Most in Need (AASA). This School Administrator article authored by Jeannie Oakes provides implementation lessons that school leaders and policymakers can use as they seek to expand learning time.
• A School Year Like No Other Demands a New Learning Day: A Blueprint for How Afterschool Programs & Community Partners Can Help (Afterschool Alliance). This blueprint offers building blocks for school–community partnerships to address equity and co-construct the learning day in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Assessment

• Attendance Playbook: Smart Strategies for Reducing Chronic Absenteeism in the COVID Era (Attendance Works and FutureEd). This playbook provides a detailed, three-tiered approach to addressing a lack of student attendance whether classes are held in person or online.
• Learning as We Go: Principles for Effective Assessment During the COVID-19 Pandemic (Center on Reinventing Public Education). Based on a consensus panel of experts, this document provides a set of principles that can help schools, districts, and states make decisions about assessments to inform instruction as schools reopen. While these principles can inform good assessment practices in general, they are particularly salient in our current environment.
• Blueprint for Testing: How Schools Should Assess Students During the COVID Crisis (FutureEd). This resource provides guidance on how and when states, school districts, and schools should use assessments to gauge and help accelerate students’ learning and provide systems-level insights.

---

Policy and Funding Strategies

• Making School Budgets Whole and Equitable During and After COVID-19 (Learning Policy Institute). Michael DiNapoli Jr. outlines the magnitude of need with cost estimates and strategies that policymakers can use for their upcoming school year budgets.
• How Much Will COVID-19 Cost Schools? (Learning Policy Institute). This state-level tool calculates the effects of declines in state revenues on education budgets, along with the increased COVID19-related costs for those estimating needed spending increases or state finance measures.
• Restart & Recovery: Considerations for Teaching and Learning: State Policies and Actions (Council of Chief State School Officers). This document outlines the critical state-level policies and actions that align with each section of the guidance, which include System Conditions, Wellness and Connection, and Academics.
• Guidance on Culturally Responsive-Sustaining School Reopenings: Centering Equity to Humanize the Process of Coming Back Together (NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools). This guide poses questions and practices for policymakers, district and school leaders, and school personnel to consider for engaging in culturally responsive– sustaining school reopenings through an equity lens.
• What Will Return to School Look Like This Fall? A Look Inside hybrid Learning Plans (Panorama Education). This website describes additional examples with links to states and districts that are developing hybrid learning models for fall 2020.
• Lead With Equity: What California’s Leaders Must Do Next to Advance Student Learning During COVID-19 (Policy Analysis for California Education). This policy brief provides research-based policy recommendations to ensure adequate monitoring, support, and resources that prioritize equity in learning for state leaders in California and other states.
• State Education Funding: The Poverty Equation (FutureEd). This article delves into the reasoning behind poverty measures in funding formulas and shows how different definitions of poverty (either at the student or district level) can lead to more or less adequate funding of those most in need.
• 5 Things to Advance Equity in State Funding Systems (The Education Trust). This fact sheet provides weights and other equity measures that states can better incorporate in postCOVID-19 funding formulas.

---

Distance Learning

Technology and Access

• How States Are Expanding Broadband Access (The Pew Charitable Trusts). This report identifies and explores promising practices for connecting unserved communities through examples in nine states.
• Closing the K-12 Digital Divide in the Age of Distance Learning (Common Sense Media). This report, done in partnership with Boston Consulting Group, analyzes the digital divide for America’s k–12 public school students and teachers and provides strategies for moving forward to close the digital divide.
• Digital Learning Plan (Wyoming). This 2017-2018 framework helped the state achieve 100% broadband connectivity and become the national leader in high-speed access.
• empowerCLE+ (DigitalC). This nonprofit organization provides a growing number of communities in the greater Cleveland area with $18/month internet access—a potential model for philanthropic partnerships in other states.
• ISTE Standards for Students (ISTE). This interactive website provides additional detail and illustrative videos on seven standards for leveraging technology. The site helps educators, schools, and districts adopt these standards and put them into practice in order to create authentic learning opportunities that empower student voice and prepare students to be future- ready, lifelong learners.

Curriculum and Teaching Strategies

• Reopening: Moving Toward More Equitable Schools (EL Education). EL Education’s framework provides guidance and support for schools and districts to help them emphasize authentic learning and assessment regardless of whether school takes place in school buildings or through distance or blended learning. The framework is organized around five domains: empowering leadership, crew culture, compelling curriculum, students as leaders of their own learning, and deeper instruction.
• Restart & Recovery: Considerations for Teaching and Learning: State Policies and Actions (Council of Chief State School Officers). This document outlines the critical state-level policies and actions that align with each section of the guidance, which include System Conditions, Wellness and Connection, and Academics.
• Supporting Learning in the COVID-19 Context (Policy Analysis for California Education). This research brief provides 10 recommendations with accompanying resources for implementing distance and blended learning.
• This collection of resources, curated by Teaching Tolerance, was built from the recommendations of 2,000 educators — more than 98 percent of whom were facing school closures and in need of high-quality resources, including resources around equity. Teaching Through Coronavirus: What Educators Need Right Now
• The American Federation of Teachers has created a library of resources for teachers and parents broken down by grade level, subject area, and student needs. Free but registration required.

