Education Week - August 26, 2020 - 3

In Coronavirus Era,
Worst-Job Honors
Go to District Heads
A superintendent's job is a tough one on a good
day. But as a new report makes clear, the pandemic
has required them to make some impossible choices
balancing school health, quality teaching, and constituencies like parents and teachers whose priorities frequently conflict.
The report, issued this month by the American
Enterprise Institute's Nat Malkus, its deputy director of education policy studies, summarizes a series
of in-depth conversations with 12 public and Roman
Catholic school superintendents. 
Its main insight is that, for all the airy pundit talk
about "innovating" and making the best of a crisis,
most superintendents view school reopening as no
less than an unwinnable situation. There are awful
tradeoffs: A decision that pleases one constituency,
like working parents who can't afford to keep their
kids at home, can be the same thing that frustrates
another one-like teachers who, not without good
reason, are fearful of being exposed to the virus in
a classroom setting.
Although all the superintendents acknowledged
that the responsibility for decision-making ultimately rested on their shoulders, many said they
didn't necessarily feel in total control.
"The virus," replied Matthew Veerecke, the Dallas diocesan superintendent, when asked who was
in charge.
It's safe to say that nothing in the report hasn't
been reported before. But it is worth reiterating some
of the unique ways that the U.S. response to COVID19 has made the superintendent's job a lot harder:
The federal government's confusing, sometimes
contradictory messages about school reopening
have politicized the process unnecessarily.
State health guidance has been vague or lacking,
forcing superintendents to become mini-epidemiologists on a dime.
Disagreements among district constituencies
about reopening options have cleaved along lines
of privilege. 
At least the public school superintendents don't
have one pressure their Catholic peers have for resuming in-person classes. "If I don't open face-to-face
five days a week, people aren't going to pay to come
to a Catholic school," said Scott Conway, the superintendent of the St. Augustine, Fla., diocese schools.

36

Ready or Not

29

A majority of educators don't have
a lot of faith in their colleagues'
ability to teach remotely-in large
part because of the training they
received. They were asked: What
percentage of educators in your
district could effectlively teach
students remotely if asked to do so
during the 2020-21 school year?

14
11%

10
1

100%

76-99

51-75

26-50

1-25

None

(Percent of colleagues)

SOURCE: EdWeek Research Center survey, July, 2020

What the Nation Thinks About COVID-19
And Schools May Not Match Local Action
It seems like everywhere you look, there's a new poll about
the coronavirus and schools. But do they influence action?
Some of the many national polls about the topic in recent
weeks include those from ABC News and Ipsos, the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs, Gallup, and
the Pew Research Center. 
So what are the limits of those kinds of national surveys? And why do they sometimes seem so out of sync with
what's happening in your local school district?
Daniel Domenech, the executive director of AASA, the
School Superintendents Association, said superintendents are "not going to be looking at the national trends
or the state trends" in making decisions about reopening.
Instead, he said, school leaders in the country's roughly
13,600 districts are looking at local infection rates, what
district parents and teachers are saying publicly, and
similar factors. 
"They're less concerned about those polls and more concerned about what's happening in their community," he said. 

What such nationwide polls cannot capture is that "U.S.
schools are highly fragmented, complex systems that are very
parochial," said David DeSchryver, a vice president at the research and consulting firm Whiteboard Advisors who oversees
polling of school officials. It's not like asking voters or the general public who they plan to vote for in the presidential election. 
That's not to say national polling isn't useful for local education leaders in a broader context. It has affected how lawmakers and lobbyists talk about how much aid Congress should
provide to schools, how it should be allocated, and different
aspects of schools. 
Stephanie Marken, the executive director of educational
research for Gallup, stressed that she doesn't "think a national poll should ever presume to tell a district what it
should be doing." But she also notes that nationwide polls
can highlight issues that aren't strictly local and make addressing them more urgent: "There's going to be a lot of
learning lost over the summer. I don't think that's going to
change from district to district."

BRIEFLY STATED CONTRIBUTORS: Alyson Klein, Stephen Sawchuk, Denisa R. Superville, Andrew Ujifusa, and Mark Walsh. Edited by Karen Diegmueller.

Vol. 40 * Issue 2 * August 26, 2020
5 Teachers With COVID-19 Health

Risks: Who Gets to Stay Home?

6
8

Overcoming COVID-19
Learning Loss
Private Schools Catch Parents' Eye
As Public School Buildings Stay Shut

10 What Will It Take to Keep

Coronavirus Out of Schools?

10 Race and Schools Are

At the Center of Trump's
'Suburban Lifestyle Dream'

12 Betsy DeVos Backtracks on Remote

Learning Options She Had
Championed

13 How a Biden White House Could

OPINION
16 There Is Nothing Fragile

About Racism

17 When Parents Are Teachers
20 Should I Choose My Life

Over My Life's Purpose?

DEPARTMENTS
3 Briefly Stated
9 What the Research Says
18 Letters to the Editor
19 EdWeek Top School Jobs

Diverge From Obama on K-12 Policy

14 How School Reopenings Have

Worked Globally

EDUCATION WEEK | August 26, 2020 | www.edweek.org | 3
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Education Week - August 26, 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - August 26, 2020
