New America, Tunette Powell, Shantel Meek, Xigrid Soto-Boykin, Rosemarie Allen, Iheoma U. Iruka, Eric Bucher, Afua Ameley-Quaye, Brittany Alexander, Mario Cardona, Gladys Y. Aponte, Lisa Gordon, Darielle Blevins, and Aaron Loewenberg
Much has been written about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students' academic performance and mental health, with overwhelming coverage of "learning loss" and "learning recovery." Now that this is a post-pandemic recovery, it is critical to reflect and think transformatively about what schools need to do differently, in partnership with families and communities, centering children, their joy, their curiosity, and their rights to an enriching, stimulating, culturally affirming educational experience. This report proposes a new framework for elementary education that builds on, and is informed by, previous foundational efforts, centered on children and the ways we know children learn, and disrupting well-documented, historically rooted, and contemporarily entrenched biases in learning systems. While there is no single ideal elementary school experience, there are core ingredients to which every child needs and deserves access. Guided by research, data, learnings from schools across the United States, parent and family voice, and a desire to design child-centered, joyful, and effective spaces for learning, the report provides a framework that consists of 14 core ingredients.