How a pandemic exposed – and may help fix – inequalities in education

Education faces existential change as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. But the tumult may open the door for innovation, helping schools reduce inequality – through everything from microschools to joy-based learning.

In the early 2010s, Jon Valant, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy, began researching Americans’ perception of the “achievement gap,” mainstream lingo for the difference in educational outcomes between historically advantaged and disadvantaged students.

What he found surprised him.

As a scholar of education, he thought it was clear that systemic...