Equity, engagement, and health: school organisational issues and priorities during COVID-19

ABSTRACT

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has disrupted and posed great challenges for kindergarten-grade12 education systems. Initial studies on education and COVID-19 often focus on technology use, student learning, and school reopening plans. However, debates on the form of instruction become futile when stakeholders are unclear about what the competing values, issues, and priorities are. Using exploratory data analysis of a representative sample of US teachers and school leaders, this paper highlights key organisational issues and priorities in terms of addressing academic achievement gaps, students’ online engagement, and teachers’ and students’ health. More fundamentally, deeper issues are uncovered like equity for those doubly disadvantaged by the pandemic, student engagement in the face of more pressing concerns, and health both physical and mental. More theoretically, the research contributes to understanding schools’ responses to societal crises and the need to clarify competing values during decision-making in the face of such crises.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• school organisation
• K-12 education
• achievement gaps
• student engagement

Acknowledgement

The author thanks the editors and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. The author also extends thanks to the RAND Corporation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their support of the research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Jose Eos Trinidad is with the Departments of Sociology and Comparative Human Development, and the Committee on Education at the University of Chicago. His research intersects organizational sociology, educational policies, big data, and quantitative methods.