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Education Medicine United States

Some School Districts Plan To End the Year Early, Call Remote Learning Too Tough (wsj.com) 93

Posted by BeauHD from the too-tough-to-handle dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: Some districts are giving up on remote learning and ending the academic year early, after concluding that it was too cumbersome for teachers, students and parents. Washington, D.C., as well as parts of Georgia, Texas and elsewhere plan to end a week to several weeks early. Schools have struggled to launch remote learning for more than 50 million children across the country during the coronavirus pandemic in the largest experiment in remote learning ever. Among the issues they've encountered, not all students have internet access or have parents available to help, causing concerns about inequity. As a result, many districts haven't required schoolwork be completed or graded. Student participation, when schools are even able to measure it, has often been below regular attendance level. When schools do eventually reopen, they'll look vastly different than they did before. There may be more scheduled days home, more online learning, and lots of hand-washing.

In parts of China, where life is slowly returning to normalcy, an elementary school in Yangzheng had students design hats that measure 1 meter (3.2 feet) across as a lesson in coronavirus safety practices. "We're advocating students to wear a one-meter hat and maintain one meter's distance," the Zhejiang Daily newspaper quoted Hong Feng, the school's principal, as saying as the kids returned to school this week for the first time in several months.

"Along with teaching the students about social distancing, the headgear is giving the kids a history lesson: The hats resemble those worn during the Song Dynasty, which ruled China between 960 and 1279," adds CNET. "The long horizontal plumes on Song Dynasty toppers were supposedly to prevent officials from conspiring sotto voce with one another while at court -- so social distancing was in fact their original function," Eileen Chengyin Chow, a Duke University professor of Asian and Middle Eastern studies, explained on Twitter.
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Some School Districts Plan To End the Year Early, Call Remote Learning Too Tough More

Some School Districts Plan To End the Year Early, Call Remote Learning Too Tough

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  • What a bunch of whiners! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29, 2020 @04:32PM (#60005458)

    We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere - like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Give me five bees for a quarter, you'd say.

    Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by risc8088 ( 876186 )

      Who wrote this... Joe Biden?

      • It's a Simpsons reference

      • Basically. It's Abe Simpson talking to Mr. Burns about how he and his chums can bust up unions.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

        I really do want to cut this video and have it wipe/blend to some clips of Biden's senility. I'm just far too lazy.

      • Most parents around the universe love their children. You have 1.35 billion Chinese population. How can they protect them that will be cost effective and lasting. Congrats China. Too bad some American schools did not think to protect the parents of kids this way. Kids will bring home the virus, but it is the grandparents who will die.

  • We'll see the return of the hoop skirt.

  • and it's a nightmare for parents. Kids are kids, and they have a hard time focusing if they're not in a classroom. Parents are often still working (26 million unemployed leaves around 130 million still employed) and that puts a huge burden on the parent that boarders on home schooling. That's before we get into any of the technical challenges.

    Best thing to do is to do what they're doing now, which is put a hold on it for anyone who's not a Senior in high school or college and then try to make it up next

    • ...that puts a huge burden on the parent that boarders on home schooling.

      On top of that, their kids get boared.

    • Re:CNN had an article on it (Score:4, Informative)

      by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2020 @05:13PM (#60005602)

      I wouldn't call it a nightmare, it's much, much easier for middle school and above. For elementary school, it's very difficult, they require a lot more supervision and their assignments require someone to be involved. I am definitely finding it difficult taking time out of my work schedule to administer. I would like to see them continue to try to make this work, part of the problem is attempting to implement it with no warning. It's very likely this virus will be an issue in the next school year as well.

      The good news is that at least here in Texas, the last month is typically lost to Texas' state standardized testing. Teachers pretty much spend this time teaching the test and giving a lot of practice tests, so the kids aren't actually missing a huge amount. One might argue the review is good, but certainly minimal new material. If this persists into the next school year though, some better attempt is needed.

      • No - no matter the level it is hard. As a student, you have to have the discipline and motivation, and you still have to carve out X hours per day and actually GO TO SCHOOL. As a teacher, you end up tutoring a classroom full of students, not teaching them and the work load difference is exponential.

