Lyndon French for The New York Times 47
We need a national commitment to make up
for our children’s unfi nished learning. We’re
going to need a nationwide focus on tutoring,
of the kind we are seeing in Britain and the
Netherlands. We’re going to need addition-
al counselors and mental-health services. A
brief by Matthew Kraft and Michael Gold-
stein for the Brookings Institution proposed
what is known as ‘‘high-dosage tutoring,’’ full
time throughout the school year, provided by
expanding the federal AmeriCorps program
or through state and city programs. Senatorsled by Chris Coons of Delaware have pro-
posed bipartisan legislation that would expand
national service in response to the pandemic,
doubling the number of AmeriCorps posi-
tions for this year and providing hundreds of
thousands of opportunities to youth who are
currently unemployed.
Hannah-Jones: What about year-round school?
I reported in Wake County, N.C., where some
schools are year-round, and teachers and par-
ents loved it because you didn’t have three
months off , but you got regular breaks, and
kids didn’t lose as much ground as they do
when they’re out for the summer.
Cordova: I’m really intrigued by the idea of
a third semester. But not the usual summer
school. Parents with means fi gure out how to
give their kids learning all year long. In the
summer, their kids do programs based on their
interests that get them engaged in learning for
learning’s sake — not ‘‘third grade is the multi-
plication tables’’ — or are all about social and
emotional development. What are the summer
learning experiences that we should invest in
for kids who are falling behind, that would
be motivational, that would expose them to
a larger world? For our older students, a lot of
it could be work-based, exposure to colleges.
That’s what I really want to push for.What Should We Fight For?Bazelon: That leads me to my next question: As
we imagine someday coming out of the pan-
demic, what should we fi ght for in American
schools? What are the priorities?
King: Maybe this is a nerdy-history-teacher
way to frame this, but I was a nerdy history
teacher. We have a choice between the Hoover
path and the F.D.R. path. The Hoover path is
the continued dismantling of public-sector
responsibilities. It’s cutting resources for
schools, doing less, hoping for less. In con-
trast, the F.D.R. approach would recognize how
deeply interconnected we all are and make
our investments accordingly. As a nation, we
should be more conscious by now of how hard
it is to navigate life and work, so we ought to
make a major national commitment to univer-
sal access to quality child care for kids from
birth to 4 years old. And we ought to make
a major additional investment in K-12 educa-
tion not only to address the consequences of
Covid-19 but to remedy the many inequities,
especially for students of color and students
from low-income backgrounds, that existed
before the pandemic. We have the resources.
The question is, Do we have the will?
White: I have two kids myself, I have a third
grader and a sixth grader. I would hate to
realize that the adults in power have ruined
the experiences that myJosh Humphrey, 14
Freshman, Crispus Attucks High School,
IndianapolisIt feels empty when you’re just online.
You’re dealing with the technology
lagging. The teacher will show us a video,
and you can’t get sound. When you’re
in class, you can do group work, but with
us just doing online learning, it’s limited.
You can’t really interact with your peers
and do group assignments. (Continued on Page 65)