Alumna & Award-Winning Educator Explains Why American Public Schools are in Crisis – Part I

There’s a crisis in American public education – low attendance, low achievement, low graduation rates and a massive teacher shortage.

Experts attribute it to the pandemic. Award-winning educator and RIC alumna Yanaiza Gallant agrees. “In education we call it ‘the COVID effect,’” she says. 

The COVID pandemic resulted in wide-ranging and long-lasting loss of learning in the United States. According to a 2024 study: By 2022, only 26 percent of American eighth graders were at or above proficient in math; less than a third of fourth graders (32 percent) were at or above proficient in reading; and 30 percent of all students were chronically absent.

In this Q&A, Gallant addresses “the COVID effect” as well as the systemic problems that have historically plagued American education.  

Gallant has been an educator for more than 20 years, working in the Providence and East Providence Public School System. The daughter of Cuban refugees who fled Fidel Castro’s regime, she arrived in the United States with her parents when she was five years old. Throughout her public school education, Gallant saw education as an equalizer able to change the trajectory of people’s lives. 

She was the first in her family to go to college, graduating from RIC with three degrees: a B.S.W. in 1998, a B.S. in elementary education in 2002 and an M.Ed. in reading in 2012. She completed her administrative certification through the New York City Leadership Academy.

Gallant began teaching in the Providence Public School System in 2002. In 2014 she joined the Orlo Avenue Elementary School in East Providence as transformation principal. Orlo was categorized among the lowest-achieving five percent of Title I schools in the state. Gallant is credited with turning the school around. In five years, she transformed the school from one of the lowest performing in Rhode Island to a state-wide model. Today she is multilingual learner director for East Providence Schools.

Gallant is also recipient of the national Milken Educator Award, which is considered the Oscar of the teaching profession. Presented to her in 2012, the award cemented her place among the best educators not only in the state of Rhode Island but in the nation.

Yanaiza, can you explain “the COVID effect”?

Part of our learning comes from socializing. We establish norms that way. We learn what is acceptable and what is not. During COVID, when kids reverted to remote learning, it prevented them from socializing. They were isolated at home. They had access to technology 24 hours a day. So, the number one thing we’re seeing as a result of COVID is lack of engagement – lack of engagement with their teachers, lack of engagement with each other and lack of engagement with what’s being taught.

There’s also a lack of what I call stick-to-it-ness. It’s about how long can you stay on something until you give up. Research tells us that the reason technology is so enticing to students is the instant gratification it provides. I need an answer and technology gives it to me immediately. When you return to school and the teacher is asking you to critically think about something in multiple ways, the neurons in your brain aren’t trained to trudge through something you don’t know. What we’re noticing is problem behavior resulting from frustration. The frustration comes from not having the resilience to try hard things and stick to it. So, we’re seeing an elevation of noncompliance. Kids are saying, “I’m not doing this. I don’t want to do this. I’m tired.”

Because they haven’t been in a social environment, we’re also having to retrain students in how to express themselves, how to share their thoughts and ideas. I find that dialoguing with them is very short. It’s more like text messaging. I see it in my own children, as well. I’ll text them this huge paragraph, and I’ll get back the word, “Okay.” In fact, I don’t even get the “O” in okay anymore, I just get the “K.” If you’ve ever sat with a group of middle schoolers, it’s the most awkward thing in the world. I know this sounds so basic, but you’ve got to teach them how to talk to each other.

What can we do to increase scores in reading and math, which have been low in the U.S. for decades?

I hear this question all the time. I’m going to answer that question with a question: How are we measuring student success? How are we measuring what students know? If it’s based on standardized test scores, therein lies the problem.

Standardized testing has been around forever. It’s an antiquated system that doesn’t work in the modern world. At no job interview will they ever ask you what you scored on your fourth grade NECAP test. Even universities and colleges are starting to see that. They used to put a lot of weight on the SATs, but now they want to know what your extracurricular activities are and how active you are in the community.

By focusing on standardized test scores, all we’re doing is dimming the light of our very intelligent students who can fix a Chromebook in two seconds while we struggle with it for four hours. Yet we say that student is not achieving because they can’t tell us the author’s purpose in a five-page essay. We must get past test scores and come to know students wholistically.

What are more wholistic ways of measuring what a student knows?

In education we call it Universal Design for Learning, which means allowing our students to express what they’ve learned in multiple ways. Howard Gardner established the theory of multiple intelligences. He says there are multiple ways in which human beings display intelligence. There are visual learners who become artists. There are hands-on learners who are able to fix a Chromebook. There are highly verbal learners who become leaders in the world. How do we measure that? We need to allow students to choose how they show mastery of content. I also love project-based learning opportunities and collaborative learning to show what students know.

How can AI and other technologies improve student outcomes?

Some educators embrace AI and say let’s utilize it as much as possible. Others say students will never learn on their own if a machine is always doing things for them. I like to meet in the middle. I like to ask: How can we use technology to delve deeper into content? We used to go on field trips to supplement what we were teaching in class. Today, we can go anywhere in the world using technology. We can have a Zoom meeting with an astronaut from NASA. The access we have through technology is a window of opportunity.

I also believe technology is the equity piece that we were missing. In my district, we have 28 languages. Through Google Translate, which has over 300 languages available, I can translate information to parents not only in Spanish but in Arabic, Turkish and Ukrainian. Technology has equalized access to our families who were often marginalized. That’s the exciting part of technology for me.

I think we need to truly explore what our workforce and our world will look like in the next 10 years because we need to start preparing our students for careers of the future. Businesses tell us we’re not preparing students for the world, and they’re right. We’re still telling students to close their books and memorize 20 algebraic facts. For what? These kids have technology that can do that for them. It’s what they do with the facts that’s important. Can you take this algebraic formula and build something that will function in the world?

In Part II of “American Public Schools in Crisis,” Gallant discusses the massive teacher shortage and what real education reform might look like.