NYC Schools Announce Plan to Close COVID-19 Achievement Gaps

In response to the widening COVID-19 achievement gap that New York City schools are seeing in students, Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYC School's Chancellor Richard Carranza have begun to develop a Path Moving Forward plan. The plan aims to close the achievement gap and help minimize learning loss experienced by students, which Carranza says NYC principals have expressed to him. 

The plan follows six main points:

1. Getting a baseline of what ground we lost. Carranza says this will be achieved through low-stake, diagnostic assessments city-wide and interim assessments throughout the school year to monitor progress and learning. The city wants to make it clear that these formative assessments are not high stake tests. They are meant to help teachers serve children and establish a clear baseline of what students need. 

"You can't know where to focus unless you know what to focus on and that's the whole point of these formative assessments," says Carranza.

2. Increasing access to high quality digital curriculum available for every single school.  

3. Launching a one-stop digital learning hub. A new learning management system will be developed and phased in, customized for NYC schools. It will house lessons and tools that can be shared across the city to help students, their teachers, and families better understand how each student is progressing, according to Carranza. It is meant to capture the work of students and make it available to everyone involved.