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Webcast only: How should schools prepare for a coronavirus outbreak?

Webcast only: How should schools prepare for a coronavirus outbreak?

Since the arrival of the COVID-19 virus (also known as coronavirus) in the United States, there are now more than 250 reported cases and 14 deaths across 21 states. As the virus spreads, institutions across the country are taking measures to combat the epidemic. Given how easily illnesses spread in areas with high concentrations of people, schools have become a focal point in preventing the spread of COVID-19. As the virus spreads, some schools in the country have already closed, and many others are contemplating closures or remote learning. But many questions remain about when exactly to close schools, how to continue student learning in the interim, how to minimize disruption to parents, and a host of other considerations.

On March 11, the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings will host a webcast only event that will address how schools should prepare for and handle a COVID-19 outbreak. Panelists will discuss possible school closures and the medical, legal, educational, logistical, and equity issues that may arise with such drastic measures.

This event will be a live webcast only discussion. Viewers can submit questions for panelists by emailing  events@brookings.edu, or via Twitter at @BrookingsGov or using #COVID19Edu.

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Optimizing Assessment for All: Focus on Asia

By Esther Care, Alvin Vista, Helyn Kim

Twenty-first century skills (21CS) are now firmly entrenched as learning goals in education systems worldwide, but their actual implementation in teaching and assessment practices is lagging behind. With these learning goals—which prioritize how to get answers rather than just providing a correct response—we are facing new challenges and exploring new solutions.

The report

This report describes the collaborative activities undertaken by the Optimizing Assessment for All (OAA) project at Brookings with three countries in Asia—Cambodia, Mongolia, and Nepal—to create 21CS assessment tasks. OAA and partners worked with the countries to identify the 21CS skills that countries value, hypothesized what these skills might look like in classroom assessment tasks, and developed and piloted these tasks to ensure that teachers can use them in classrooms.

The mechanics of the activities are described in detail to illustrate the methods used in the OAA project and by the countries. Comprehensive descriptions of work over a 20-month period from 2018 to 2019 include multicountry workshops, individual in-country workshops and convenings, regional meetings hosted by the Network on Education Quality Monitoring in the Asia-Pacific, virtual communications, and maintenance of an online platform for document sharing and management.

Frequently, assessment studies focus primarily on the tools or tests. For the OAA project, the primary focus was on the process: How do you develop tasks that reflect current curricula and that integrate 21CS into teaching and learning practices?

From this process, it became clear that rethinking the classroom culture is necessary. Concerns expressed during pilot task implementation highlight some of the complexities associated with collaborative work, about not always prioritizing correct answers, and about building knowledge together.

The OAA initiative took just one step in the process of integrating 21CS into the curriculum. The development and introduction of assessment tasks in the classroom is a disruptive force acting as a lever for change. The challenge will be how to deal with that force adaptively.

Download the full report>>

Photo credit: Preah Norodom Primary School, Cambodia

       

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