From New Jersey to Texas to California, the pandemic has left our public schools reeling. In addition to lives lost, disengaged students, and overall burnout, schools are facing these challenges:

A significant teacher shortage. According to Learning Counsel Research, we’re down by 638,000 teachers–and we already had a shortage before the pandemic.
A rise in mental health issues. In the 2022 Crisis Communication and Safety in Education Survey, student mental health ranked number 1 among K-12 education professionals’ concerns (number 2 was faculty and staff mental health).
A steady decline of students to private schools, homeschooling, or dropping out. Since the pandemic began, public schools have lost more than 1.2 million students. New York City and the state of Michigan have each lost 50,000 students.

What about learning loss?

Perhaps the biggest challenge our schools face today is learning loss. Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath says Texas lost a decade’s worth of progress in the last two years, with more than a million children below grade level, exhibiting the state’s largest decline in student knowledge in math and literacy.

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