America's Switch To Remote Learning For 50 Million Students Called 'A Failure' (msn.com) 149
"This spring, America took an involuntary crash course in remote learning," writes the Wall Street Journal, noting it affected 50 million students from kindergarten through 12th grade.
"With the school year now winding down, the grades from students, teachers, parents and administrators is already in: It was a failure..." The problems began piling up almost immediately... Soon many districts weren't requiring students to do any work at all, increasing the risk that millions of students would have big gaps in their learning... Preliminary research suggests students nationwide will return to school in the fall with roughly 70% of learning gains in reading relative to a typical school year, and less than 50% in math, according to projections by NWEA, an Oregon-based nonprofit that provides research to help educators tailor instruction. It expects a greater learning loss for minority and low-income children who have less access to technology, and for families more affected by the economic downturn.... About 9.7 million students aren't connected to the internet, according to an estimate by the EducationSuperHighway, a nonprofit focused on connectivity in public schools. [The national average for unconnected students is 20%] "As a nation, we were not prepared to take learning online," said founder and CEO Evan Marwell...
School districts didn't realize the number of students without access to devices and the internet until they surveyed parents. Districts that could afford to do so hurried to buy the technology needed to get students online. Some, such as those in Austin and Belleville, Illinois, put Wi-Fi wired buses in parking lots for students to connect from their parents' cars. Many districts prepared printed packets of work for students without online access, which were handed out in food drive-through lines at schools....
Remote learning has turned the simple task of taking attendance into a challenge. Many count students as present if they log in to do work in programs like Google Classroom, an online classroom manager. Some give attendance credit for weekly progress on completed work, while others allow parents to call in to vouch for their children. Some districts aren't bothering with attendance at all. Those that have been able to track attendance say it has been below regular levels. Some students have simply gone missing. Early into the shutdown, the Los Angeles Unified School District estimated that on any given day in a week span, 32% of high-school students didn't log in to learn.
"With the school year now winding down, the grades from students, teachers, parents and administrators is already in: It was a failure..." The problems began piling up almost immediately... Soon many districts weren't requiring students to do any work at all, increasing the risk that millions of students would have big gaps in their learning... Preliminary research suggests students nationwide will return to school in the fall with roughly 70% of learning gains in reading relative to a typical school year, and less than 50% in math, according to projections by NWEA, an Oregon-based nonprofit that provides research to help educators tailor instruction. It expects a greater learning loss for minority and low-income children who have less access to technology, and for families more affected by the economic downturn.... About 9.7 million students aren't connected to the internet, according to an estimate by the EducationSuperHighway, a nonprofit focused on connectivity in public schools. [The national average for unconnected students is 20%] "As a nation, we were not prepared to take learning online," said founder and CEO Evan Marwell...
School districts didn't realize the number of students without access to devices and the internet until they surveyed parents. Districts that could afford to do so hurried to buy the technology needed to get students online. Some, such as those in Austin and Belleville, Illinois, put Wi-Fi wired buses in parking lots for students to connect from their parents' cars. Many districts prepared printed packets of work for students without online access, which were handed out in food drive-through lines at schools....
Remote learning has turned the simple task of taking attendance into a challenge. Many count students as present if they log in to do work in programs like Google Classroom, an online classroom manager. Some give attendance credit for weekly progress on completed work, while others allow parents to call in to vouch for their children. Some districts aren't bothering with attendance at all. Those that have been able to track attendance say it has been below regular levels. Some students have simply gone missing. Early into the shutdown, the Los Angeles Unified School District estimated that on any given day in a week span, 32% of high-school students didn't log in to learn.
Low tech teachers (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Low tech teachers (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, that's the problem. The issue isn't that remote learning can't work, it's that without the software, training, skills, and curriculum oriented towards it it wont work.
I mean, realistically, who could expect it to be anything but a failure when half the teachers are expected to provide physical handouts and have no idea of how to deliver the same content digitally?
It would be a shame if this reflected negatively on the technology when the real issue is simply that it was a change that happened without appropriate planning and prep. The exact same would be true in reverse of course if digital was the norm and there was a sudden need to switch to physical with no planning and prep.
It's just the nature of changing an entire system overnight, it's just hard to make that work, especially when there's little blowback if you don't even try and make it work in public sector.
Private sector was more successful because it was a case of make it work, or lose your job so the incentive was there to put in the extra effort to make the transition.
Re:Low tech teachers (Score:4)
The thing is, it probably *is* a bad idea. It may be necessary short-term, but expecting anything from it is probably a mistake.
There may possibly be ways for remote learning to be successful in the upper grades, but even there I'm dubious. People are social animals, and when you cut out the social aspect, they lose interest.
