K-12 School Administrators Reflect on the 2023–24 Year
If you’re a K-12 administrator, you’ll be able to relate to the feeling — the weighted exhale, the pause to acknowledge that you made it, and then the immediate transition into the next school year.
But “the pause” is important, and administrators don’t always allow themselves to capitalize on it. We’re so conditioned to keep looking forward in education that we don’t always give ourselves time to reflect on the past. And what we can learn from the past is essential in helping us shape our future.
Let’s take stock of the journey you’ve been on during this 2023–24 school year.
The legacy of COVID-19
Depending on where you live, this was likely your second full year back without the tangibles we’ve come to associate with the COVID-19 pandemic. Think about that: only the second year without mask mandates or submitting class seating charts to the county health department. You could be forgiven for thinking it was all a dream as you walk the hallways in your building.
The kids look alright. Things are largely “back to normal.” But the general absence of masks and the empty hand sanitizer dispensers sometimes do us a disservice: they make us forget that the legacy of COVID is still very real. And there are issues from this year that are part of that legacy.
Chronic Absenteeism
Truancy isn’t a new challenge for educators, but COVID certainly seemed to heighten it. Maybe this is because the remote and hybrid nature of COVID-era schooling made it seem more “optional.” Maybe our teachers’s visible struggle to instruct over Zoom made some parents think school isn’t as “serious.”
Whatever the cause, though, attendance patterns have changed since the height of COVID-19, and re-establishing the importance of being in school continues to be a challenge.
When I asked her about chronic absenteeism, Dr. Renota Rogers, the Executive Director of Secondary Education for Temple Independent School District in Texas, noted: “We use the truancy officers. We also thought it would be good to target a group so we focused on attendance as part of the Freshman Experience initiative at the high school to more quickly identify and address truancy issues at the high school.”
Geoff Edwards, the Superintendent of Learning Technologies for the Ottawa Catholic School Board in Canada, shared that multiple departments in his district are working together to address the issue.
“The Learning Technologies department is working in concert with our Student Success Departments and our Special Education departments to create an attendance strategy,” he noted. “We are seeking ways to provide good data and analytics and notification and communication strategies to encourage greater attendance. Early intervention and support are key to reversing these trends.”
Both districts’ strategies mirror recent advice given by the U.S. Department of Education. U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona recently observed, “This is a very crucial moment for academic recovery, so we need all hands on deck to make sure that we’re getting students fully engaged… to attend school every day.”
Approaching this issue collaboratively across departments and student experiences is expected to be part of the Department’s forthcoming toolkit for fighting absenteeism, which they will release in advance of back-to-school season later this year.
Cellphone Use
Cellphone use in schools has been a challenge for over two decades now, but COVID certainly didn’t help. Cellphones became the primary way for students to relate to the world during lockdown and the nontraditional school years from 2020–2022, and that’s been a hard bell to unring.
While many districts are turning to all-out bans, some — like Geoff Edwards’ — are leveraging student cellphone use as an important teaching moment. “We recognize the challenges in regards to distraction from learning and access to inappropriate content but our strategy is to teach proper and timely use. These are skills for life; not simply from entry and exit from the school day,” he explained.
This perspective echoes what Chris Page, a principal in Douglas County Public Schools, Colorado, recently told Education Week: “We are in the business of preparing kids for the next step. There aren’t many college campuses that have no cellphones whatsoever. It’s about responsible use, and we have a duty to teach kids about responsible use.”
Budget Shortfalls
Like cellphone use concerns, budget shortfalls are hardly new challenges in education.
“Budget shortfalls have been a challenge this year,” shared Phonisha Hawkins, a Texas-based leader in secondary mathematics education. “I would have liked to be able to provide more [training] days for our campuses with new teachers. We just ended up stretching what we had to make it work in our best interest.”
And, as Mark Lieberman recently reported, school finances are about to get worse in the U.S.
