We heard a lot of concern this summer in the education sector about "learning loss," "accelerating learning," and making sure some students do not "fall further behind." Such fears are not new for Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students; students with disabilities; or students from low-income communities. These young people have always been subject to scrutiny in a system that keeps them at a disadvantage and then worries over their differences in performance.
Even before the upheaval of the last several months, our education system was in dire need of a shift in how to define success for our young people. Our over-reliance on high-stakes, test-based accountability systems in the context of historical and contemporary injustices has left little room for students' full humanity to be cultivated in American schools...