        The only reason it comes close to "working" at the college level (where before this term having "only" a 20% drop/fail rate is impressive for a school to maintain) is the drive and desire and discipline of the

        • All that is true but honestly, how many of us needed to go to college or do 80% of what we did in school? Geometry, basic algebra and greek and victorian literature... how much do kids really need exposed to in school before going to some kind of trade school?

          • Yes,I'd much prefer high schools to spend their 4 years preparing folks for adult life - the economics of running a house hold, economics and finances of daily living, planning for retirement, the bad stuff about credit and loans, dealing with taxes, wills, etc. Learn how to get on a cycle to pay your monthly bills, etc. More civics - local and state government, federal. World political history. More real life math (money math, cooking math, etc) all wrapped up in word problems. Critical thinking skills.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Mashiki ( 184564 )

              High school used to do that, Jr. high used to do the same. They cut it all out, all of it over 20 years ago and much closer to 30 years ago in some places. To give an example, in Jr HS, we had home ec, home finance(budgets, loans, interest rates, doing taxes), shop classes(which included basic home repairs), cooking, home gardens for self-sufficiency, basic survival(water and food prep) that was done in grade 7 and 8. Civics were cut and gut as well, they don't really teach it in Ontario after the educat

        • As a student, you have to have the discipline and motivation

          And, if the student doesn't have it, it is the parents' fault.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by khchung ( 462899 )

        I wouldn't call it a nightmare, it's much, much easier for middle school and above. For elementary school, it's very difficult, they require a lot more supervision and their assignments require someone to be involved.

        For kids still in elementary/primary school, I would say don't bother, just let them play.

        An extra 4 months summer holiday won't matter much in their life. Rather, it would benefit them AND their parents a lot more in the long term to take this opportunity to enjoy life at home and form better family relationship.

        Sure, let them read and learn if they are so inclined. They have to stay home the entire day and eventually they will be so bored that reading something is better than doing nothing. But don't b

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by hattig ( 47930 )

      I'm in that situation, in the UK.

      The school is using an effective online system - classdojo - which works well, there's even mobile clients so most parents should be able to participate (but obviously some can't).

      So today for year 3 (7/8 year old) they set Maths, English, Reading, Spanish and P.E. tasks - all multi-slide powerpoint. Great, we'll scrap the P.E. of course.

      I'm working from home, because computer programmer (which seems to be MS Teams Meeting Jockey these days). 9-6 with hour lunch, and whateve

      • I don't really play games anymore but I remember the focus I used to have with them when I was younger. I'm surprised with all the MMOs and such available these days one hasn't been implemented something decent that requires real deep knowledge and engages kids.

    • And yet, some homeschooling parents have been doing this successfully for years. (Admittedly with others failing miserably.)

      Putting all the kids on hold is a terrible idea. Testing when they can open up the schools again makes more sense. Those who could and did continue on through this (including independent study or parent created lessons) should not be held back to wait for their peers to catch up. They will be bored as hell and develop lazy habits because they won't have to try.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by hattig ( 47930 )

        The key part there is "for years", also it is their choice, they did the research, they did the preparation, and even then a lot of them find it hard, or fail.

        Yes, it can be done successfully - if you have the time it requires, and your child gets used to it over a period of time so they have their homeschool normality.

        That's really not applicable here, with working parents who can't provide the time, and children in a completely different situation.

        Oh, the first two weeks were fine (apart from lack of time

      • Unfair comparison.

        A homeschooling parent knows that s/he will have to spent 3-5 hours per school day, treating teaching the kid(s) as a real job.

        A parent trying to hold down a job while suddenly working from home might find it hard to find more than 1-2 hours to try and direct the kid(s) during the hours 8a-6p.

    • it's a nightmare for parents. Kids are kids, and they have a hard time focusing if they're not in a classroom

      What the Covid shutdown has revealed, is a fact few were willing to admit - public schools are just rather bad daycare centers for children.

      Seeing how well public schools performed under these conditions, should give a huge boost to charter schools and homeschooling, and the kids will be vastly better off for it.

