As a community and a nation, we are facing unprecedented challenges in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond the impact on the health of millions, COVID-19 is radically affecting all aspects of our home and work lives as well as the lives of students in our care. Teachers and school staff are feeding students and families, transitioning to online learning against a large digital divide, and working to ensure that students have their diverse needs met.

We made a conscious shift in our strategy years ago to focus on Black, Latinx, and low-income students, and now we’re expressly concerned with addressing their needs associated with this pandemic. COVID-19 is having a clear, outsized impact on vulnerable student populations due, in part, to issues like a lack of reliable access to devices and the Internet. This will exacerbate already large opportunity gaps among students, and we’re committed to doing everything we can to mitigate that reality.

The commitment to and overall goals of our education strategies are not changing. At the same time, we are working to support our partners in this fluid situation.  We are supporting grantees, where possible, by increasing flexibility in their grants to allow them to respond to unanticipated needs.  In some ways, COVID-19 requires us to accelerate our work, especially to help partners and communities open school in the upcoming school year in some form this fall.

To that end, we are beginning to focus on the following areas:

• Working in partnership with other funders, we are ensuring educators and families have access to high-quality materials and resources
• We’re also investing in quality curriculum and content providers to expand digital access to their content.
• Anticipating the key challenges facing schools, we are working to help with common obstacles, like student transitions from high school to postsecondary programs.
• We are supporting policy groups in their response to the immediate programmatic and financial implications facing state departments of education and districts in this emergency.
• We are supporting efforts to better understand the impact of COVID-19 on educators and families and spur action and inform decision-making based on those insights.
• We are also learning real-time about needs through our Teacher2Teacher Network and Principal Project Network, lifting up exemplary practices, and creating opportunities for educators to learn and share with one another effective strategies for navigating these challenging times.

Below are some resources that speak to the above.

LAST UPDATED: 5/26/20

Latest on Gates Foundation Pandemic Response

What We’re Learning: COVID-19 and Education: Notable findings and data sources: Key learnings and efforts underway to understand how districts, school leaders, teachers, families, and students themselves have been impacted by COVID-19.

The strangest school year in memory is about to end. How do we get ready for the next one? Allan Golston discusses how we can help school districts as they finish classes this month and turn their attention to next year.

The Optimist is the place for regularly updated information about the foundation’s global response to COVID-19.

Schools and Students During COVID-19: Q&A with Allan Golston, President, U.S. Programs: Allan Golston gives his thoughts on the challenges facing education systems right now and shares what the Foundation is doing.