Giving Compass' Take:

• Michael B. Horn discusses how COVID-19 will impact K-12 education and the long-term effects that this pandemic will have on the system. 

• How can donors provide support to educators and school districts? How is your local school district coping?

• Read about schools in Illinois struggling with closures due to COVID-19. 

As COVID-19 spreads around the globe and the threat of a recession materializes, most people are focused properly on the immediate task at hand—preparing to teach and support students remotely.

Beyond that, there will also be significant longer term impacts. The biggest shifts may occur at the intersections of K-12, higher education and workforce learning. Often these areas are treated as their own distinct silos in the education market, but the coronavirus crisis has revealed how interdependent these sectors may be.

What exactly will happen is hard to divine. Here’s a forecast from several education officials along with my colleagues at Entangled Group, an education venture studio and consulting firm.

Doug Lynch, a faculty member at USC Rossier School of Education, noted two interdependencies between K-12 and higher education that could get hairy. For one, “high school kids will not be able to take SAT or ACT in the same numbers and it will impact next year’s enrollments in higher ed,” Lynch said.

In the workforce-learning arena, Matthew Daniel, a partner at Entangled, believes that in addition to canceling face-to-face training sessions, companies are growing concerned about talent pipelines from colleges and universities as their recruiters will be unable to attend on-campus recruiting events.

“This could have repercussions for years to stable processes and programs, not just the immediate impact to a few classes,” Daniel observed. “Even if [companies] can make the hires, will those students be able to travel, and what kind of onboarding will be provided to new employees? Everyone is being forced to make hard decisions on what is truly mission critical and what alternatives are available.”

Read the full article about long-term impacts on education by Michael B. Horn at EdSurge.