Close to $200 billion was made available to schools as Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds in three installments from March 2020 to March 2021. Districts have until September 30, 2024, to commit the remainder of their funds to anticipated expenses and until January 30, 2025, to actually spend the money.
This means that districts across the U.S. have to prepare for a coming fiscal cliff” as operating expenses continue to rise. For example, the cost of school food services rose over 21% between 2020 and 2022. The looming end of ESSER spending means many districts are preparing for teacher layoffs and building closures.
As administrators prepare for the 2024–25 school year, resource allocation will have to be top of mind.
Artificial Intelligence
Another technology that’s been causing many educators headaches this year is artificial intelligence. In late 2023, we surveyed 800 educators about their experience with and views on AI in education, and some of the results — like how little AI training is available for teachers — surprised us. Our AI in Education report also revealed that while 77% of our respondents believe AI can be helpful, only half actually use it!
“Artificial intelligence…raised a slew of concerns but also, an equal number of opportunities for the K-12 sector,” explained Mr. Edwards. “Balancing governance, data and privacy challenges against the supports for students with learning and language challenges as well as the opportunity to revolutionize educator workflow has been the challenge of the new millennium.”
“AI really is the biggest technical innovation that will happen in our lifetime, and that makes it something that we can’t fully say ‘no’ to,” explained Amy Mayer, the CEO of friEdtechnology, an EdTech professional development services provider. “[But] there’s a human element to education that cannot be replicated by AI. I think that when a new technology like this develops, it makes us even more conscientious of how much we need other people and how important other people are to us.”
As administrators both reflect on the past year and plan for the next, providing opportunities for teachers to learn more about AI will be crucial, as will crafting clear and thoughtful AI policies.
Other challenges
Other big challenges for administrators this year have included well-publicized staffing shortages. “The largest challenge seems to always be scaling and spread. With staffing shortages and competing professional development needs, we are always seeking innovative ways to reach our greater community,” noted Mr. Edwards.
Additionally, new data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) indicates that 92% of public school leaders have expressed “at least some level of concern about their students meeting academic standards” this year. Data from the U.S. Department of Education reveals that reading and math scores have dropped since 2019 in grades 4 and 8.
As our Senior Director of Literacy Impact, Megan Jensen, wrote back in August: “The reality is that a shocking number of students in the U.S. are underperforming, partially because they aren’t given the opportunity to do better. […] We are failing them by not assigning grade-level work.”
It’s clear that administrators have a lot to consider as they look ahead to 2024–25.
Administrator “wins” in 2023–24
Despite numerous challenges, administrators also achieved considerable wins this past school year.
Dr. Rogers expressed pride in her district’s leadership. “[We saw] frequent district communication with campus leadership to support implementing [a new curriculum]. “We are putting processes and systems in place to make our leadership practices stronger as we look ahead to year 2.”
Ms. Hawkins shared her success in implementing professional development. “The biggest success this year was our professional learning for middle school math. Every session we placed in front of our teachers was designed specifically for what they need to strengthen their own internalization of the curriculum, as well as their own pedagogy. We did not want to be redundant in any of our learning opportunities! We meet our teachers where they are and support the learning they need.”
Nishira Mitchell, a principal in Tampa, FL, celebrated the successful implementation of her innovative daily faculty coaching sessions. The result has been a dramatic drop in teacher attrition. “This year, none of my teachers have lost a planning period,” she shared. “None of my teachers have quit. As an administrator, you can choose not to take care of your staff. But they’ll just find a job at another school. Teachers go where they feel supported. They aren’t going to be anywhere they don’t want to be.”
Administrator wins can be big or small — one of mine for the 2021–22 school year was creating a digitized catalog of our padlock inventory — but all are important. You continue to be an integral part of moving education forward each and every day that you keep showing up.
So reflect on your wins. Acknowledge your losses. Take a pause and be kind to yourself. Walk the empty hallways of your building and remember why you fell in love with education in the first place.
And then — when you’re ready — get up and prepare to do it all again.
