AIR Surveys and Projects
This project, conducted in conjunction with the Gates Foundation, is creating an in-depth view of how states, districts, and their communities—especially those with higher percentages of Black and Latinx students and/or students experiencing poverty—responded to the pandemic. The project includes a longitudinal database containing state, district, school, and community data, enabling a broad view of pre-, during, and post-pandemic trends.
Part of the AIR Opportunity Fund, this project was established in summer 2020 to document the effects of the pandemic on education and provide actionable information to educators, policymakers, and researchers to inform future education practices beyond the initial public health crisis.
Other AIR Resources
This extensive compilation of AIR's research, resources, and webinar recordings explores the challenges teachers are facing and offers tools and resources for educators. Topics include strengthening teacher quality, teaching and learning during COVID-19, and teacher appreciation during a pandemic.
Learning and Teaching at Home During COVID-19
With the disruption to in-person education caused by the pandemic, educators and parents had to develop creative ways to encourage students' learning at home.
Strategies for Supporting Young Students’ Home-Language Development During COVID-19—and Beyond offers educators suggestions to help dual language learners and their families foster children's language development at home.
Two episodes in our AIR Informs podcast series, "Opportunities for Learning and Development in Out-of-School Time," with Deb Moroney, and "Creating Safe, Supportive Learning at Home," with David Osher, described ways to keep children engaged and learning while schools were closed.
Returning to the Classroom
COVID-19 profoundly disrupted K–12 schooling. Public health officials and education leaders faced difficult decisions about when and how to reopen closed schools and when to keep school buildings open. AIR contributed to the conversation with these pieces:
As schools prepared to welcome students and educators back in the fall of 2021, our experts offered insights into topics such as equity, students with disabilities, and mental health and trauma in our spotlight,
Catching Up During COVID.
To What Extent Does In-Person Schooling Contribute to the Spread of COVID-19?, a CALDER working paper, used publicly available health data in Washington state and Michigan to help experts weigh decisions about reopening schools. The paper's authors discussed the results in a Q&A.
The pandemic highlighted the need to attend to children's basic needs (safety, health, nutrition) and well-being. AIR created a resource, COVID-19 and Whole Child Efforts: Reopening Update, that provides definitions for selected whole child terms and a crosswalk of these terms to the national reopening guidance.
As students returned to in-person learning, many had to play catch-up. Addressing COVID-19 Learning Disruptions: Four Recommendations for Effective Tutoring Interventions describes the importance of tutoring in addressing the gaps in learning resulting from COVID-19 disruptions.
Recovery: What Works?
AIR Vice President and CALDER Director Dan Goldhaber addressed the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions during a full committee hearing on June 22, 2022: Supporting Students and Schools: Promising Practices to Get Back on Track.
Researchers from CALDER at AIR, Harvard University's Center for Education Policy and Research (CEPR), and NWEA are partnering with a coalition of districts across the country on The Road to COVID Recovery: Actionable Research on District Strategies for Student Advancement, a project with the goal of helping determine which COVID recovery interventions are working (or not working) and why.
Working papers released in May 2022 include A Comprehensive Picture of Achievement Across the COVID-19 Pandemic Years: Examining Variation in Test Levels and Growth Across Districts, Schools, Grades, and Students and The Consequences of Remote and Hybrid Instruction During the Pandemic.