---

Social-Emotional Learning

• Reunite, Renew, and Thrive: Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Roadmap for Returning to School (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning). This guide provides school leaders with whole-school, anti-racist SEL strategies centered on relationships and built on the existing strengths of a school community. Specifically, the guide provides concrete SEL Critical Actions with essential questions; actions as schools prepare, implement, and sustain their integrative SEL work; and tools to help them along the way.
• Preventing a Lost School Year: The Crucial Importance of Motivating Students & Engaging Families (Stand for Children Leadership Center). This guide identifies essentials for motivating and supporting students and for strong partnerships with families, including advisors for all, staff teaming, and virtual home visits, accompanied by tools and resources.
• The American Institutes for Research created Building Positive Conditions for Learning at Home: Strategies and Resources for Families and Caregivers to support parents and caregivers in creating positive conditions for learning at home. The resource, available in English and Spanish, addresses offers strategies, describes developmental differences to consider, and identifies a few resources that go deeper into the topic.
• The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning offers suggestions for educators on addressing the social and emotional needs of students. They also started the CASEL CARES initiative, which offers resources including SEL tips and information for anyone who works with children and a webinar series on various topics, such as how to support SEL at home.
• The webinar, Supporting Students’ SEL and Mental Health Needs During COVID-19, discusses how districts can address the mental health needs of students and support their social and emotional learning (SEL) growth during the COVID-19 school closures. The webinar was developed by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education in partnership with Transforming Education, and Walker Cares.

---

Student Health and Well-Being

• COVID-19 and Homelessness: Strategies for Schools, Early Learning Programs, and Higher Education Institutions (SchoolHouse Connection). This resource provides guides, checklists, and strategies for meeting the needs of children and youth experiencing homelessness.
• The Whole Child: Building Systems of Integrated Student Support During and After COVID-19 (Center for Optimized Student Support at Boston College). This action guide offers practical steps for schools to develop a system of integrated support.
• The Afterschool Alliance has FAQs and resources about how the afterschool field can support communities during the pandemic, including by supporting essential workers with childcare and providing free meals and food support.
• North Dakota and Ohio have released behavioral health guidance to help parents and educators understand how to talk with children about COVID-19.
• The Oregon Department of Education has created mental health guidance for school counselors and other administrators, as well as guidance on how to support educator and student mental and emotional wellbeing.

---

Supporting Students With Special Needs

• In response to widespread school closure, a group of special education advocacy and innovation organizations has formed the Educating All Learners Alliance to support the education of students with disabilities during COVID-19. On its EducatingAllLearners.org hub, users can access resources, a community forum, webinars, and more. (Member organizations Council of Chief State School Officers, the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, WestEd, the Council for Exceptional Children, and the National Center for Learning Disabilities).
• Top 12 Websites For Children With Learning Disabilities is a collection curated by Special Education Degrees.
• The U.S. Department of Education's "Questions and Answers" document outlines states’ responsibilities to infants, toddlers, and children with disabilities and their families, and to the staff serving these students. Also check out their webinar on ensuring web accessibility for students with disabilities for schools utilizing online learning during the COVID-19.
• The Center on Online Learning and Students with Disabilities has a wealth of resources focused on making online learning more accessible, engaging, and effective for students with disabilities.
• The Maine Department of Education has a page for Special Services COVID-19 Resources to help administrators, teachers, and families and caregivers to teach and support students with special needs.

---

English and Multilingual Learners

• Colorín Colorado provides resources to enable schools and communities partner effectively with multilingual families. We also include information about how schools can best serve English learners during school closures.
• From the San Diego County Office of Education, Language Development Resources for EL Students by Language Strand and Content is a curated list of resources for teachers.
• The International Networks for Public Schools offers best practices for remote learning for multilingual students.
• Learning Forward: Supporting Equity for English Learners During the Coronavirus Pandemic
• The Chalkbeat story, "Teachers of newcomer students try to keep them connected as schools close, routines shift," reports on how educators who work with new immigrant children and teens adapting to life in America face some of the most complex challenges during the pandemic. It also discusses how they are responding by doing everything from personally delivering hotspots to hosting Sunday video chats.

---

Educator Preparation

• EdPrepLab (EdPrepLab Network). This network of leading-edge teacher and leader preparation programs supports research, policy, and practice aimed at helping practitioners use the science of learning and development to support equitable deeper learning. EdPrepLab offers a practice-based website that provides teaching resources and policy exemplars that enable improvements in educator preparation policy and practice, including strategies for responding to the challenges of COVID-19.
• Micro-Credentials and COVID-19 (Digital Promise). This curated library of micro-credentials that can be earned outside of the classroom and without students can be used to help educators continue their professional learning during social distancing and beyond.
• NEA Micro-Credentials in Assessment Literacy (National Education Association). The NEA micro-credentials site was created to make it easier for educators to access professional learning opportunities. The Assessment Literacy certification bank includes six micro-credentials for educators to develop their knowledge and skills to utilize meaningful assessment practices.
• The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) has compiled information about its response to the outbreak and links to helpful tools, resources, research, and learning opportunities to assist its members' operations during this time.
• Bank Street Graduate School of Education's Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice is continuing to virtually support school communities during the COVID-19 pandemic by developing resources for teachers, caregivers, and others looking for ways to enhance the social-emotional element of their online work with children.

---

Early Learning

• At-home Teaching and Learning in PreK-3rd Grade (National P-3 Center). This document provides specific guidance related to school districts’ and elementary schools’ supports for at-home learning across the primary grades (pre-k to 3rd grade) based on fundamentals of effective teaching and learning in early childhood.
• Promise Venture Studio has a curated space for resources, tools, and guidance for anyone supporting young children, including a searchable database of resources for working with children at home.
• Early Edge California has compiled information, resources, and activities for families with young dual language learners (including screen-free activities).
• Vermont is providing financial assistance to all ECE providers (subsidized and private) to cover their costs and pay early educators in full to ensure that programs do not close due to tuition loss.
• Tennessee is partnering with an early education online platform provider to make publicly available videos demonstrating instructional activities parents can do with their children on literacy, early math, health, and well-being.