Ep 28: The impact of COVID on our kids in schools, transforming education through innovation, and the racial achievement gap with Tom Kane

On today’s episode, we talk to Tom Kane. An economist and Walter H. Gale Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He has committed his career to both K-12 and higher education efforts focused on school accountability systems, teacher recruitment and retention, financial aid for college, race-conscious college admissions, and the earnings impacts of community colleges.

Our conversation with professor Kane unpacks the current impact of COVID on our kids in schools, transforming education through innovation, and the racial achievement gap. 

Through an analysis of an urban medium-sized school district, professor Kane found that about 28% of students had not logged in for school over a month and a half. He talks to us about a possible virtual tutoring solution that has shown promise even before COVID.  

The Student Opportunity Act added $1.5B of funding to public school education in Massachusetts. $10M of that funding was committed to the 21st Century Education Trust Fund. Professor Kane shares the importance of this fund as it provides opportunities to innovate, including testing and piloting in education as we do in healthcare.    

Massachusetts’ National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) scores haven’t improved since 2007. Further, the racial achievement gap hasn’t changed since 1996. Professor Kane discusses the immediate need to shift from having discussions to intentionally closing the gap. He believes allocating funds to innovative methods and testing those methods could make all the difference.  

Professor Kane’s work and his perspective encourage us to think about how evidence-based processes can improve innovation and racial inequities for kids in schools. Learn more about his work, and as referenced in the episode, the Coleman Report. This report is widely considered the most important education study of the 20th century.