Entering 2022, the world of education policy and practice is at a turning point. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic continues to disrupt the day-to-day learning for children across the nation, bringing anxiety and uncertainty to yet another year. Contentious school-board meetings attract headlines as controversy swirls around critical race theory and transgender students’ rights. The looming midterm elections threaten to upend the balance of power in Washington, with serious implications for the federal education landscape. All of these issues—and many more—will have a tremendous impact on students, teachers, families, and American society as a whole; whether that impact is positive or negative remains to be seen.
Below, experts from the Brown Center on Education Policy identify the education stories that they’ll be following in 2022, providing analysis on how these issues could shape the learning landscape for the next 12 months—and possibly well into the future.
Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Brown Center on Education Policy: As an early childhood policy researcher (and a mom of two children who have spent the early part of this new year without child care due to snow), I am totally focused on child-care policy. When done right, child care can serve two critical roles: simultaneously providing learning opportunities for young children, and essential work supports for families. In the United States, however, we have structured and funded child care in ways that make it extremely difficult for child-care providers to succeed on either front. While we offer free public education to children starting at age 5, families of younger children are left to navigate a complex, fragmented system—one with far fewer public options as well as costs that create real burdens. The pandemic exacerbated these longstanding challenges. In 2022, through the White House’s Build Back Better plan, we have the chance to significantly improve access to early learning opportunities and build a more coordinated, high-quality system. I’ll be tracking that bill closely. My hope is that, if it’s passed, I’ll be following the impacts of these historic investments on children, educators, families, and the economy.
Senior Fellow in the Brown Center on Education Policy: This year, I’ll be paying close attention to substitute staffing and related policy responses. The pandemic has stretched school resources and personnel in many ways. Thankfully, recession-induced budget cuts were avoided thanks to quick legislative action and schools have been able to keep their teacher work forces largely intact. But this does not mean that all staffing has been easy. As many front-line positions in the economy have received pay increases, school systems have found it harder to keep many of their operational jobs—which are often low-paying—including janitors, bus drivers, aides, and others.
But the biggest and most concerning hole has been in the substitute teacher force—and the ripple effects on school communities have been broad and deep. Based on personal communications with the president of Kelly Education, the largest education staffing provider in the country, the pandemic is exacerbating several problematic trends that have been quietly simmering for years. These are: (1) a growing reliance on long-term substitutes to fill permanent teacher positions; (2) a shrinking supply of qualified individuals willing to fill short-term substitute vacancies; and, (3) steadily declining fill rates for schools’ substitute requests. Many schools in high-need settings have long-faced challenges with adequate, reliable substitutes, and the pandemic has turned these localized trouble spots into a widespread catastrophe. Though federal pandemic-relief funds could be used to meet the short-term weakness in the substitute labor market (and mainline teacher compensation, too), this is an area where we sorely need more research and policy solutions for a permanent fix.
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