I spent the last couple of days listening to and talking with secondary school administrators from across Virginia. You know what their big challenges and concerns are? They are most definitely not NAEP scores. They are most definitely not whether schools were remote too long. If you are a pundit or think tanker or journalist focused on those things, you are very lost.

David Leonhardt's newsletter about schools today is OK, but not great. Consider this part: Is that true? We prioritized businesses (restaurants/bars/gyms/etc) over schools. Many states didn't have indoor mask mandates. So, did we really try to minimize the spread so that schools could function f2f?

Because we do it wrong and go by the calendar year instead of the academic year, I have to write my annual review report and annual work plan in the next couple of weeks. For this coming year, our (internal School of Ed) expectations for scholarly productivity are being ramped up. We have a new "rubric" that we are using.

Should I live tweet this new "Reboarding" mandatory training I now have to do? email said it would take 20 minutes. First screen in the "course" says 30 minutes. Hmm...

Also, since nobody asked, here are some tips I would offer to folks doing academic distancing plans: 1. Create a DAY ONE plan to share with faculty; i.e. "Here's what you can do on day one." I would consider having faculty send students a calm, reassuring video. 2. I would provide faculty with as much boilerplate language as possible. Give them language for an email to students about how to access the LMS. Give them boilerplate language for an email about how to access tech tools. etc. Make faculty lives easier.