As everybody in the education sector is painfully aware, the COVID-19 outbreak has drastically changed the way we think about and execute our jobs for the foreseeable future. Normal life has been put on hold while we determine how to navigate the uncertain months ahead. Questions materialize much faster than answers, and it is difficult to keep up with the near constant updates coming from federal, state, and local officials. I am hard-pressed to identify a moment in my life that has been as impactful, rapidly-evolving, and confusing. I don’t believe it’s hyperbolic to say that this is a truly unprecedented time for those of us in education. 

We have many questions facing us in this unique and challenging time. How will we provide continuity of education for our students? How will we provide equitable opportunities for all of our students, especially those who receive special education services? Do our students have access to technology? Are our students connected to the internet? What if our students have siblings that also need to complete work remotely and there’s only one device in the house? What will our students actually be able to complete at home? How many hours of work per day is realistic? Will parents be able to support their students in completing work remotely? How do we grade work? Should we assess students, and if so, how? If students don’t have technology, can we provide weekly packets to them to complete, and if so, how do we get the packets to them consistently? How do we get the packets back to review? Will we provide feedback to students? How do we provide feedback to students? What if some students don’t participate in remote learning? What if a student or a family member gets sick? What if a teacher gets sick?

I am confident that questions will only multiply in the weeks to come, especially if schools are closed for the remainder of the school year, as they have been in a handful of states (but not yet in Ohio). Yet, I am also confident that educators across the country will start to formulate answers to some of the questions above. What other choice do we have? In thinking about how to respond to such a wide-ranging societal and economic crisis, I can’t help but think about some of the lessons from improvement science that may help us in this situation. In Learning to Improve, Anthony Bryk and his colleagues identify one of the “big ideas” of improvement science: rather than implementing fast and learning slow, we must learn fast to implement well. I can’t think of a more timely piece of advice as schools attempt to navigate the COVID-19 crisis.

Stepping through the six core principles of improvement science in education identified in Learning to Improve, one can draw a number of parallels to the work many educators are doing in schools right now: 

1) Make the work problem-specific and user-centered. What specifically is the problem we are trying to solve? 

• Most urgently, we need to ensure that 1) all students are connected to the internet, 2) all students have a device to access online instruction, and 3) we, as a network, have a basic plan for how we’re going to deliver instruction remotely. 

2) Variation in performance is the core problem to address. The critical issue is not what works, but rather what works, for whom, and under what set of conditions. 

• We need to address this challenge with the understanding that there is going to be a vast difference in how students, families, and educators are going to be able to execute our plan. 

3) See the system that produces the current outcomes. Go and see how local conditions shape work processes. 

• We need to be in constant contact with students and families to be able to see how our education plan is holding up to rapidly-evolving local conditions (“local” being defined, in this instance, as the home). 

4) We cannot improve at scale what we cannot measure. Embed measures of key outcomes and processes to track if a change is an improvement. 

• We need to measure something. Grading may not look the same, but we can track lesson completion, i-Ready minutes and passing rate (i-Ready is an online instructional tool), and assessments that students complete online. Then, we can react to that data, as we normally would, and track if those interventions make a difference. 

5) Anchor practice improvement in disciplined inquiry. Engage rapid cycles of PDSA (Plan, Do, Study, Act) to learn fast, fail fast, and improve quickly. 

• While we may not engage in as many formal, documented PDSA cycles, we can use the PDSA mindset to adjust accordingly as we react to initial data gleaned from remote learning. How can we iterate our education plan to work for all during this unique and rapidly-evolving moment? 

6) Accelerate improvement through networked communities. Embrace the wisdom of crowds, and understand we can accomplish more together than even the best of us could accomplish alone. 

• At no point in my time as an educator has this been more relevant. Every single educator, school, and district in the U.S. is facing the exact same problem right now. Sharing education plans, discussing best practices, staying connected virtually are all going to be paramount in ensuring continuity for our students and families.

Is the above a perfect example of how we can apply the principles of improvement science to the education sector? Not even close. During “normal” times, learning journeys, which incorporate the above principles, take months, even years, not days. In addition, we normally spend more time identifying the problem than the potential solutions, we spend a lot of time looking at the current system (process maps, etc.) before diving into PDSA cycles, and our PDSA cycles iterate over an undetermined length of time as we adopt, abandon, or adapt previous change ideas. Again, this is not improvement science perfectly applied to a pressing problem. In contrast, this is the principles of improvement science imperfectly applied to an immediate, urgent, and unexpected problem. The next few months promise to be incredibly challenging, messy, frustrating, confusing, and punishingly inadequate in an educational sense. However, our students and families are counting on us. Put plainly, doing something is vastly better than doing nothing, or, in the words of the always-eloquent David Steiner, “Don’t make the ideal the enemy of the possible.” 

As a final thought on the current COVID-19 crisis, I return to Emily Krone Phillip’s The Make or Break Year and her discussion of the importance of relationships in preventing high school drop-outs. She found that students who lack a strong adult relationship at their school are the ones who gradually dis-identify with school and drop-out. For those of us in education, especially those serving students in low-income areas, let’s remember to check in on our students and families frequently during this closure to maintain the all-important school and home connection. That vital connection is currently at risk of fracture, and the antidote is constant communication between school and home. Eventually, students will return, and, to the extent possible, we’ll want to pick up where we left off. At United Schools Network, I have been floored by the extent to which our educators are connecting with our students and families during the closure, both academically and personally. I know the same is true in schools across the country. We’ll get through this together, and be better in many ways as a result.

Ben Pacht is the Director of Improvement of the School Performance Institute in Columbus, Ohio. The School Performance Institute is the learning and improvement arm of the United Schools Network. Send feedback to bpacht@unitedschoolsnetwork.org.