      It even seems possible now to float the idea of an entirely virtual charter school that

      • What fucking bullshit. It doesn't say anything about public schools. It says it is really hard to teach children remotely. A dara point: My daughter a couple years ago attended 8th grade at a premier online charter school for a year. Complete waste of time. Horrible quality. Learned far more when she returned to public school.
      • I don't think it is a fair comparison because schools weren't setup or prepared for the switch to distance learning. Not to mention we were first told it would be a one week delay, then an additional 2 weeks, then an additional month, and then they finally canceled the rest of the year. It caught us off guard and had we been able to prepare for the switch, I think it would have been much smoother.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Comrade Ogilvy ( 1719488 )

        That fact that 25 parents collectively cannot get 25 kids to sit still and do anything, perhaps that actually shows that 1 teacher > 25 parents in educational value.

        So you seem to be misspeaking, because obviously you wanted to say that teachers are a bargain at 5 times their salary, given the evidence on hand.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mtmra70 ( 964928 )

          Correct, 25 parents cannot control 25 kids because you know, those 25 parents are busy doing their job. Sure, if the parent sat there and babysat the kid all day it would be easy, but then they wouldn't have a job other than babysitting/teaching.

          One person in a room of 25 kids with the sole purpose to control and instruct the students is far easier to handle practically and logistically than a parent attempting to work in a new environment, with new work methods, while also trying to control their child or

          • I think both takes are correct. Teachers are undervalued for their capacity to watch over 25 kids simultaneously and largely get some information into their heads, and parents are under way more strain than is reasonable already, to say nothing of heaping on the responsibility of trying to keep a child occupied and educated.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        is a fact few were willing to admit - public schools are just rather bad daycare centers for children.

        Pretty much everyone I know has been comfortable with that fact for 20 years, even as children. Americans are sick degenerates who have offloaded raising our kids onto the government. About about a quarter of us are so obsessed grubbing for money, we throw the blame on others pretty much in any way to distract from or facilitate more money grubbing. Maybe a quarter would like to reorganize things away from the money grubbing. Half simply don't have the mental energy, luxury, or aptitude to really consider i

    • Surprise! Parenting is hard. Who knew it?
    • I missed a few months of grade school. Predictions were made about how I would need to repeat the year. But it wasn't any problem.

    • I can't help but thinking that homeschooling currently looks a lot like this [youtube.com] in most homes...

    • and it's a nightmare for parents.

      No, just a nightmare for elementary school parents. Everyone else is getting their work done just fine as middle school and high school kids are somewhat better unsupervised. Maybe schools didn't cope with the switch but based on the wife's recent results there seem to be no major difference in results of her class to last year's exam to this year's exam and they are up to date on the curriculum.

      Now that said there seems to be great variance in how schools have implemented remote learning. But one thing is

    • All I get from your post is that parents raise their kids to be assholes and then blame teachers for the behavior of their kids. Now that parents have to deal with their kids, they are realizing that their kids are shitheaded assholes and want them back in school so they don't have to deal with them.

  • <JackNicholson>You can't handle remote learning!</JackNicholson>

  • Things are definitely getting weird: https://www.goldthread2.com/cu... [goldthread2.com]

  • college try (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bugs2squash ( 1132591 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2020 @05:22PM (#60005638)
    I can't say that the school district around here have it much of a try. They have done very little to attempt to teach high schooler's anything. My 9th grader gets a single half hour google meeting every other day and some occasional math homework. They have not even set a reading list.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by heezer7 ( 708308 )
      Same here. Weeks in and what we get is pretty sad, but it seems to vary by teacher. Some of our friends' kids have daily class calls and weekly one on one check ins. Nothing like that here.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by melted ( 227442 )

      Pretty much the same here. And we're paying $11K per student per year in our state. On the other hand the number of administrative staff is second to none. Management hierarchy goes 4-5 levels deep. Facepalm.

    • I can't say that the school district around here have it much of a try. They have done very little to attempt to teach high schooler's anything. My 9th grader gets a single half hour google meeting every other day and some occasional math homework. They have not even set a reading list.

      As a Canadian observing the USA and it's education system, I am coming away with sad emotions The intention is to commercialise public school education by financially subsidising Charter Schools The intention of the Devos is to under-fund public schools. The intent of university / college education is to make that education expensive. Only children of the wealthy will be able to attend, it will be too expensive for the rest. So, in twenty years, given current trends, USA is going to be a third world coun

      • That doesn't seem to have been too much of a factor locally to us (admittedly a relatively well-heeled school district in a "nice" neighborhood). The "common core" objectives don;t seem that out of whack and generally the schools do a pretty good job. Local policy seems to be far more influential than federal policy in practice.

