First Lady Jill Biden and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona will spend some of this week visiting summer learning programs on their education tour.
The American Rescue Plan, which applied $1.9 trillion to various pandemic-related problems across the country, includes $122 billion to go to schools. That money was intended to help schools reopen and stay open safely, and to support the academic and mental health needs of millions of students.
The pandemic hit school kids hard. Every school in the country saw record highs of absenteeism, drop-outs, and failing grades. Participation in standardized testing hit all-time lows, leaving many states blind to just how remote or hybrid schooling was going for their students.
An estimated one third of all students, k-12, fell behind in some manner or other, and so many school districts have added tutoring, summer programs, and longer school days to help evaluate and support those struggling.
On Tuesday, the office of First Lady Jill Biden announced that she and Secretary Cardona would be taking a two-day tour through schools in Connecticut, Georgia, and Michigan to get in touch with some of those summer learning programs. Additionally, the tour is supposed to highlight some of the work being done by the ARP funding.
The tour begins Wednesday in New Haven, Connecticut, at a summer learning program for public grade school students, held at Albertus Magnus College. On Thursday, it will visit Detroit Public Schools Community District, where another learning program serves kindergarten through eighth grade. From there, they’ll go to Athens, Georgia. There, a program serving Barnett Shoals Elementary School is held in the University of Georgia.
First Lady Biden and Secretary Cardona have both been teachers, and the First Lady still is. During the school year, she teaches undergraduate English and writing to students at Northern Virginia Community College. She began teaching there shortly after her husband took office as Vice President to President Obama, in 2009.
Photo: mark reinstein / Shutterstock
