The policy solutions aren’t simple — even if we leave out expensive, politically contentious ideas such as huge investments in hiring and training teachers and grief counselors; subsidized child care; extra years of primary school; or universal basic incomes to prevent families from being plunged into poverty.
Intense tutoring, for example, might provide the equivalent of 19 weeks of class time for students who receive it. But for those who don’t, schools might have to try doubling the amount of time students spend studying math and reading, whether at the expense of electives or gym or during a longer school day. That effort might bring a gain of 10 weeks. Then, there’s summer school. But good luck finding instructors to facilitate all this in a white-hot labor market.
Instead, it might make more sense to simply extend the next two school years by six weeks each, according to Thomas Kane, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and one of Goldhaber’s co-authors. “We already have the schools, we already have the teachers, we already have the bus routes, parents already have their pickup and drop-off procedures worked out,” Kane said in an interview. Such a plan would also give parents back 12 weeks of missed child care, a small down payment on money and time lost trying to find alternate arrangements when schools and day cares closed.
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