Equitable Access to Educational Resources
The Charge
Ensure students, families, and educators have equitable access to key levers for student learning and engagement, including technological and multilingual resources.
RESEARCH FINDINGS:
Pandemic-era teaching and learning made evident both strengths and weaknesses in the educational system.
The strengths centered on the people – the educators and families who came together in a pinch to enact distance learning. But systemic weaknesses hampered these efforts, specifically the lacking infrastructures for accessible technology and bilingual communication.
Following the rapid shift to distance learning, educators realized that some students and families lacked access to the technology needed to engage in online learning.
Even in districts with one-to-one technology, stakeholders realized that (a) this initiative did not include young learners in early-childhood settings and (b) students needed the internet to use these devices to engage in distance learning.
Educators also quickly realized the challenges of communicating with families who spoke languages other than English at home.
Whereas multilingual communication was typically disseminated at the school level, teachers needed to engage parents in real-time, requiring more dynamic and on-demand access to translation software and services that were not available to them.
While widespread distance learning is hopefully a thing of the past, these issues can be rectified to enhance access for all students and families.
Potential Action Steps:
Ensure every student has access to laptop or tablet to engage in learning.
Ensure every family has access to wireless internet to use these devices at home
Ensure every teacher has access to translation services to facilitate home-school communication with speakers of all languages.
