U.S. Department of Education releases 2nd handbook focused on students' needs

On April 9, the U.S. Department of Education released the second in its series of “handbooks” to help schools re-open and recover from the COVID pandemic. While the first handbook focused on safe reopening, “COVID-19 Handbook, Volume 2: Roadmap to Reopening Safely and Meeting All Students' Needs” focuses on supporting the social, emotional and academic needs of students and educators from a research-based perspective. The Department remarked that this newest handbook was the result of a broad collection of input from superintendents, school boards, education and civil rights groups, and research organizations, among others.

The handbook highlights that American Rescue Plan (ARP) funding, if well invested, presents a great opportunity to make long-term impacts on educational opportunity gaps, even beyond healing from the effects of the pandemic. The document offers a number of helpful recommendations specific to the afterschool and summer learning field for local education decision-makers to consider, beginning with an introduction of the uses of ARP funds’ purpose “to provide afterschool or other out of school time programs that address students’ social, emotional and academic needs” and “provide students with evidence-based summer learning and enrichment programs, including through partnerships with community-based organizations.”

One of the handbook’s nine sections focuses on accelerated learning opportunities such as expanded learning time (also known as out-of-school time or afterschool programs), summer learning, in-classroom approaches, and tutoring. This section mentions the importance of collaboration between all partners across all four of these models, as well as the importance of providing students with opportunities for enrichment, engaging families as partners, making relationships a key focus, ensuring programs are free, accessible and flexible, and creating support that includes academic, social and emotional components.

The accelerated learning section highlights best practices that lead to greater research-based outcomes. In regards to afterschool/out-of-school time learning, these approaches often include:

• identifying students most in need of support aligned curriculum with the school day,
• utilizing certified teachers for academic instruction,
• engaging students with hands-on project based learning and enrichment, and
• ensuring consistent attendance.

This section also reiterates the strong research base on afterschool. It establishes that ”High quality afterschool programs have demonstrated effects on student math and language arts achievement and programs strongly rooted in the school context can also have a positive effect on school-related student outcomes, including greater self confidence, increased civic engagement, better school attendance, improved high school graduation and decreased delinquency.”

For more on evidence-based components of afterschool and summer learning, please see the March 29 webinar hosted by the Department of Education and the WestEd Center to Improve Social and Emotional Learning and School Safety Discussion, “Addressing the Impact of COVID-19 through Summer Learning and Enrichment.”

Other sections of Handbook 2 include:

• Providing school meals regardless of educational setting
• Meeting the social, emotional, and mental-health needs of students
• Providing all students with access to a safe and inclusive learning environment
• Accelerating learning through in-classroom instructional approaches, tutoring, and expanded learning time
• Supporting equitable access and effective use of technology for teaching and learning
• Using data about students' opportunities to learn to help target resources and support.
• Addressing resource inequities
• Stabilizing a diverse and qualified educator workforce
• Supporting educator and staff well-being

Additional sections often refer to the importance of working with stakeholders and community partners to ensure the most effective and enduring outcomes, including provision of meals, finding spaces for student voice and agency, youth participatory action research, culturally responsive practices, and understanding the often disproportionate impacts of the pandemic on specific populations.

The handbook recommends broad collaboration in establishing welcoming spaces and social and emotional learning, such as offering professional development opportunities that combine school day staff, counselors and afterschool professionals to support coordination. It also recommends student and family surveys, personal outreach and forums, and shared decision-making on how resources should be expended. Community schools are highlighted as an approach to help coordinate resources, supports, and interventions among stakeholders. And the handbook asks that careful attention be paid to availability and accessibility of resources and resource equity including those which establish an opportunity to learn (OTL), qualified teachers, adequate school funding, well-rounded education, and extracurricular opportunities and those coordinated with community-based organizations.

In all, the comprehensive Handbook 2 provides a useful tool for education leaders in their decision-making process during the COVID recovery and American Rescue Plan implementation period. The afterschool field appears throughout the handbook because of its critical role as a partner to schools and connector to students, families, and the broader community. We hope the recommendations and examples in the handbook will inspire collaboration and innovation across the county that helps support our students with the resources and approaches they need to keep moving forward.

To that end, we also have a number of tools to help programs approach their school districts with ways they might collaborate. As always, we welcome you to share your story with us here. We look forward to sharing examples as this work continues.