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NWEA Report Offers Natural Disaster Recovery Strategies

  • By Matt Jones
  • 01/16/26

Key Takeaways

  • Proactive planning and community partnerships are essential. NWEA emphasizes advance preparation — through risk assessment, emergency planning, drills, and strong communication — along with close collaboration between schools and community organizations to support recovery needs beyond academics.
  • Stability and emotional well-being should come before academics after disasters. Quickly restoring daily routines helps students regain a sense of normalcy, but the playbook stresses that students' emotional recovery and teachers' unmet needs must take priority over academic catch-up.
  • Long-term recovery requires layered supports for learning and mental health. NWEA recommends multi-tiered systems of support — ranging from universal social-emotional services to intensive therapeutic care — paired with targeted academic interventions to address learning losses that can exceed the amount of instructional time missed.

The Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), the K–12 assessment and research organization, recently announced the release of a new playbook for schools and communities recovering from extreme weather events. It offers recommendations for preparation, immediate recovery efforts, and longer-term strategies for rebuilding over the course of years.

"This new playbook is the second part of our research into the impacts of extreme weather events on teaching and learning," said NWEA's Dr. Megan Kuhfeld, director of growth modeling and analytics. "The first report we released this past summer felt unfinished without looking at what districts can do to better prepare for future disasters and how best to support students and teachers through the recovery phase and beyond. This playbook is a collection of insights drawn from lessons in resilience from districts that have faced disasters and what they did to recover."

The research brief is titled "Lessons in resilience: A playbook for recovery from natural disasters." Its six recommendations are:

  1. Prepare a plan in advance. Steps include assessing community risk, developing an Emergency Operations Plan, building communication systems, and running practices and drills.
  2. Build relationships between schools and community organizations. The brief discusses how schools serve as community hubs that can meet needs like temporary housing, trauma counseling, and disaster relief donations.
  3. After a disaster strikes, try to move students back into a daily routine as soon as possible. Predictability, stability, and familiar routines or expectations are crucial to recreating a sense of normalcy.
  4. Students' emotional recovery—as well as teachers' unmet needs—must take priority over academic recovery.
  5. For long-term recovery efforts, build multi-tiered supports. These include universal support services (such as staff training and social-emotional learning), targeted support services (small-group interventions), and intensive support services (connecting students with therapists or coordinating continuing care).
  6. Provide additional support for students' academic needs. According to the brief, "missed school days due to severe weather can translate to academic losses that are two to four times greater than the missed instructional time itself." Strategies including offering tutoring and learning from prior interruptions.

For the full brief, visit the NWEA site.

About the Author

Matt Jones is senior editor of Spaces4Learning. He can be reached at [email protected].

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