With just three months left in the semester for Massachusetts public schools, there’s a lot of unanswered questions about what classrooms are going to look like in the months and years ahead. But speaking Thursday on Boston Public Radio, former Mass. Education Secretary Paul Reville said the lack of clarity isn’t the fault of educators or school administrators.

"People are very caught up in the present, understandably, ‘cause we’re still in a sort of quasi-emergency response mode,” he explained. “I’m not making excuses, but I’m rather explaining why it isn’t as visible or high priority, because the demands of the present are so urgent and so rapidly changing."

Currently, Massachusetts is continuing its push to get kids back in schools, which Reville commended. But to the question of how those same schools address problems created by a year of remote learning, he suggested that state leaders consider investing more money into finding and creating long-term solutions.

"I think one of the things that the state can help with – and some of this new funding can help with – is to buy the additional time and help that’s needed for people to do longer-term planning,” he said. “Because it’s very difficult in this emergency response mode to take a breath and step up on the balcony and take a look at the future, and then make some plans.”

Paul Reville is a former Mass. Secretary of Education and a professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, where he also runs the Education Redesign Lab. His latest book, co-authored with Elaine Weiss, is "Broader, Bolder, Better: How Schools and Communities Help Students Overcome the Disadvantages of Poverty.”

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