Strengthening American Rescue Plan Preparation and Implementation: Evidence-Based Practices
Region 17 collaborated with the Idaho State Department of Education on a series of seven webinars designed to increase school and district staff members' understanding and use of evidence-based practices on such topics as learning acceleration for multilingual learners, trauma-informed practice and activities, monitoring ESSER fund plans, and more.
American Rescue Plan Discussion Starter for District Teams
This document is designed to help school district teams engage in meaningful and productive conversations about how to use federal American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act funds to address students’ academic and social-emotional needs in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It offers considerations, examples of evidence-based strategies, and supporting resources in three critical areas:
- Addressing the academic impact of lost instructional time
- Conducting meaningful family and community engagement
- Providing social-emotional and mental health supports
Lessons from COVID-19: Evidence-Based Resources for Professional Development Trainers
REL Northwest has created customizable modules that can support middle and high school teachers to leverage remote learning resources and build students' social and emotional skills in a hybrid or in-person learning environment.
Summer Learning & Enrichment Collaborative
State and local education agencies have unprecedented funding from the American Rescue Plan to support the development and expansion of summer learning and enrichment programs that ignite a love for learning, exploration, and enjoyment for students, particularly those hardest hit by the pandemic. This collection of resources from the Comprehensive Center Network can help.
Safer Schools and Campuses Best Practices Clearinghouse
The U.S. Department of Education (ED) has launched the Safer Schools and Campuses Best Practices Clearinghouse, a website that highlights the innovative work underway nationwide in continuing to reopen K-12 schools, early childhood centers, and postsecondary institutions. Through the Clearinghouse, ED is providing examples of how schools and other educational institutions can safely reopen as communities continue recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19 Education Resources
The Comprehensive Center (CC) Network, to which the Region 17 CC belongs, has created a repository for education resources related to COVID-19. This includes a curated list of resources for the continuity of learning.
Reunite, Renew and Thrive: SEL Roadmap for Reopening School
Educators nationwide are preparing to welcome students and adults back to school to reunite, renew, and thrive. They face the layered impact of schools closures, the COVID-19 pandemic, an economic crisis, and racial inequities exacerbated by the pandemic and amplified by the nationwide mobilization for racial justice. To aid in this transition, CASEL collaborated with more than 40 partners to illuminate a way forward, centered on relationships and built on the existing strengths of a school community.
Projecting the Potential Impacts of COVID-19 School Closures on Academic Achievement
In this study, the authors produce a series of projections of COVID-19-related learning loss and its potential effect on test scores in the 2020-21 school year based on (a) estimates from prior literature and (b) analyses of typical summer learning patterns of five million students. Under these projections, students are likely to return in fall 2020 with approximately 63-68 percent of the learning gains in reading relative to a typical school year and with 37-50 percent of the learning gains in math. Thus, in preparing for fall 2020, educators will likely need to consider ways to support students who are academically behind and further differentiate instruction.