Reflections on Learning ‘Lost’ and ‘Gained’

In the U.S. child care industry, services to children and families have been lost as providers struggle to hire and retain educators. But have policymakers finally gained awareness of this crisis that's been brewing?

This reflection comes from Javaid Siddiqi and Dan Wuori, leaders at The Hunt Institute, a North Carolina-based education policy organization founded by former Governor Jim Hunt that works to support and inform elected officials and policymakers across the nation.

Students and teachers have lost the sense of certainty that many of them once enjoyed. But some districts have gained resources to help support mental health among members of their communities.

That's according to the author of this essay, Alma Lopez, the lead counselor for Livingston Middle School and the guidance counselor coordinator for Livingston Unified School District. She was named the 2022 School Counselor of the Year by the American School Counselor Association.

At some colleges, there's fresh energy among faculty and staff for discerning students’ primary learning needs as well as their basic life needs.

“Institutions and individual faculty must continue to build genuine questions into their educational processes and directly engage students about their evolving learning experience,” argues Tyler Roeger, the associate dean of the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching, Assessment & Learning at Elgin Community College.

The pandemic fractured the communities that edtech entrepreneurs rely on for gathering data and testing new ideas. And although online learning made it easier to try out innovations, that created competition that strained the marketplace. Yet out of this struggle, the industry may have gained a new appreciation for collaboration, writes Ash Kaluarachchi, the CEO of StartEd and a producer at Edtech Week.

And for many in edtech, 2022 was a hard year, as the rush of funding that marked the early years of the pandemic dried up. But last year showed clear progress, argues Matt Tower, principal at Workshop Venture Partners, who writes a popular newsletter about edtech. He sees that in tech infrastructure in schools, in sophistication of schools and parents, in students asking for proof that tech tools improve learning and in a more global interest in edtech. The question now, he says, is how to build on those trends in the year ahead.