From Oyster Reefs to Turnaround Schools: An Educational Restoration Model for the COVID-19 Era

• In Event: Rebuilding the Educational Landscape: Unconventional Strategies and Traditional Measures in Educational Leadership

Abstract

COVID-19 shocked the preK-12 education system, disrupting education reform efforts and straining the capacities of students, teachers, principals, and communities for improvement. Yet accountability policies and practices, including school turnaround, marched on unabated, potentially exacerbating pandemic-related crisis conditions. This conceptual paper draws on principles from the field of ecological restoration to reconstruct school turnaround as educational restoration. Mirroring best practices for restoring oyster reefs degraded by the climate crisis, we explain how an educational restoration approach accounts for—and responds to—disruption and damage in turnaround schools. As part of this approach, we propose an Educational Recovery Wheel, which policymakers and practitioners could use to evaluate and restore schools’ innate capacities to implement sustainable improvement and strengthen the resilience of education systems.

Authors

• Daniel Dawer, University of Texas at Austin

• Sarah L. Woulfin, University of Texas at Austin