Pandemic Lessons on Equitable Lending in Education

For the last three years, the CDFI Racial Equity Collaborative on Education has been a community of peers committed to infusing a racial equity lens into our work as lenders to public charter schools and other education organizations. Our learning  is ongoing and calls us to expand our notions of quality or effective school models beyond academic results based on standardized testing. Through our work with educational equity experts, we have learned best practices for creating equitable learning environments that support an affirming school culture and provide necessary supports to all students.

At the start of 2020, the Collaborative members were ready to take what we’d been learning as a small group to our respective teams and organizations in anticipation of rolling out the racial equity framework in our lending processes that we had designed with the nonprofits Village of Wisdom, Discriminology, and we are. In February 2020, we began a four-part virtual racial equity training designed to reach Collaborative members who work and live in several different parts of the country without requiring travel. We had no idea, however, that a month into the process, our entire lives would be virtual or that so much of our learning together would come to life over the next year.

The eight CDFIs in the Collaborative lend, develop real estate, and advocate in low-income communities often home to predominantly Black and brown residents. We know these communities—specifically people who are Black, Indigenous, and/or Latinx—have been hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic with disproportionate numbers of serious cases and deaths. Our colleagues have responded by administering Paycheck Protection Program loans, advocating for equitable distribution of stimulus funds, and continuing to lend when many mainstream lenders did not.

The impacts of the pandemic we’ve learned about through our responses affect adults and youth alike. Students in these same communities have been forced to navigate the move to virtual school, the loss of physical contact with friends, and the disappointment that accompanies cancelled milestones of a school career—driver’s ed, prom, graduation, and more. At the same time, many were also losing adults in their lives to the virus, being displaced when their families could no longer afford rent, or trying to avoid displacement by taking on jobs to supplement lost household income. A recent Columbia University study of poverty based on a family’s monthly resources during the pandemic found that Black and Latinx people experienced a greater rise in deep poverty during the months studied. Specifically, it found that the monthly poverty rate for children overall increased nearly 2% from January to September 2020.  

So much uncertainty, stress, and trauma affect students’ mental health as evidenced by the increase in mental health-related emergency room visits during the pandemic. In my own family, I have witnessed the amount of fear and anxiety young people are carrying from months of constant news of death, either from COVID-19 or in the fight for racial justice. The work of the Collaborative teaches us that in order to effectively educate all students, teachers and school leaders have to understand these issues and create systems that support the whole person within the broader social context because students carry all of their experience with them into the classroom, just like adults in the workplace. 

Over the course of the pandemic, I’ve been heartened by the ways I’ve seen schools pivot to meet students’ needs and extend their support beyond those who are enrolled in their school. Public charter schools that I work with have ensured that all students have internet access (and parents have necessary tech support), served as neighborhood feeding sites, provided grocery gift cards for families, and opened their doors for hybrid learning to be a safe place for children of essential workers. Schools have greatly improved family engagement through more regular, responsive communication. They have also employed alternative grading practices that are less punitive for late assignments or allow for second chances on missed ones. Some have also thoughtfully implemented trauma-informed methods of virtual learning that do not force students to be on camera.  

I hope that many of these newly adopted or enhanced practices continue once students return to a typical in-person learning environment. Students will need extra academic support to make up for learning loss, but the social and emotional support will be just as important. We must invest in the entire educational ecosystem so that all students get what they need, while also taking care of teachers and leaders.  

As an equity-focused lender, my greatest takeaway from this time is that we cannot be so prescriptive in our solutions that we miss what is actually needed in the moment. We must always remember that our pursuit of equity should meet the current context, and as a result, our learning must never end.