We grade students throughout their lives, but have you ever wondered how we would measure our communities when it comes to things that truly matter, like student outcomes? What grades would they get?

Disparities abound, from students who have been unable to make a  quick switch to distance learning because they lack access to technology to families struggling with basic needs such as food and housing.

That’s why, when it comes to maintaining an equitable status quo, the only appropriate grade for most U.S. schools is an F. And that’s the state we find many of our institutions in as the current pandemic lays bare the inequities of our education system.

And yet, some communities are working to create a world where a child’s potential isn’t dictated by race, ethnicity, ZIP code, or circumstance. These are communities that believe confronting inequitable systems requires more than Zoom subscriptions.

Despite our current shortcomings, we have a great opportunity to rethink how we measure student progress in education and how we use real-time data to address these inequities.

Though we have worked for decades to close the so-called “achievement gap,” the gaps in our schools today are as big as they were 50 years ago.  We expect that Covid-19 will make them grow even wider.

We may not know how much wider, though, because methods and data we’ve relied on for decades to measure student progress — standardized tests and traditional grades — may not be available this year.

The true measure of strength in our school systems will be how well they perform under pressure. Take what’s happening in South Carolina. In Spartanburg County, districts adopted a continuous improvement model, piloting the approach in the 2018-19 school year. They designed short-cycle assessments that happen every five to 10 days, allowing for constant attention to what is working well for students'

Read the full article about re-evaluating how we measure student progress by Jennifer Blatz at The Hechinger Report.