Also, I won't read a long article on line. I read books all the time, but on-line things need to be short and focused, or I lose interest. One can argue about why this might be so, but that it *is* so is unquestionable, and that many others have the same reaction has been verified many times. There have also been numerous studies showing that less information is retained when reading the same text from an e-book than from a regular book. There are arguments about why this is true, but they don't change the results.
That there are things that can be done on-line that can't be done any other way is also true, but they aren't the same things.
Re:Low tech teachers (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me add my anecdote:
My kids' teachers had no problem at all adapting to e-learning. The tech had a few glitches the first week but mostly worked fine.
With less time spent commuting to school and socializing at school, my kids learned more. If it was an option, I would like to keep them on e-learning permanently for at least a few days per week.
One big mistake the schools made was that when they made participation optional, they let the students decide, rather than having the parents decide.
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One big mistake the schools made was that when they made participation optional, they let the students decide, rather than having the parents decide.
Most of the parents were at home as well. If they cared, they probably provided significant "influence" into the decision.
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Most of the parents were at home as well. If they cared, they probably provided significant "influence" into the decision.
The students should have never been told "None of your work for the rest of the semester counts for anything."
Sure, the parents can make them do the work, but the students know it doesn't matter.
Instead, it should have up to the parents to either accept the grade in the class at the beginning of lockdown or have their kids continue to work and learn, and have that work count.
I understand the reason for making school work optional. They didn't want to penalize students who had no broadband, no computer, o
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That's a bit different. That's the schools making a choice, not the students or the parents.
Take any reasonable group of adults and tell them "work for the next two months or don't, either way you won't be paid" and you'll get a decision closely resembling the students.
Of course, more learning can and should be it's own reward, but as a society we do a poor job getting kids to understand that. Some work it out one their own, some never do. Bue even many adults looking back have said of various parts of thei
Why Educational Technology Has Failed Schools (Score:2)
By me from 2007: http://patapata.sourceforge.ne... [sourceforge.net]
"Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case" based on someone else's demand. Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand", for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools to make use of t
Re:Low tech teachers (Score:5, Informative)
Kids in remote parts of Australia have been learning over radio for decades now, K-12. Before that, they learned by mail.
As for social, kids have used their smart phones as a portal to socialize for a few years now. So much so that we have people hand wringing about their apparent dis-interest in face to face socialization (I suspect it's more that there isn't anywhere to hang out anymore).
It can work. The problem really is that parents, teachers, and students had this sprung upon them overnight and nobody knew how to make it work. In many cases the equipment wasn't there. Some families had no internet at home. Others had one family PC and two kids and a parent who all needed it at the same time for school and work. That applies to the teachers as well. Many teachers who are comfortable enough with a chalkboard, overhead projector, and mimeograph sheets (AKA dittos) you can create with a pen simply didn't know how to use electronic tools to do the same thing. (And, of course, the etiquette. If the teacher sends a handout to your tablet, should you smell it to indicate receipt? :-)
Re: Low tech teachers (Score:3)
Here's an idea. Schools import school materials from other countries where it works, such as Australia.
Re:Low tech teachers (Score:4, Funny)
Also, I won't read a long article on line.
I understand. I couldn't even make it halfway through that paragraph.
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It's pretty unfair to just automatically blame the teachers when something like this fails, the problem is that there's really no good substitute for getting kids into classrooms with direct instruction from a human being. We've spent at least twenty years discovering that adding laptops and tablets to a classroom at best makes no difference, at worst makes things much worse, so why would removing the teacher entirely do anything other than make things even worse? Simply throwing tech at a problem with de
Re:Low tech teachers (Score:5, Insightful)
My best friend is a math teacher, tech savvy, and has run a digital (in-person) classroom for nearly a decade, and in an area that is generally affluent. He considers his classes an abject failure; putting the course material online took him a day or two for the rest of the semester, but trying to motivate the students to do anything was impossible, and the role fell on parents. Parents failed there... understandably as most still had full time jobs to attend to.
This isn’t a problem of content, it is about keeping kids’ attention and inspiring them to learn. Some of the digital tools reduce teacher workload, but they are not geared towards addressing these challenges.
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This post reinforces the GP, despite being off topic to that thread. Nicely done!
Re:Low tech teachers (Score:5, Insightful)
And sadly, for too many parents, school is a merely a convenient babysitting service for their offspring.
To be fair, there are many parents who can barely afford the time cost to support their children when traditional school is in session. Having the entire workload laid at their feet, quite suddenly, probably presented an insurmountable task for many wage earners.
Re:Low tech teachers (Score:4, Informative)
And sadly, for too many parents, school is a merely a convenient babysitting service for their offspring.
