As we wait to tally up the true toll of the destruction left behind by COVID-19, Nevada’s children deserve bold leadership and action in education to ensure their future remains intact.
The necessity to abruptly shut down schools to help curb the spread of this virus has placed the educational well-being of our children in peril.
Traditionally, educators have talked about, and planned for, the “summer slide”: the period during the summer break in which children lose the academic gains from the previous year due to time away from the classroom. Now, we will have a new dilemma to face — the COVID-19 slide — owed to the weeks of in-person instructional time our kids have missed in light of the crisis.
In the days ahead, we will have to ask ourselves some tough questions about what we are willing to do to help our children adjust and move again toward the goal of earning a high school diploma. Will we need to ramp up summer school plans for those students who fell behind? How do we find time to increase learning opportunities for our students? Many have even suggested the idea of expanding distance learning to ensure that our students are able to maximize instructional time. We need our best strategic thinking to find our way back from the brink of ruin.
We cannot follow the paths we might have normally chosen to find our way out of this crisis. We will have to put our heads together: school board trustees, parents, teachers, principals, business leaders, other community stakeholders and state government, to support our teachers and staff leading our students to success. The economic destruction left behind by this virus will surely be felt by all of us, and already-limited resources will be even more scarce.
Well before we knew of COVID-19, many of our children were already facing tremendous inequities. This virus has magnified them. Research from the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), a nonprofit organization focused on education, points to frightening predictions for how this time away from physical classroom instruction may negatively affect our children. (For the research, go to nwea.org/covid-slide.)
According to the NWEA, our third-, fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade students will feel the largest impact, with a predicted steep decline in both reading and math gains. The hard truth is that the largest loss will be experienced by students of color, students with special needs, those living with poverty, and English-language learners.
The choices we will have to make will need to be courageous and swift, since time is not on our side. While all our decisions will be made with the best interest of our children and families in mind and with the best information at hand, not all of them will have the effect we desire, and we will have to adapt quickly to new data and changing realities.
I am inspired by this community’s continued spirit of service displayed by so many working to support those who are most affected by this crisis. We have to come together to find innovative ways to move forward and create safe ways to continue educating our children and to diminish the impact of COVID-19.
I am committed to serving our 320,000 students and their families, and will continue working closely with all stakeholders to move forward through this slide and any other challenges ahead. We will get through this together.
Jesus Jara is superintendent of the Clark County School District.