Superintendents and school leaders navigated hundreds of impossible decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic. They needed quick, accurate, and trusted information about their students’ academic well-being, but districts weren’t positioned to start new partnerships or data sharing agreements during these tumultuous months. Their research staff were frequently managing public health logistics and staffing data, too.

Join the RESTART Network, funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), for the Actionable Insights from Research and Practice to Support Pandemic Recovery Forum, an in-person convening at the American Institutes for Research (AIR) headquarters in Arlington, VA.

During the 2024 National Network Forum, researchers, policymakers, leaders, and practitioners will join to discuss accelerating student learning, fostering student connectedness and social emotional learning, and emerging research related to pandemic recovery.

The evidence was clear: enrollment in full-day preschool had long-lasting benefits for students, especially students who started off the farthest behind. Beginning in 2013, Chicago Public Schools officials invested in new policies and programs that resulted in quadrupling full-day programs, most notably on the West and South Sides of Chicago in primarily Black neighborhoods with the lowest income levels.