        The standard of the top tier teachers is tremendous. I would say that senior-itis is an issue among the brighter students because the curriculum is not evenly paced over the duration

  • 1 meter diameter? (Score:3)

    by lusid1 ( 759898 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2020 @05:30PM (#60005678)

    This is why you can't blindly send specs to china to have things made. To maintain a 2 meter distance between students each hat would have to have a 1 meter RADIUS.

    • These are the improved model, which has been cost-optimized for improved time-to-market and sanitation synergies--which, as we all know, mean that the 0.5 + 0.5 actually needs to be synergistically scaled (1.5; 1 + 1 = 3, as we all learned in business school), therefore there is 1.5 * 1m = 1.5m radius around each student. The remaining 0.5m is part of our cutting edge strategy to corner the market on ultra-thin 1m hats.

    • Actually wearing a hat with a 1 meter radius would be pretty cumbersome. You won't fit through most doorways, unless it folds it wouldn't fit into most vehicles, and you'd be forever running into things with it both inside and outside. Easier to go with a 1 meter diameter hat and to tell everyone to keep a hats' width between your hat in the nearest hat.

  • Who Cares? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by sexconker ( 1179573 )

    All this is doing is showing parents how stupid and pointless public schooling is.

    They're basically baby sitting their kids and feeding them indoctrinating drivel. Now that parents have to engage in that they're going to realize:

    1: The school administration is incompetent, giving their kids mindless busy work and propaganda, and is more concerned with attendance (as it drives funding) than learning;

    2: The teachers, even the "good" ones who care, can't handle corralling 3 dozen brats, let alone teaching t

  • Another reason to look to NZ (Score:3)

    by AK Marc ( 707885 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2020 @06:28PM (#60005872)
    I keep hearing about NZ being an example for how to do a lockdown (early and well followed).

    But NZ schools also were open under 100% lockdown. The building was closed, but the classes were open. Anyone who could get online, got an online class, and those who couldn't got a version of the work on paper. No shutdown of schools for lockdown (though they moved up the fall break by 2 weeks, to buy time for a plan, but with no loss of days for the year). Every school has a minimum of 100 Mbps fiber.

    The US spends millions making up expensive rules for public schools to follow, then doesn't fund the compliance, and blames the schools for poor classroom performance, when classroom funding is falling, and administrative expenses, driven by Republican regulations, are driving up costs.

    A country with no Republicans or Democrats has effective schools and flexible schools, and better outcomes for less money.

  • Live online training is actually really hard. From not having the proper training to use the many pieces of software, to not having the appropriate equipment. In addition, most software sucks for live learning learning.
    I have been watching my mom attempt to teach gymnastics conditioning to her competitive gymnasts of all ages from 6-16 years old, and I have had her try different web conferencing platforms. Watching her struggle, in addition to my own work experience with different setups. I think the lar

  • As a web developer turned high school teacher... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by whatdoibelieve ( 1622097 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2020 @07:59PM (#60006138)
    I started out working as a web developer working on several LMS (learning management systems) and a lot of regular projects over the years. I decided I didn't like the direction that high school math was going (based on my own kids experiences) so I decided to change careers and become a teacher. This was my first year teaching and I do agree, the way we are currently doing it cannot be maintained. But there were systemic mistakes that were made that could be addressed in future years.

    1) We don't have good contact info on our students. We went on Spring Break expecting to return the following week. When school was canceled, we were left scrambling to contact all of our students. I quickly realized that I don't have ANY of my student's phone numbers. I went through the parent contact lists calling my students (all 155 of them) and found that many were old or bad number that were no longer in service. This would have been a LOT easier, if I had valid contact info on all my students.

    2) Not all my students have internet access at home. We are a rural community and about 10-15% of my students don't have strong enough internet to stream video of any quality that would be useful for school. We have to provide written packets of notes, assignments, quizzes and tests to those students. Since this wasn't planned, it was a bit of a scramble to put everything into packets with additional notes that would cover what they would normally receive during lecture in class.

