Posted on 6/22/2020, 2:29:44 PM by karpov
The remote-learning experiment isn’t going well. This month the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education published a report looking at how 477 school districts nationwide have responded to the Covid-19 crisis. Its findings reveal widespread neglect of students.
The report found only 27% of districts required teachers to record whether students participate in remote classes, while remote attendance has been abysmal. During the first two weeks of the shutdown, some 15,000 Los Angeles students failed to show up for classes or do any schoolwork.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that, 10 weeks in, “the Philadelphia School District registers just 61% of students attending school on an average day.” The same week the Boston Globe reported that only “half of students are logging into online class or submitting assignments online on a typical day.”
Students have an incentive to ditch digital class, since their work counts for little or nothing. Only 57.9% of school districts do any progress monitoring, the report found. The rest haven’t even set the minimal expectation that teachers review or keep track of the work their students turn in. Homework counts toward students’ final grades in 42% of districts. And some schools that do grade offer students a pass/incomplete.
Teachers unions never want teachers’ performance judged by student achievement, so they’ve lobbied to ensure a lack of accountability and assessment during the shutdowns. They dressed up this demand in the language of social justice: Because the pandemic has not visited the same hardships on all families, the only equitable solution is to deprive all students of for-credit instruction, they claim.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Just like regular school, eh?
But making them work can teach them to hate learning.
I really don’t think schools (as an institution) care about students when the students are in the classroom.
I’m not surprised if schools (as an institution) don’t care about students when the students are not in the classroom.
But the danger for the Schools (unions) is that people might realize that “in the classroom” and “not in the classroom” makes little difference. They don’t want that realization to catch on. So they need to emphasize virtual schools as a failure.
I have quite a few teacher friends involved in this virus-related home learning thing. And the article is correct in that there is little or no student accountability.
No teachers are happy about that. But decisions are being made far above the teacher or even principal level. They are being made at the superintendent level. No superintendent wants to see a high failure rate in his district. That will impact him very negatively when it comes time to renew his contract.
Plus there is a fear of lawsuits. “My Johnny couldn’t do the work because he’s bad with computers. He needs classroom instruction, and you didn’t give him that.”
The unions have nothing to do with any of this.
FIFY!
>>The unions have nothing to do with any of this.<<
This just helps.
> This just helps. <
I don’t know what that means. Please explain.
The most important part of a school system is that employees (teachers, staff) get their paychecks.
Kids? It’s a nice to have side effect if they learn something.
I think that is were the schools fail miserably. They never teach why the student should learn. They never teach why math is important or why speaking correct English is needed. They never teach why the US Constitution was written the way it was and what it actually meant, as written.
If you take a kid that doesn’t want to learn and put them in the best school, he will fail. If you take a kid that wants to learn and put them in a poor school, they will excel even if they do it on their own, outside of the class room.
In Georgia schools I know about, grades could only go up if you did the work, they were frozen. That said, I know one high school junior who told me he was failing several classes yet woke up one day to find out he was passed on to senior year with unearned grades. He was happy but what good did that do for him really?
I disagree. The teachers unions are very powerful in California. When schools closed in mid March, in our area they successfully argued that teachers at home were “too busy with their own children” to teach my children. And they didn’t.
I enrolled my daughter in a private Christian school last week—those teachers are allowed and even encouraged to excel (imagine that!), and proved it by providing fairly decent online education beginning on day 1 of the shutdown. And they care about the students and pray for them.
The decisions of my local school district during the pandemic was the final straw for me. Enough.
“My Johnny couldn’t do the work because he’s bad with computers. He needs classroom instruction, and you didn’t give him that.”
______________________________________
Bet Johnny/Janie do just fine w/apps/porn/social media/gaming.
2nd graders have been writing simple programs since the 90s or earlier.
For 25-30 years adults have been forced to quickly adapt to learning curves in computing. Sometimes only with 6 weeks of instruction.
This excuse is bogus, since the real problem in the kids can’t read, can’t do simple arithmetic and have no work ethic along with the attention span of a gnat.
Schools failed 40 years ago.
