Leadership matters. In a crisis, effective leadership matters that much more. In a pandemic the likes of which none of us have seen, leadership can be the difference between absolute success and complete failure.
America’s public education system was woefully unprepared for COVID-19. Our antiquated system of centralized school districts did little to empower its school leaders to rapidly adapt in such an emergency. In contrast, the autonomy and independence that school leaders like Lagra Newman, Robert Marshall and Shawn Nelms enjoy, enable them to respond in ways that should be replicated.
According to a recent report by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), “America’s Remote Learning Imperative,” in order to shift to effective remote learning during the pandemic, our schools need more than laptops and wifi hotspots for students. They also need to make changes in five critical areas: (1) professional development for teachers, (2) engaging parents, (3) student assessment, (4) students’ social-emotional learning, and (5) school governance.
Long before America closed nearly all of its schools, school leaders with autonomy were building the parent trust, teacher capacity, and social-emotional supports necessary to respond to school closures.
At Purpose Prep Academy in Nashville, Lagra Newman created a charter school that deploys two teachers per class in kindergarten through grade 4, so they can work with children in small groups.
According to the PPI report, seven out of ten surveyed teachers in the U.S. reported they had not been properly prepared for virtual learning. During the pandemic-induced shutdown, Newman and her staff used their spring break to prepare. Teachers were asked to conduct wellness check-ins with every student’s family, to establish families’ expectations of them and their expectations of families. With twice as many teachers per class as a traditional school, Purpose Prep had a big advantage over other schools that tried to do the same.
With the information gathered from weekly wellness checks, teachers were able to target tutoring for particular students. Even as the school transitioned into summer break, Newman and her team dedicated three weeks of professional development for staff on teaching remotely, transferring the curriculum online, helping parents support their kids’ learning, and assessing student progress in online learning.
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