Yep, parents found out just how difficult it is to teach children during the pandemic. Maybe they should be more appreciative of a good, well funded public education system with fairly paid teachers.
Schools shut down because of the pandemic. A pandemic that killed an extra one million plus Americans in two years. The Covid-19 virus spread thru close contact of people and if we wouldn’t have shut down, what would have been the extra deaths. Children were less likely to die from covid, but they could still carry the virus home. What was the choice, more deaths or children catching up on studies.
POC kids in Kali have gone from bad to worse, less than 2 in 10 read at grade level. From 18% to 16% just getting the older kids into class is double tough.
There’s much to unpack here, and I suspect there will be more such news down the line. I think some people may have forgetten how difficult it was early on when so little was known about Covid. I think most people making decisions regarding education did so with safety being the primary concern. The last three months of 2020 were an unmitigated disaster for my students and for me as a teacher. However, I wonder, in my urban district, what the attendance rate-for students as well as staff-would have been if there were no mandatory closings? People in our community WERE dying and there was real fear about it.
So, how do we move forward? What are the realistic suggestions to assist those who are behind? The right, in general, shies away from offering extra resources. The left, in general, wants the resources with no questions asked. Almost every teacher I’ve met or worked with (left, right, or apolitical) has been willing to go the extra yard to help students learn and succeed. Many administrators are only concerned with having the proper “forms/assessments/growth” completed without connecting the concept(s) to learning. Most parents want their child to succeed, but some often define that success by the piece of paper received upon graduation. Many of their students are in the same boat, wanting “to go to college”, but unaware that their own habits limit the possibility of success there.
It’s certainly a problem that can be addressed and overcome, but it will need a more realistic self-assessment from all parties involved.
School boards can be a big part of the problem. Every parent thinks that their kid is a genius, and should be getting straight ’A’’s. They demand that all students pass, no matter how inept.
We will never know what the impact on learning, or even life, would have been if schools had remained open during the pandemic. We do know that our education system was unprepared — just like every other system. And it did a fairly remarkable job of trying to maintain a learning atmosphere during a frightening time. In some ways it was like expecting a person who drives a car to handle a jet airplane during a thunderstorm.
Let’s face it, we, the general public, only seem to care about kids’ learning when the test scores show that our country isn’t winning. We don’t care enough to pay teachers a respectful salary. We don’t pay enough to ensure that all students have the necessary learning resources. We talk about it and ‘tsk’ ‘tsk’ when we hear about the high drop-out rate, but we don’t really see how it is ‘our’ problem.
We play games with school funding which mainly comes from taxes, largely on property taxes which are often divvied up such that schools in high property value areas get more than schools in low property value areas. And then there are tons of regulations dictating how, where, and when the money can be spent. And for any ‘nonstandard’ needs (e.g., tutoring programs), there are state and federal grant programs that schools/teachers can apply for [along with schools and teachers from all over the state/country]. I remember when my son’s school applied for funds to set up an after-school math tutorial. That was in September. The funding came through in mid-March. And the money had to be spent by the end of the school year (May) or it went away.
There are a lot of things that our education system can improve, but that can’t happen without decent funding. And not without public support. We need to show our kids that education really is important for them, not just for an overall test score.
mwksix over 1 year ago
At least he spelled “Asterisk” correctly…
Free Radical over 1 year ago
Yep, parents found out just how difficult it is to teach children during the pandemic. Maybe they should be more appreciative of a good, well funded public education system with fairly paid teachers.
willie_mctell over 1 year ago
Pandemics can br inconvenient. Life gets interrupted.
Kurtass Premium Member over 1 year ago
Schools shut down because of the pandemic. A pandemic that killed an extra one million plus Americans in two years. The Covid-19 virus spread thru close contact of people and if we wouldn’t have shut down, what would have been the extra deaths. Children were less likely to die from covid, but they could still carry the virus home. What was the choice, more deaths or children catching up on studies.
nyg16 over 1 year ago
test scores have been falling for years but on the other hand these kid can type 100 words a minute with their thumbs
RonnieAThompson Premium Member over 1 year ago
Woodrow Wilson’s opinion on education.
http://www.educationnext.org/blame-woodrow-wilson-for-americans-lack-of-historical-literacy/
knutdl over 1 year ago
cccp?
Ammo is on a break Premium Member over 1 year ago
POC kids in Kali have gone from bad to worse, less than 2 in 10 read at grade level. From 18% to 16% just getting the older kids into class is double tough.
Havel over 1 year ago
There’s much to unpack here, and I suspect there will be more such news down the line. I think some people may have forgetten how difficult it was early on when so little was known about Covid. I think most people making decisions regarding education did so with safety being the primary concern. The last three months of 2020 were an unmitigated disaster for my students and for me as a teacher. However, I wonder, in my urban district, what the attendance rate-for students as well as staff-would have been if there were no mandatory closings? People in our community WERE dying and there was real fear about it.
So, how do we move forward? What are the realistic suggestions to assist those who are behind? The right, in general, shies away from offering extra resources. The left, in general, wants the resources with no questions asked. Almost every teacher I’ve met or worked with (left, right, or apolitical) has been willing to go the extra yard to help students learn and succeed. Many administrators are only concerned with having the proper “forms/assessments/growth” completed without connecting the concept(s) to learning. Most parents want their child to succeed, but some often define that success by the piece of paper received upon graduation. Many of their students are in the same boat, wanting “to go to college”, but unaware that their own habits limit the possibility of success there.
It’s certainly a problem that can be addressed and overcome, but it will need a more realistic self-assessment from all parties involved.
FrankErnesto over 1 year ago
School boards can be a big part of the problem. Every parent thinks that their kid is a genius, and should be getting straight ’A’’s. They demand that all students pass, no matter how inept.
NeoconMan over 1 year ago
Yes, what a horrible-terrible situation of how kids fall so far behind when they can’t go to school.
But schools just indoctrinate them so let’s home-school them anyway.
GreenT267 over 1 year ago
We will never know what the impact on learning, or even life, would have been if schools had remained open during the pandemic. We do know that our education system was unprepared — just like every other system. And it did a fairly remarkable job of trying to maintain a learning atmosphere during a frightening time. In some ways it was like expecting a person who drives a car to handle a jet airplane during a thunderstorm.
Let’s face it, we, the general public, only seem to care about kids’ learning when the test scores show that our country isn’t winning. We don’t care enough to pay teachers a respectful salary. We don’t pay enough to ensure that all students have the necessary learning resources. We talk about it and ‘tsk’ ‘tsk’ when we hear about the high drop-out rate, but we don’t really see how it is ‘our’ problem.
We play games with school funding which mainly comes from taxes, largely on property taxes which are often divvied up such that schools in high property value areas get more than schools in low property value areas. And then there are tons of regulations dictating how, where, and when the money can be spent. And for any ‘nonstandard’ needs (e.g., tutoring programs), there are state and federal grant programs that schools/teachers can apply for [along with schools and teachers from all over the state/country]. I remember when my son’s school applied for funds to set up an after-school math tutorial. That was in September. The funding came through in mid-March. And the money had to be spent by the end of the school year (May) or it went away.
There are a lot of things that our education system can improve, but that can’t happen without decent funding. And not without public support. We need to show our kids that education really is important for them, not just for an overall test score.