The COVID-19 Pandemic: Astonish to Education and Policy Retort
Edwin T. Yanga
The COVID-19 pandemic threatens education progress worldwide through two major shocks: The near-universal closing of schools at all levels and The economic recession sparked by pandemic-control measures Without major efforts to counter their impacts, the school-closings shock will lead to learning loss, increased dropouts, and higher inequality, and the economic shock will exacerbate the damage, by depressing education demand and supply as it harms households. Together, they will inflict long-run costs on human capital and welfare. But if countries move quickly to support continued learning, they can mitigate the damage and even turn recovery into new opportunity. The policy responses to achieve this can be summarized in three overlapping phases: Coping Managing Continuity Improving and Accelerating In implementing these policies, education systems should aim to recover but not replicate the past—given that in many countries, the pre-COVID status quo was already characterized by too little learning, high levels of inequality, and slow progress. Countries now have an opportunity to “build back better”: they can use the most effective crisis-recovery strategies as the basis for long-term improvements in areas like assessment, pedagogy, technology, financing, and parental involvement. Education system was not built to deal with extended shutdowns like those imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers, administrators, and parents have worked hard to keep learning alive; nevertheless, these efforts are not likely to provide the quality of education that’s delivered in the classroom. Even more troubling is the context: the persistent achievement disparities across income levels and between white students and students of black and Hispanic heritage. School shutdowns could not only cause disproportionate learning losses for these students compounding existing gaps but also lead more of them to drop out. This could have long-term effects on these children’s long-term economic well-being and on the economy as a whole. Despite the enormous attention devoted to the achievement gap, it has remained a stubborn feature of the education system. Yet poverty alone cannot account for the gaps in educational performance. Together, they were the equivalent of a permanent economic recession Unfortunately, the past decade has seen little progress in narrowing these disparities.
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The author is Teacher III at Angeles City High School, SHS, Division off
Angeles City