This week I had an opportunity to participate in the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) Legislative Conference in Washington, DC. CCSSO is a nonpartisan, nationwide nonprofit supporting the top education leader in every state and five U.S. territories. The Council’s core focus is on three broad priorities: Response and Recovery to include ongoing rapid response and assistance with recovery and improvement; Equity, Access, and Critical Infrastructure; and Modernizing the Education System including new education delivery models and state of the art accountability and reporting.
This was my first face-to-face participation at a moderate size educational convening since the pandemic begin in March 2020. This shared learning experience included small group discussions, workshops, state spotlight presentations from Missouri and Tennessee, an update on oversight of federal COVID relief funding and conditions for effective spending by states, and opportunities for state delegation meetings with their respective members of congress.
One of the unexpected highlights of the CCSSO convening was an inspirational elementary school choir performance from students at W.B. Patterson Elementary School in Washington, DC, whose rendition of Quincy Jones & Tevin Campbell’s “Tomorrow (A Better You, Better Me)” at the opening dinner tugged at the hearts of everyone in attendance.
A moderated conversation with U.S. Secretary of Education, Migual Cardona, talked about removing silos, looking at the pandemic as an opportunity to reset and help spearhead innovation in public education, and long-term solutions to loss instructional time challenges. Part of my consultancy work with CCSSO includes support for a State Support Recovery Network initiative involving eight state education agencies (including Oklahoma) and work with their Summer School Learning Network.
Speaking of summer learning, I ended my week moderating a Summer Planning Bootcamp webinar session, Investment of a Generation: Accessing and Leveraging Funding and Partnerships, hosted by the National Summer Learning Association (NSLA). NSLA is a national non-profit exclusively focused on closing the achievement gap through high-quality summer learning for all children and youth. NSLA and its broad coalition of supporters strives to move beyond the remedial nature of summer school programming to include enrichment and youth development opportunities that nurture and cultivate a child’s natural brilliance and curiosity.
Summer learning is a national response strategy to help address lost instructional time (i.e., learning loss or the COVID-19 slide) caused by the pandemic that requires strong partnerships with state education agencies, districts, and community organizations — “Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much.” Helen Keller.