{"id":16783,"date":"2020-04-09T07:23:54","date_gmt":"2020-04-09T13:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=16783"},"modified":"2020-04-09T07:23:54","modified_gmt":"2020-04-09T13:23:54","slug":"will-the-pandemic-school-closures-cause-an-education-re-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2020\/04\/will-the-pandemic-school-closures-cause-an-education-re-think.html","title":{"rendered":"Will The Pandemic School Closures Cause An Education Re-Think?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"
https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/wwworks\/15344079560<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Schools are closed.<\/p>\n

Depending on what part of the country you\u2019re in, they\u2019re closed \u2019til April 30, or closed for the rest of the year, or nominally closed til April whatever-th but, let\u2019s face it, that\u2019s gonna be extended.\u00a0 And depending on the school district, the kids are doing \u201ce-learning,\u201d or they\u2019re working on workbooks with parental guidance, or neither of the above.\u00a0 And depending on the family situation, they\u2019re being supervised\/nagged by parents, being directly instructed by those parents, or, again, neither of the above, if those parents are unwilling or unable \u2014 which I imagine can occur for a number of reasons, from their own lack of understanding of the subject matter, to the need to work and leave the kids in a \u201cchild care\u201d arrangement (for instance, the state of Illinois is running an \u201cemergency child care program\u201d for essential workers<\/a>, which also includes school aged kids, but I have no particular reason to believe these programs will work with children out of school on their lessons).<\/p>\n

So when school resumes, how far behind will the non-instructed kids be?\u00a0 Will they have lost two months \u2014 not great, not the end of the world?\u00a0 Or will they be set back by much more?<\/p>\n

It seems to me this would all hinge on the degree to which the school has individualized learning, so that students can continue learning at their own pace, possibly catching up during the summer, possibly by putting in \u201covertime\u201d during the school year.\u00a0 But if a system is one-size-fits-all, so that the only way to accommodate kids who missed two months, is to restart them at the beginning of the year, then the harm will be all the greater \u2014 and if \u201cthe system\u201d shrugs off their deficits as unavoidable, leaving them unaddressed, it will never be remedied.<\/p>\n

What concrete actions are schools taking, in cases where the usual lesson plans can\u2019t be delivered online?\u00a0 It seems to me that there could be some alternate remedies, by schools focusing on trying to maximize the activities that can be done at home, then adopting highly individualized instruction in the fall to pick up the deficits.\u00a0 Perhaps younger grade school kids could be tasked with the rote learning of basic math facts even if the curriculum called for something different.\u00a0 Parents could be called on to set aside lots of independent reading time, and schools could provide books.\u00a0 (Heck, I think it was a mistake to have closed libraries as \u201cinessential\u201d!)\u00a0 Kids could be asked to write daily, even if there\u2019s no one to correct mistakes.\u00a0 \u00a0Then groups of kids who have stayed on pace or improved with some of these skills could be given double-doses of science and social studies in the fall.<\/p>\n

Of course, a further difficulty is that the official guidance of the Illinois State Board of Education that students in no way be penalized in terms of grades and credits for any shortfalls in their \u201ce-learning\u201d work.\u00a0 Essentially it means that only grades which exceed the student\u2019s pre-closure average are included in the average.\u00a0 And I acknowledge that they don\u2019t want to cause students harm, but it\u2019s such a \u201ccredentializing\u201d mindset that says that the benefit kids get from schooling is the diploma\/college admission at the end, rather than actual learning, that risks the system deeming particular kids as not needing any help as long as they are \u201con track\u201d grade\/credit-wise.\u00a0 (Here\u2019s a not-helpful link:\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/www.isbe.net\/Pages\/covid19.aspx<\/a>.\u00a0 Somewhere on this page is a further link to a document which gives this instruction.)<\/p>\n

And I write with no illusions that educators are waiting for recommendations from a small-time blogger.\u00a0 (Hmmm. . .\u00a0 maybe I will write a further blog post about libraries, though.)\u00a0 I\u2019m mostly just thinking out loud about the inflexibilities of our education system, and whether there\u2019s any way to solve that, and inviting reader comment.\u00a0 What do you think, and what have you seen?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Schools are closed. Depending on what part of the country you\u2019re in, they\u2019re closed \u2019til April 30, or closed for the rest of the year, or nominally closed til April whatever-th but, let\u2019s face it, that\u2019s gonna be extended.\u00a0 And depending on the school district, the kids are doing \u201ce-learning,\u201d or they\u2019re working on workbooks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1421,94],"class_list":["post-16783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-covid-19","tag-education"],"yoast_head":"\nWill The Pandemic School Closures Cause An Education Re-Think?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Schools are closed. 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