How School Districts Are Outsmarting a Microbe

Confronting the unprecedented challenge of lengthy school closures because of coronavirus, the nation’s roughly 13,000 public school districts are scrambling to cope. Almost no district was truly ready to plunge into remote learning full time and with no end in sight. There is no one-size-fits-all remedy and no must-have suite of digital learning tools. Leaders have largely had to find their own way, spurring a hodgepodge of local innovations. As the struggle continues, a few overarching lessons learned — about equity, expectations and communication — are now helping schools navigate this crisis on the fly. After dealing with the first priority — making sure students were safe and fed — schools had to figure out how to keep the learning alive. But America’s persistent digital divide has greatly hampered efforts toward this goal. While most school buildings are fairly well stocked with computers and high-speed internet, millions of students’ homes are not, particularly in lower-income and rural areas.