With the Biden administration pushing schools to reopen in-person, it is necessary to reflect on the hardships our educators have met and continue to encounter as the COVID-19 crisis lives on.[1] The gaps in teacher employment protections have and continue to cause excruciating consequences. This blog post serves as documentation of our teachers’ plights. The […]
Education and Disinformation
Getting our Child Co-Workers Back to School Safely—and Avoiding the “Education Contracts of Adhesion” Trap
As more private and public primary and secondary (K-12) schools move to reopen in-person, we need to ensure reopening plans protect public health—and also protect the legal rights of parents and students, as well as schools’ core ethical imperative of nurturing and guiding young people. The pressures to reopen are mounting, and so are the […]
Journalism During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond
“When I announced it, you all said, ‘It’s not possible.’ Come on, give me a break, man. It’s a good start. 100 million,” President Biden responded to a question from Associated Press reporter Zeke Miller. Miller asked at a January 21, 2021 COVID-19 focused press briefing if Biden’s vaccine goal of 100 million shots in […]
Government Information Dissemination in the Post-Trump Era
On Wednesday, January 20, 2021, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki led the Biden administration’s first press briefing. Though no stranger to press briefings (Psaki served as traveling press secretary for President Obama during both of his presidential campaigns, and as State Department spokesperson from 2013 – 2015), a clear theme emerged that likely struck […]
Federal, State, and Local Responses to Student Absenteeism during COVID-19
In the past several years, school attendance and absenteeism have been key focus areas of education policy. Consistent school attendance is necessary for students’ long-term academic success, and the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 heightened the role that attendance plays in school performance metrics. The Act requires states to submit multi-factor education plans for […]
The Education Divide Caused by COVID-19
The United States has entered a ‘third’ wave of Covid-19 , and many students are entering yet another month of online learning. The American education system has long been plagued with racial and socio-economic inequalities, but the COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide shift to online learning has transformed what was an already widening inequality gap into […]
Emergency Measures: Free Speech and Online Content Moderation During Coronavirus
A Conversation with HLS Lecturer evelyn douek In the chaos and confusion of the Coronavirus pandemic, few have stopped to notice or second-guess the unprecedented role that online platforms have assumed in the past few months. Among the few who have, fewer still have looked beyond the pandemic and questioned what is truly at stake. […]