> The teachers unions are very powerful in California. When schools closed in mid March, in our area they successfully argued that teachers at home were “too busy with their own children” to teach my children. And they didn’t. <
That is simply wrong. I would be very, very upset about it too.
Here’s the way it should have gone:
Union: We are too busy to teach our classes remotely.
School district: Teach your classes or be fired.
But I still must argue that you are aiming at the wrong target. A teachers union is very much like a defense attorney. It’s the job of a union - or a defense attorney - to argue what’s best for their clients.
It’s the job of the opposition to push back. You noted that the union successfully argued their case. Who in the world said “yes” to them? I’m guessing it was either the district superintendent or the school board. Those are the folks who need to be targeted.
Johnny’s parents should have sat in front of the computer to help him along. No excuses. It’s not like mom and dad (where is daddy or mama’s latest bf?) were working 24/7 during the stay home. Bet Johnny does very well with computer games.
Parents can’t say they didn’t know Latrina wasn’t do her work because grades and attendance are posted online. Sorry, parents, this is all on you.
I blasted one mama who was whining about this very thing online. Shut up and take responsibility for the kids you birthed.
News reports state in my county over 5000 students have not even attempted to connect for virtual classes. The social justice crowd immediately claimed the missing students are poor and unable to afford computers or internet connections.
This nation spends hundreds of billions of dollars on education each year including the funding of research “studies” by colleges and universities which have nothing to do with educating a child in the classroom. I suspect no academic will undertake a real study of the households were children are not participating in remote education. I suspect if a real study were undertaken key findings would be:
1) Little parent involvement or encouragement of education. These are the children whose parents are not making them do homework and not concerned about their performance in school.
2) Most of the households are poor by government standards. However, if a researcher looked at household spending there would be wide screen televisions, recent model sophisticated cell phones, beer in the refrigerator, possibly weed or other drugs in a drawer, firearms, and other discretionary items deemed more important than a computer for the child.
3) There would have been no attempt by the parents to obtain a computer and internet hookup. In this community there are multiple government and private programs designed to provide free computers to poor households and subsidized or free internet connections to poor households. However the household has to apply for the benefit. Uncaring and uninvolved parents are not going to make the effort.
Almost daily there are local news reports of “youth” as young as 9 years old being involved in group crimes - property damage, car break-ins, car theft, beatings of white homeless people. Most of these crimes occur after midnight. Why are these school age children running around in the middle of the night committing crimes. Where are their parents and why are their parents not managing them?
The truth is, if the parent makes education a priority, children will be educated no matter the income level. Today we are bombarded with messages about societal racism, white privilege, and rampant discrimination. Yet poor Asian immigrant children excel in school while many poor black students fail, even in schools run by black administrators and taught by black teachers. Why aren’t black parents making education a priority? Why aren’t they pushing their children to succeed in school? Why is another generation of black school children being condemned to a life of poverty and dependency? Fix this problem and many of society’s ills are dramatically diminished — crime, team pregnancies, poverty, discrimination.
An 18 year old person of any race who is functionally illiterate or a school dropout is going to have extremely limited prospects in society. This has nothing to do with racism and everything to do with lack of skills to survive and succeed in life. If the parent has not prepared the child to succeed in life she/he is condemned to a life of poverty.
PBS recently ran a profile of the life of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas was raised by strict grandparents who were poorly educated and victims of discrimination. Yet they scraped up the money to send Clarence and his brother to Catholic school, set high standards of performance. Clarence was able to go to college and law school because his grandparents insured he had the education and skills to be successful in life.
Progressives say it is time to have an honest conversation about race in this country. Isn’t it time to have an honest conversation about the failure of parenting in poor communities and how to overcome it?
I'm shocked, shocked I tell you... /s
How did that differ from when they were in the classroom?
> This excuse is bogus... <
You bet it’s bogus. But parents have sued schools - and won - with far weaker arguments. School superintendents, and school boards, don’t want the hassle. So they cave in when they should be fighting back.
This is especially true if the student happens to be a special needs student. State and federal laws have made them practically a royal class.
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