Equity: In Our Schools and For Our Children

As we emerge from the depths of the COVID-19 Pandemic, one thing is absolutely for certain: our state’s children were deeply impacted across the board. We are seeing the effects of trauma in all children. The childhood of many was altered and shifted. The last three years of our lives have proven that children, more than ever, need high quality, accessible education. 

If we were to consider public schools within our state, you must understand that no two schools look exactly alike, and no two classrooms will look alike either. While in some ways, that’s the beauty of education. Each child’s learning should be different. We can acknowledge that each child that enters into a public school will have various needs throughout their educational journey. However, there are enormous differences when it comes to what is available to help all children succeed. 

As mentioned above, the pandemic impacted all children. But, one area that was quickly noticeable was children's access to education as we shifted to remote learning. Depending on the school and the district in which children attended, their ability to participate in learning was up for debate. While some schools were able to provide children with personal laptops or comparable devices, other schools relied on families to supply these devices for children. Alongside this, students were then in need of stable, and reliable internet connection to participate in online learning or to complete assignments. Writing this out now seems wildly unfair to me as a new professional in the field of education, but also as a former student who lived through this reality. 

In my own experience, as a college student at the time, it seemed as if overnight our reality changed. All courses were moved to a remote format, all assignments were virtual, and because no one really knew what was going on, we all did the best we could. But, doing the best we could still does not feel like enough. In my case, I was a nineteen year old college freshman who had just begun my college journey. In many ways, I felt lucky I had completed my time in public education because it seemed that college courses had an easier time shifting to an online format. Even with this small plus side, my learning was heavily impacted. My mental health deteriorated, and I (along with the rest of the world), was in a very unsure place. 

My point in bringing my personal experience up is that as an ‘adult’, my learning was also severely impacted and I was a student who had access to internet connection, owned a laptop in usable condition, and had a university that had the means to support this style of learning. When considering our youngest learners- early education students- the effects were even more damaging. Overnight, these young children needed to understand how to use mobile devices, interact with their classmates via computer screen, and try to fit time in for learning. And that’s assuming that these children had access to devices and connection to the internet. 

We live in a world that is becoming more and more based online. While there are many pros to this concept, we have to consider equitable access in terms of learning. Students were impacted all in their own personal ways, but what we need to attack moving forward is funding becoming available to schools so that students from here on out are given the same material and understanding of growing technology. Thinking critically about student’s learning post-pandemic, it’s easy to see that thousands of students have fallen ‘behind’ in relation to standards, testing, and academic rigor. Combatting this now means that students have the ability to move forward with the rest of growing technology and have access to the digital world in a way that is developmentally appropriate and equitable across the state. 

While of course there are many factors in relation to the funds available for schools to begin this conversation. But what I propose is conversation at a state level. We need to widen our viewpoint past each district and consider as a state that these children are all of our children. Within each county, there are huge discrepancies of available tax money to provide schools with. If we were to operate this way, there are districts that would always have less access. We need to consider the amount of students in need, create a vision for moving forward, and instill change. 

It’s a big ask- and I know that. Creating too much change at once will only exhaust the effort and more than likely, nothing will be done. A place to start is to engage in this dialogue with government officials and ask that needs such as these are brought to the table. A step in the right direction, and a step towards equity in technology begins here.