Beyond Crisis Schooling project receives 2021 NREA Best Research Award

Associate professor of educational leadership Catharine Biddle and lecturer in educational leadership Maria Frankland received the National Rural Education Association’s 2021 Best Research Award for the Beyond Crisis Schooling project. Since COVID-19 caused schools across the country to go remote in spring 2020, Biddle and Frankland have led the project, in which they examine how local districts and school leaders in Maine and Pennsylvania have responded to the pandemic. They published a first report in August 2020, looking at how Maine school districts supported remote student learning from March–June 2020. Their second report on the reopening of schools to in-person learning during the 2020–21 school year in both Maine and Pennsylvania, came out in August 2021. The project is funded in part by a Spencer Foundation COVID-19 Rapid Response Grant.