Learning Renewal & Rebuilding
Overcoming the Effects of COVID-19 within our School Communities
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in the Spring of 2020, education for children was turned upside down. Every family in Illinois was impacted in every corner of the state.
As educators – teachers, school staff, and school and district leaders – work tirelessly to keep students engaged and learning throughout this crisis, pandemic disruptions are still impacting students’ educational experiences.
The COVID-19 pandemic will leave many challenges in its wake. Among those challenges are disruptions to learning, social discourse, civic development, and well-being experienced by our children and young adults. It will take focused and creative leadership to develop and implement a state-wide learning recovery plan. Advance Illinois is committed to ensuring that equity is at its center.
An Equitable Learning Recovery Plan
We realize that this pandemic was not an equal opportunity disruptor. Inequities in the education system were deepened across lines of race, income, language, and need.
If left unaddressed, the effects of the pandemic will widen gaps in inequity. In the early months of the pandemic, students from low-income households and Black and Latinx students were far less likely to have access to a laptop or high-speed internet than their higher-income and White peers, making it difficult for them to engage in remote and hybrid learning. Without targeted efforts to combat the learning disruption and address the trauma being unevenly experienced across the state, Illinois runs the risk of compounding inequities during crisis recovery.
We owe it to the next generation to rise to this moment by recognizing the significance and scale of the issues at hand, developing a plan, committing the resources, and taking the actions necessary to address them.
Committed to Keeping Students at the Center of Policy Work
Central to Advance Illinois’ approach is a commitment to keeping students at the center of our policy design and advocacy work. We hosted a series of focus groups in the fall of 2020 with high school students and parents/caregivers of students of all ages to hear their experiences around remote/hybrid learning and their school experiences as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants hailing from communities across Illinois and representing the racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and linguistic diversity of the state shared their experiences and described what they anticipate they will need in the years ahead. Our learnings from focus groups were compiled into our report, Education in a Pandemic: Learning from Illinois Students & Caregivers to Plan for the Road Ahead, which advocated for key needs to help school communities renew and rebuild from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a member of the Illinois P-20 Council, a group of thought leaders and education advocates from across the state, the council released the P-20 Council Learning Renewal Resource Guide. This guide is a collaborative document that details a set of opportunities to invest in and will drive learning renewal. It is meant to be informational and inspire actions. This report is designed to help guide funding decisions for both new federal dollars and existing resources for education. In addition to being a member of the Illinois P-20 Council, Advance Illinois co-chaired special working groups to help develop the resource guide and identify areas for strong state support and action.