    3) Not all my students have laptops. They didn't sign-up for distance learning. When my older kids chose to do distance learning starting two years ago, we agree when we signed up to provide laptops, phones, quality internet, etc. My current students didn't sign up for this. We can't expect them to buy laptops for this. We gave out ALL of the laptops from the school but there just weren't enough to go around so it was first come first serve.

    4) Some students just don't care. About 10% of my students just don't care. They barely did enough work when I saw them daily and now without any daily accountability, they are doing nothing. Their parents are doing the best they can, but they cannot keep up with everything and all of their kids classes too (nor should they have to, these are high schoolers.) I spend at least one entire day a week calling students to motivate them to do work. Some right now just don't care because they think they will pass even if they do nothing.

    5) We are testing multiple LMS providers. Again, we didn't plan on this so we didn't have online learning in place. There is a learning curve to all of these systems for both the teachers and the students. With multiple systems, the learning curve is even greater because math is using one system and foreign language is using another. I pity the students but they adapt much faster than the teachers.

    6) Most teachers don't have a tech background and are clueless on how these systems work. I have had to show several other teachers simple things how to forward their school number to their cell phones so they can take student calls from home. Also, many of the learning management systems have awful reporting. I had to write scripts to strip the grades from the system and convert them into a CSV because there is NO export feature and the report displays look pretty but are completely useless. They were designed by graphic designers, not by teachers who actually need to analyze the data... Without the scripts I could spend 2-3 days a week just trying to copy grades from the LMS to our gradebook system.

    7) We aren't allowed in the school except for 12 hours a week. And it is the same 12 hours for all the teachers... So trying to stream daily lessons from the school is difficult, but possible, however...

    8) The school isn't setup for every teacher to record and stream their classes. We just don't have enough equipment or tech help to pull it off. Again, not all teachers are tech savvy and can setup th
    • The big problem is that all the tools out there seem to have been designed to supplement classroom learning, not as a replacement. I guess there simply wasn't any demand for such a system before the Pandemic.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by DaveR ( 172684 )

      Thanks very much for this post! As an ex-teacher I've been following this issue, and this is the best summary I've seen about the challenges of K12 remote teaching.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by DaveR ( 172684 )

      whatdoibelieve: I'm a retired HS science teacher...
      During the last few years of my career I ran technology for the school.
      I'm interested in having a teacher-to-teacher exchange regarding LMS issues.
      If this interests you, my (temp) email is message4davidr [at] yahoo.com
      Best regards...

  • They already did it around here. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Around here at least a month or two ago all schools closed/ended the year.

    I don't understand why they think things are going to be better months from now. If anything it's going to be worse. Just like how you can't stop the flu or common cold. COVID-19 is here for the long haul. So are they just going to keep everything closed forever?

    I have to go to traffic court and they postponed it to June. Like anything is going to be different in June. What they need to do is make it so people can appear in court vir

  • We're not in some big, wealthy district (but certainly not a poor one), maybe 18k students near Dallas county. The district has made use of google classrooms and other online tools for several years for students to communicate with teachers at any time, get and turn in assignments and so on. It paid dividends when this began. Since most of this stuff was in place and well understood by students (K-12) and staff, adding Zoom and some other tools was relatively simple. Kids with no computer at home were g

  • It is a mess (Score:3)

    by MitchDev ( 2526834 ) on Thursday April 30, 2020 @05:36AM (#60007022)

    My daughter is in 5th grade and online learning is insane. One central side to get the assignments, then 15-20 other sites to go to, and maintain logins and passwords for (and sometimes troubleshoot).....

  • I get that in an ideal world, every kid would have the same resources for learning that every other kid has. But COVID-19 didn't introduce that problem...it's been around the whole time.

    This attitude of "not all the kids can participate, so we shouldn't do it for any of them," is the same kind of crap that took some (to be un-named here) racial equality programs far beyond their original purpose and turned them into an excuse to punish those who by no actions of their own happen to be in a more conducive s

  • Iâ(TM)m thinking an overwhelming demographic of minorities in Alabama and Texas that donâ(TM)t have the drive or intelligence to properly homeschool. Iâ(TM)m also thinking that many of the teachers are not of a quality to keep up and help their students succeed. There may also be a hundred thousand illegals in Texas that donâ(TM)t have internet which impedes the status quo.

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