The 2020-2021 US school year will go down as the year of the great education experiment. With the majority of our children starting the academic year via the remote-only instructional model, the parent-school partnership has never been more critical to student achievement. With a constantly evolving landscape, parents need to be knowledgeable, demand transparency, and be involved.
- Many schools will not be fully and properly staffed. Schools are suffering budget cuts and more teachers are leaving the field. Be prepared for limited access and communication as teachers will be stretched thin while parents have more questions. According to an EdWeek Research Center poll, 44 percent of teachers said they were “somewhat more” or “much more” likely to leave classroom teaching since the onset of the pandemic. So, in states like New York, for example, teachers may teach one class outside their area of certification, which is permitted by education law.
- Public schools will increasingly offer social services. Public schools will be hubs that offer: mental and medical health checks, meals, technology access, transportation, housing, and more. Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest school district in the US behind New York City, educates over 18,000 homeless students and provides 3 meals per day to the majority of their student population as well as wrap around services like health and wellness clinics according to Nick Melvoin, elected member of the Los Angeles Unified School Board. Student need has heightened.
- Inequities will grow. Privileged families can keep their kids home, hire tutors or pursue private schools that have large endowments and access to wealthy donors and parents. At the same time, with slashed budgets from lower tax revenues, our public schools lack the resources to retrofit buildings, provide PPE for all, address the social emotional and academic needs of their diverse populations, hire and train staff for remote learning, and distribute technology and access to the Internet. According to a June McKinsey report, learning loss for low-income, black and hispanic students will be even greater.
- Many teachers have not been able to lesson plan for the 2020-2021 academic year. Many teachers are only now learning what courses and grades they will teach and in what format: asynchronous virtual, synchronous virtual, hybrid, fully remote. Governor Cuomo’s announcement about New York State school reopenings on August 7 was late, though maybe necessarily as COVID cases are being monitored. Sarah Bidwell, a New York public school teacher says, “Typically teachers spend the summer lesson planning. In this very atypical year, teachers are now in the uncomfortable position of preparing to be unprepared.” As of August 10, according to Cuomo’s office, 107 of the State’s 950 Districts have not filed a plan for in-person learning.
- We can learn from other nations. Many high performing nations planned for various models of teaching before going remote. According to the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) report, this planning includes: high quality digital resources and equitable access to these resources, jurisdiction level curricular frameworks, hands-on learning tools like physical textbooks to supplement digital, a commitment to balancing teacher’s levels and areas of expertise with responsibilities and special attention to those students with special needs. Lei Tong, a PhD biologist working mom in Singapore recounts her experience from the start of the pandemic, “Before the official quarantine began, the government planned a practice day of home based digital learning to make sure that even my 6-year-old could log in and access her schedule, assignments, and teacher and classmate correspondence.” Online learning was supported by physical textbooks, so her daughter was often reading from a book and handwriting her homework.
- Simplified Curricula and Gaps. To date, remote has proven not as effective as in-person learning. Therefore, for example, many first graders will not learn how to tell time in their formal school settings to instead focus on basic arithmetic 1-20, both part of the Common Core State Standards. Schools will need to address learning loss and assess students at the start of this academic year. The average student could begin the next school year having lost as much as a third of the expected progress from the previous year. And this past spring, only an estimated 60% of students engaged with distance learning and 75% of teachers reported students were less engaged than when they were in the physical classroom.
- Remote learning will be the default. With a sudden positive Covid case within your school, community, or pod, children will be quarantined at home. Even if our schools open or reopen in-person in some capacity, we must be prepared for remote learning at home. Globally and here in the US, schools that have reopened without all necessary precautions have had to go remote suddenly. Public health experts doubt that schools that open classrooms in hard-hit parts of the country will be able to avoid shutdowns for long.
- Prepare at Home. On-line learning platforms and apps, teachers and classmate socialization, school-family communication channels, curricula, teacher expectations/syllabi, homework and grading policies, will all look different. Parents and students alike need to be fully familiar with their school reopening plans and prepare home workspaces taking into account privacy, sound, and even visible backdrops for the full year. We need to remove as much uncertainty during these uncertain times for our kids.
- Our institutions and corporations can get involved. Our communities can maximize efficiencies to prioritize our children’s education. Large spaces like libraries, auditoriums, museums, stadiums are not being fully utilized but can be repurposed for schooling to facilitate social distancing and offer outdoor space, where feasible. Additionally, if organizations like the NBA have enough funding to invest in PPE and daily testing for its players, these very deep pockets could be channeling funds to their fan base of kids and getting them back to school and learning.
- Technology Overuse and Human Interaction. We do not have any pedagogical precedent or associated research with full-time large-scale remote K-12 learning. But with no other option, it has necessitated kids being on-line despite research that has shown it is damaging to their academic, social and emotional development. Andreas Schliecher, head of OECD PISA, reports “Students who use computers frequently at school do a lot worse in most learning outcomes, even after accounting for socio-economic background and student demographics.” He goes on to state, “Building deep, conceptual understanding and higher-order thinking requires intensive teacher-student interactions, and technology sometimes distracts from this valuable human engagement.” Currently, 17 of our 20 largest school districts are reopening remote, affecting over 4 million students. At some point, we will need to address the elephant in the room.
This is the year parents will be educated on education. This could be our opportunity — the much needed catalyst for increased advocacy on a massive scale to overhaul our education system. Frankly, without it, our kids will never forgive us.