Agility Thriving

Education Adapting in a Time of Disruption

Amidst incredible uncertainty, emotional trauma, heavy pressures, and frustrating missteps are stories of heroism, strength, and resilient communities. There are thousands of school leaders and educators, alongside countless parents and families, who rose to face the many challenges of the pandemic. The brightest among these embody organization-wide agility.

This report is about those stories, promising agile practices and innovations that have emerged from a monumentally challenging time. It’s some good news. Our goal is to inspire a collective sense of hope that we can create a more prepared, more equitable, more agile, and more resilient education system moving forward.

Nobody wants to show you the hours and hours of becoming. They’d rather show you the highlight of what they’ve become.” – Angela Duckworth, Character Lab

Highlights

Plans for the Future

The Center on Reinventing Public Education has shown that only 48 percent of districts plan to increase time for professional development this fall and 35 percent plan to provide coaching and mentoring during remote learning.

Falling Behind

An October 2020 survey conducted by Pew Research found that 72 percent of K-12 parents from low-income households are concerned about their children falling behind because of the pandemic.

Economic Effects

Prior to the pandemic, McKinsey estimated the economic effects of the persistent achievement gap to be equivalent to a permanent recession: ”By 2040, most of the current K–12 cohort will be in the workforce. We estimate a GDP loss of $173 billion to $271 billion a year – a 0.8 to 1.3 percent hit.”