Instructure and Partners Urge Biden/Harris Administration to Address Ongoing Issues Impacting Nation’s Education System

SALT LAKE CITY—December 17, 2020—Today, Instructure announced it has been joined by Concentric Sky, Nearpod, Unicon, and Zoom in urging the incoming Biden administration to secure sufficient education funding, achieve education equity, and address ongoing issues impacting our nation’s education system.

Read the full letter to President-Elect Biden’s Education Transition Team.

While millions of American students have depended on reliable and robust learning management systems during COVID-19, thousands of school districts across the country were already leveraging digital platforms to better serve students and educators in years prior.

Public policy has struggled to keep pace, despite the increased use of technology for teaching and learning year-over-year. Further, local and state governments seeking to invest in digital platforms have had to forego these critical tools due to revenue shortfalls, leading to increasing inequities in our digital education infrastructure.

Accordingly, Instructure, the makers of the Canvas Learning Management System, along with fellow industry leaders, outlined four key priorities for the Biden administration to take substantive action on behalf of students and educators.

• Funding: Districts across the country need federal assistance in order to make the investments necessary to successfully offer high-quality education. Districts also need flexible funding, both in the COVID-19 stimulus and relief bills and in the appropriations bills currently under consideration by the House and Senate.
• Staffing the Office of Education Technology: Students need improvements to their online learning experience now and into the future, and a fully staffed, well-funded OET is the first step toward accomplishing that goal. A fully staffed OET will help our districts navigate the uncertain months ahead, but also plan for increased future use of digital platforms.
• Revitalizing America’s Assessments: Educators need better insight into students’ progress, growth areas, and strengths. We strongly encourage the administration to revisit America’s approach to testing, ideally leveraging regular formative assessments at the classroom level for accountability and to give educators the information they need to target interventions, adjust instruction, and re-assess for mastery.
• Preparing America’s Educators: Our educators should be given the tools they need to succeed. Digital tools were becoming an integral part of American classrooms before the pandemic.