“Kids need all of these kinds of supports. They need health care, food and housing. But, I don’t want to get away from the fact that they also need good schools.”

Susanna Loeb, Ph.D., of Brown University’s National Student Support Accelerator offered this reflection during Building Blocks for the New Normal: Mining the Bright Spots & Silver Linings, a GLR Week 2022 panel conversation. Thank you for registering for this session that featured a panel of national leaders, exploring how pandemic-driven innovations can contribute to a better “new normal.”

The panelists noted the 50 percent reductions in child poverty achieved through the temporary expansions to the Child Tax Credit and encouraged investments in narrative change and advocacy to shift the public and political will to better support families and early learning educators.

Stressing that “context matters,” the panelists discussed the importance of supporting the whole child and whole family, including reducing child/family poverty and ensuring stable housing, social-emotional supports, health care, nutrition, mental health and transportation – in addition to great schools. To understand how best to take this kind of holistic approach, they called for stronger research-practice partnerships and more research that centers community and includes both content experts and context experts at the table. As research reveals effective strategies, they stressed the importance of implementing with excellence.

Nothing the progress made during the pandemic to scale research-based high-impact tutoring programs, advance digital equity and acknowledge the essential nature of the early education workforce, they emphasized the need to sustain this progress.