California Emerging Technology Fund

School2Home is an innovative statewide initiative to close both the Achievement Gap and Digital Divide at low-performing middle schools by integrating the use of Internet-enabled computing devices into teaching and learning coupled with significant parent engagement. It is anchored in research and best practices for improving academic performance and effectively using technology. School2Home employs a compendium of mutually-reinforcing interventions that transform school culture to improve student outcomes on a range of measures. It provides the essential framework to turn around low-performing schools and the requisite platform for innovative pedagogy and personalized learning. School2Home enhances Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAP) and helps students acquire deeper skills to succeed in a digital world.

When COVID-19 closed schools and sent home millions of students to try to continue their education remotely, the pandemic laid bare the Digital Divide and exposed deep inequities and widespread challenges for distance learning. However, School2Home schools made the transition relatively easily because all teachers were prepared, parents had been trained, and students already had been assigned computers to take home. One Principal commented, “We had the advantage as we dealt with the school closure.” A Teacher Leader said, “Without School2Home, we would not have been ready for this moment.”

While School2Home results are promising, Schools need Counties and Cities to align services to address the inter-related forces of concentrated and persistent poverty—a strategy called Neighborhood Transformation—so that students in low-income neighborhoods can focus on learning. CETF and the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools convened stakeholders in the Los Angeles Region to develop a model framework to transform schools and neighborhoods while incorporating Digital Inclusion. Learn more at https://www.School2Home.org.