Creating the “Equitable Access to Education Playbook”: How We Can Close the Widening Learning Gap

The learning gap continues to widen at a rate faster than we can fully quantify. Indeed, as a recent Bloomberg article states: “Our affluent parents, they’ve got what they call pods, they’ve hired teachers or workers to support their kids for the day. They’re paying them like $20 or $30 an hour. Black families are trying to just live.”

Buried underneath the minimum wage and coronavirus vaccine roll-out storylines lies a stark reality: a massive number of school-aged kids continue to fall further behind a smaller cohort of students who have had access over the last year to the tools and supports that have kept learning moving forward for these more affluent families. Given this dynamic, two questions naturally follow. First, will these kids who have lost a significant amount of learning ever catch up, and second, what must be done to ensure we reverse this trend now (and forever) so that every child receives equitable access to education?

Before we come to these questions, we must call out a few other dynamics that quite likely will push wider the learning gap between the educated “haves” and “haves not” if we don’t act:

• The coronavirus epidemic has shifted the lens on education dramatically, and the sector is now an investor darling. Capital is flowing into education companies at record levels, yet the bulk of these dollars are aimed at the post-K12 sectors of higher education and workforce learning and development. Further, what is being invested in the K12 sector skews towards services that can be delivered directly to students and parents, and as such will most likely not be fully accessible to every student and family.
• Educators — teachers and administrators — have been working under tremendous stress all year, and the rest of this school year won’t be any easier for them as pressures mount to open schools nationally before the end of the current school year. Estimates vary, but some groups have projected that as many as one in four current teachers won’t be back in the classroom come this fall. Again, the students who will be most affected by a national teacher shortage are those currently struggling with distance learning and who, as a result of these struggles, largely disengaged from their education.
• It’s unclear to what extent K12 schools and districts will be able to invest in delivering learning to every student. Even with a third tranche of federal stimulus funding coming (e.g. the $130 billion earmarked for K12 education within the Biden $1.9 trillion stimulus plan), budgets across the country are stressed by lower state and local tax revenues. Further, much of the federal stimulus may end up going to support teacher PPP and other school infrastructure needs for reopening which, while quite important, may not leave enough for districts and schools to invest in the education services that drive learning engagement equitably across every community.

What we need right now is a clearly defined and national commitment to equitable access to education. We need a federally defined “Equitable Access to Education Playbook” — the “EAEP” — that stipulates what must be delivered to every student and family in every state when it comes to ensuring complete access to “anytime, anywhere” learning capabilities. And to ensure that we execute this playbook, we need every level of government as well as private sector participants (including edtech investors and companies, “Big Tech” platforms, and Fortune 1000 brands) to step forward with their commitment for the financial resources required to execute this playbook.

As a starting point, here are five critical (but by no means complete) elements of the EAEP:

1. Smartphone mobile devices for all students, including uncapped data plans for education-approved apps. Ensuring that students, parents, and educators can communicate and stay connected with each other enables the relational thread that underpins equitable access to education.
2. Broadband access in the home for every household so that every student can access the learning experiences required by their teacher. Home wi-fi must be uncapped for education apps (including Youtube which many students use to access learning videos) so that bandwidth used to consume consumer streaming services doesn’t crowd out access to learning.
3. Digital laptops or tablet devices for all students that connect safely and securely to schools so learners can access every live video, archived video, assignment, test, and any other learning experience required. These devices must support typing, touch screen modality, and virtual white board capabilities so that each student can engage on the same level with the learning experiences being delivered.
4. Personal connection for each student to an educator “advisor” who will monitor and guide their learning journey. This will be a different person for those students in elementary, middle, and high school, but knowing that all students (and their parents / caregivers) have an educator watching over them ensures that we leverage digital technologies to support the human relationships that ultimately foster learning.
5. Measure and assess closely each month the progress of every student, and commit to rapidly close any gap that appears. Most important, commit to close learning gaps as they become evident whether these gaps require personalized investments for students in their mobile communication capabilities, home broadband access, digital laptop or tablet devices, or support from teachers, tutors, and/or counselors who can assist students in academic and social-emotional areas.

We’ve never seen the chasm in learning between the “haves” and the “haves not” expand at such a dramatic rate as we’re witnessing today. The reality, however, is that we’ve also never had more powerful digital technologies and capital to put forth in an effort to close the learning gap. So the real question is actually a third one beyond the two asked above. Specifically, do we have the desire as a country to invest now in equitable access to education — to recognize how an ever widening learning gap will only impair how competitive and cohesive the U.S. will be 10, 20, and 50+ years from now?

I’m reminded of an old TV commercial from the 1970s. An auto mechanic, referring to the decision of whether or not to replace a part, says matter-of-factly to the viewer: “So, you can pay me now…or you can pay me later.” Yes, education is much more complex than replacing a car’s oil filter, but this statement does simply summarize where we are today when it comes to our investment in public education. We can either fully invest in education right now, or we can leave it to future generations to pay for an unfavorable outcome that awaits decades from now by under investing in education. Seems to me now’s the time to define and invest something as critical as an Equitable Access to Education Playbook.