Resources for Reopening Schools
This collection of resources brings together recent and rigorous science to inform school reopening efforts with evidence-based approaches to provide and sustain safe, in-person instruction for students. Visit the website >
Restarting and Reinventing School Report
This framework provides research, state and local examples, and policy recommendations for 10 key areas of education. Read the report >
Learning in the Time of COVID-19 Blog Series
This LPI blog series explores strategies and investments to address the current crisis and build long-term systems capacity. Read the blogs >
Reopening Schools in the Context of COVID-19 Brief
As state and district leaders plan for school reopenings they can look to health and safety guidelines from other countries. Read the brief >
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.
- The Urgency Of Reopening Schools Safely: The decision of when and how to reopen schools is one of the most critical of our times. To do so effectively, we would do well to look at what has worked—and what has not—around the world. Adequate federal funding is also necessary for the additional staff and equipment needed to make schools safe.
- Districts and states can use CARES Act funds to supplement services and supports funded through the Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grant program. These can include activities to address the social, emotional, and academic needs of students; to increase student access to guidance counselors and social workers (and provide them with the training they need to deliver these services online); and to mount surveys to gauge the mental health and well-being of students and staff during and after the immediate crisis.
- The National Conference of State Legislature's podcast, "Our American States" features this education-focused episode, "COVID-19: Education, Child Care and Nutrition," which examines public policy to address these critical concerns.
- How School Funding Cuts Driven by the Coronavirus Could Affect Your State. This Education Week story featuring LPI Senior Researcher and Policy Analyst Michael Griffith features a state-by-state analysis of potential impacts through an interactive tool.
- CCSSO's Supporting States Amid Coronavirus Outbreak resource page is designed for state education leaders who are working to support schools and districts in their response to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in the United States.
- National Conference of State Legislatures created a COVID-19 webpage and webinar series designed to help state policymakers make informed decisions while reacting to the rapidly evolving situation.
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.
- The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization has created a comprehensive list of educational applications and platforms to help parents, teachers, schools and school systems facilitate student learning and provide social caring and interaction during periods of school closure.
- Free online conferencing and video platforms for teachers include:
- Microsoft and Google Video Conferencing
- Google Hangouts (free access through July 1 to advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing capabilities to all G-Suite & G-Suite for Education customers)
- Free Webex Personal Account (Unlimited Usage, 100 Participants)
- EveryoneOn is a national non-profit that collaborates with diverse internet service providers and device providers to connect low-income households to the internet. Connect2Compete (C2C) is EveryoneOn’s flagship program for K-12 students, providing affordable internet to eligible students and families. C2C is offered in partnership with leading cable companies, including Cox Communications and Mediacom.
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.
- PBS Learning Media has a vast collection of online resources for teachers and parents for students from p–k through college, including "Ken Burns in the Classroom" (featuring free documentaries available through June 20) to "Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum."
- Wide Open Schools is a collection developed to help "make learning from home an experience that inspires kids, supports teachers, relieves families, and restores community." Developed by more than 25 organizations (including Apple, Google, National Geographic, PBS, and Sesame Workshop), the collection offers resources for students from p-k–12 for parents and educators.
- Content coordinators from the San Diego County Office of Education curated this subject-specific list of resources to support distance learning.
- These websites have lessons that can be accessed by educators or parents for content instruction: CommonLit, Illustrative Mathematics, Khan Academy, Zearn
- American Federation of Teachers’ Share My Lesson offers a helpful roundup of lesson plans and other resources for teaching students about coronavirus and a Checklist for Distance Learning to help prepare for remote learning.
- The Smithsonian has launched a central portal highlighting an array of distance learning resources, from STEM webcasts to American history podcasts and comprehensive lesson plans. Offerings range from low- or no-tech (interviewing family members for oral history projects) to high-tech (diving into an interactive exploration module).
- The Barbara Bush Foundation for Literacy Educational Toolkit for At-Home Learning offers free online resources that can help children continue to build critical literacy skills while schools are closed.
- Storyline Online is produced by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television’s SAG-AFTRA Foundation as part of its children’s literacy program. The site streams videos featuring celebrated actors reading children’s books alongside creatively produced illustrations. Readers include Viola Davis, Chris Pine, Lily Tomlin, Kevin Costner, Annette Bening, James Earl Jones, Betty White and others.
- The New York Times is hosting and continuously updating this page on ideas for working with content from the Times and other reliable sources.
- The U.S. Department of Education’s Talk, Read, and Sing Together Every Day! Tip Sheets for Families, Caregivers and Early Learning Educators provide families, caregivers and early educators with research-based tips for talking, reading, and singing with young children every day beginning from birth.
- NPR has created this Just For Kids: A Comic Exploring the New Coronavirus to help demystify the virus and to teach children how to protect themselves. The online version includes a print-and-fold zine version.
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.
- In a Learning Is Social, Emotional and Academic blog, Lorea Martinez offers parents homeschooling tips to ensure social emotional learning is a part of student learning.
- Sanford Harmony, a Pre-K-6 research-based social emotional learning program, promotes positive peer relations among students through lessons and activities that encourage communication, collaboration, and mutual respect. These free resources can be used by parents at home to help children express feelings and solve problems together.
- The National Association of School Psychiatrists has developed a set of materials for schools and districts to support for their students and community around COVID-19 and pandemics.
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.
- The Pasadena High School Community Schools Initiative created a resource guide of hyperlocal supports for students and families, including physical health and food access resources, and socio-emotional wellbeing
- Phoenix Union High School District in Arizona launched the Every Student, Every Day initiative so that staff members can contact each of the district’s 30,000 students each day to check in. The initiative includes a framework and protocols to protects privacy.
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.
- Common Sense Media has curated a list of the Best Special Education Applications and Websites based on recommendations by educators who work with students with special needs. Applications support the development of academic and social-emotional skills, as well as sites to assist teachers in providing differentiated learning opportunities.
- The Council for Exceptional Children has developed COVID-19 Information for Special Educators, including a forum for members on how to adapt IEP services during school closures and a link to a resource page developed by the Council of Administrators of Special Education (CASE).
- The State Educational Technology Directors Association offers strategies and resources on its site for ensuring that online learning supports students with Individualized Education Plans.
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.
- Common Sense Media supports educators in teaching students how to thrive in the digital age with free, research-backed lesson plans in English and Spanish.
- SmithsonianTweenTribune | Articles for kids, middle school, teens from Smithsonian is an online resource provided by the Smithsonian Institution offering daily news articles, K-12. Available in Spanish.
- Storyline Online is produced by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television’s SAG-AFTRA Foundation as part of their children’s literacy program and includes materials aiming to strengthen comprehension and verbal and written skills for English-language learners for grades PK-8.
- Students can access thousands of videos in English/Spanish that include lessons, activities, and visuals via Twig Education.
- A collection of California-focused resources from Early Edge focused on early learners for a range of stakeholders, from administrators to parents and guardians, in both English and Spanish.
- Sesame Street and the Spanish-language version, Sésamo, offer games, videos, activities for children.
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.
AACTE has compiled a list of examples from states that have revised guidelines to make accommodations in clinical practice and other teacher licensure requirements during COVID-19. - NYU Metro Center and the Culturally Responsive Education Hub developed guidance on sustaining culturally responsive education remotely.
- What happens to student-teachers when there are no schools open for them to finish their clinical experiences? States and teacher-preparation programs are trying to figure that out? This Education Week article, "Student-Teachers In Limbo During School Shutdowns. Here's How States Can Help," discusses what programs are doing.
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.