Leaders call for education transformation after COVID-19 |
Governors, former secretaries of education, state commissioners of education and representatives gathered last week at the Ronald Reagan Institute in Washington, D.C., to discuss how to turn the coronavirus pandemic into an opportunity for innovation within the education profession. Politics and a lack of bipartisanship, as well as an ineffective distribution of resources, have often gotten in the way of improving school infrastructure and providing universal broadband access, speakers at the summit said. Arne Duncan, a former U.S. secretary of education under President Barack Obama, said federal, state and local agencies should “stop fighting" and "help each other." “As a country, we fight over small strategies. We don’t have big goals,” Duncan said. “That would be an opportunity to accelerate the rates of change going forward.” Kim Hunter Reed, Louisiana’s commissioner of higher education, pointed to her state as an example of smart collaboration. As a result of cooperation between the workforce, higher education institutions and high schools, Louisiana piloted a program in every region of the state for high schoolers to graduate with an associate degree.