04/02/2021
As we look ahead to our post-pandemic “new normal,” Illinois’ top priority is ensuring support, comfort, and resources for your children in ways that recognize how COVID-19 interrupted their academic and social-emotional growth. We realize that we must help students, parents, caregivers and educators process the experience and restore their learning.
We’re pleased to share that the federal government is providing significant resources to do just that. Overall, Illinois K-12 schools are receiving nearly $7 billion to be spent over the next three years to renew learning for students. For every district in Illinois, this means unprecedented one-time resources will be flowing to your schools.
So how will each district invest those dollars?
We know that your school leaders will collaborate with families, local leaders, educators and staff to develop robust learning renewal solutions tailored to your own communities. In addition, we are pleased to provide the Learning Renewal Resource Guide, filled with ideas and frameworks from some of the foremost experts in our state. It focuses on building individualized student profiles to meet students’ specific needs, building the infrastructure for mental wellness and trauma-informed schools, increasing flexibility in high school and beyond, using the lessons of remote learning models to apply them to the classroom, and providing learning experiences outside of the classroom through activities like tutoring, after-school programs, and summer camps.
The Learning Renewal Resource Guide is a starting point for our ongoing conversations about how to best meet students and educators where they are. It reflects the input of hundreds of educators, students, and administrators from every corner of the state, as well as representatives from dozens of agencies, teachers’ unions, and other education organizations. Our hope is that this baseline input will allow you and your school leaders to get to work implementing local solutions as efficiently and urgently as possible. When it comes to our kids’ futures, we have no time to waste.
We consider this guide to be a living document and encourage you to give us feedback to refine and revise the Learning Renewal Resource Guide.
In addition, we are also launching four new state-led initiatives to provide guidance and support in the most critical areas:
* High-impact tutoring, with a focus on aligning tutoring with classroom instruction throughout the school year and during the summer.
* Social and emotional learning community partnerships, including with the Center for Childhood Resilience, housed at Lurie Children's Hospital.
* Interim assessment, intended solely for diagnostic purposes, to provide reliable measures for understanding the impact on student learning so educators can target their responses to students’ needs.
* Bridge/transition support, to encourage enrollment in both early childhood programs and higher education.
These initiatives build on our work from the early stages of the pandemic to use federal funds to implement supportive programing, address the digital divide, provide coaches for teachers, provide emergency grants to higher education students in need, and establish the ISBE Student Cares Department to help support students’ social and emotional learning.
We look forward to continuing conversations about best practices to renew learning and focus on students, educators, and parents to help welcome them back to classrooms.
