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Home » Posts » Commonwealth Magazine Op-Ed by Brandon Cardet-Hernandez, Executive Director, Ivy Street School

Commonwealth Magazine Op-Ed by Brandon Cardet-Hernandez, Executive Director, Ivy Street School

Playing catch-up with remediation won’t work:
Meeting kids where they are is the approach needed

FOR A MOMENT, imagine you commute to work each day by train. A co-worker also commutes by train, but on a different line. Every day your co-worker arrives late, missing important meetings. You both live equidistant from the office and take the same mode of transport, yet you are always on time, while your co-worker is not. Now imagine you discover that your co-worker is late because of a train track in need of repair that requires the conductor to go slower at certain times. The system has failed your co-worker. And while this may upset you to learn of it, it doesn’t impact you directly. That is until the route you take develops the same problem. Now the system has failed you both.

This story illustrates what the COVID-19 pandemic exposed about our education systems. For too many—primarily poor, Black and brown students, students living with special needs, and English language learners – the system had broken down long ago. For the rest of the article click here