I'm not sure why you needed to add the word "merely" to that sentence. School offering a convenient babysitting service was a prerequisite to nearly all gains in gender equality we have made as a society. If things ever got so bad that kids needed to be home schooled forever (hypothetically) then the US would go right back to the 50's within weeks. My wife makes a good six figure income as a supply chain manager, but since I make nearly twice what she does she would probably quit her job and be a stay at home parent / teacher. She almost did that when they were in daycare, but since we knew it was only for about six years it made sense for her to keep her career going even though we only netted about $10k per year for most of the time both were in daycare (she wasn't making her current salary that whole time).
We could afford to hire a full time teacher for just our two children, but since it wouldn't be tax deductible it would probably not be worth it to her to work any more. Then again, if things ever got that bad who knows if tax laws would change to have home care become a deductible work expense. In that case, upper middle class families would just start hiring teachers and wealth inequality would just keep getting worse.
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How about equal pay for equal work? Wouldn't it be even more important [than a convenient babysitting service]?
Equal pay for equal work would barely register as an issue if almost all households with kids returned to being single income homes. Then it would come down to which parent would be staying home with the kids. Since men cannot be pregnant, cannot breastfeed, and in our culture take on less child rearing and housekeeping duties, this duty would fall on women far more often than men.
I'm not sure why your personal circumstances are relevant here, but if you meant that as a demonstration of the general principle then either you assumed that most women are incapable to do jobs that men do or that women have to be payed less for doing the same job. Either proposition sounds very misogynistic.
While comparing men and women in the same job, the wage gap almost disappears. But when comparing the average woman to the avera
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Heh heh right...or perhaps more accurately, "de poor peoples".
Scenario #3 (Score:3)
School's out for summer
School's out forever
--Alice Cooper (theist)
Yes, I'm bored.
Re:Scenario #3 (Score:5, Insightful)
--Roger Waters
I think the world will manage to go on. Looking back on it, a lot of the early education I had was just regurgitating facts written in the text books. I was fortunate enough to have parents who were glad to feed my curiosity and desires to learn things for myself even if they weren't what was a part of the school's curriculum. Maybe I take a shallow view of it because it wasn't until later that I had a few teachers who were more interested in teaching me how to think, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people have to learn that on their own.
Don't let schooling interfere with your education
--Mark Twain
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Jesus, Jesus, what's it all about?
Trying to clout these little ingrates into shape
When I was their age all the lights went out
There was no time to whine or mope about
And even now part of me flies over
Dresden at angels one five
Though they'll never fathom it behind my
Sarcasm desperate memories lie
+1 for Waters and Pink Floyd.
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Here come the pressure groups--he's tryin' again.
Teacher, teacher, you know you're alone;
Your boss won't save your skin, he's saving his own;
Nor will the parents help, but only condemn--
They want their children taught to be just like them!
Here come the bureaucrat with fifty more rules
To tie your hands and take more bread from the schools,
Here comes the preacher trying hard to get in,
He wants all children taught his pet brand of sin.
Here comes the government with plenty to say;
It wants your children taught t
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Looking back on it, a lot of the early education I had was just regurgitating facts written in the text books
On the upside you learnt some facts.
Yes our education is not ideal for bolstering the creative desires of our young minds, but early education fundamentally fills the need to produce humans that are capable of counting beyond 10 when they run out of fingers. It was boring, it was mind numbing, but it has it's place. As kids we use our creativity to learn, but at times it's best to read a fact from a book that the stove is hot rather scream as our parents rub burn cream over our hands. It's easy to criticise
wasn't that bad (Score:3)
My kids were made to do the homework, listen to lectures and and take tests. I'm thinking some teachers in some districts were lazy and didn't put the effort into remote teaching. Remote classes have been a part of university and college learning for decades.
Re:wasn't that bad (Score:5, Insightful)
I would imagine that a good part of that is parents taking actual responsibility for the children as well. In your case, it seems you passed the test of being a good parent.
Unlike many people.
Which is honestly one of the main reasons to have a universal school system in the first place. It's not so much for educating children who have good parents who would find a way to make their kids learn regardless, but those that aren't interested or responsible enough to provide this for their children.
And arguably many of the problems with modern schools from the fact that they are having more and more such children, for whom school is the only "parenting" there is.
Teaching is harder than you think (Score:2)
There's a reason people go to school for years to be teachers and it's not to go drinking.
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The drinking is a hard-to-avoid side-effect of the teaching.
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I'll get off your lawn.
Re:wasn't that bad (Score:4, Insightful)
I would imagine that a good part of that is parents taking actual responsibility for the children as well. In your case, it seems you passed the test of being a good parent.
Or more likely he had the advantage of kids who were on the older side, didn't suffer from any challenges like ADHD, had one or more parents who didn't have a demanding work schedule during the day, or plenty of other advantages that not all parents share. I have a wide range of employees with various family challenges, and only around a quarter of them were significantly struggling with their kids. The rest had a spouse who didn't work, were currently furloughed or otherwise out of work, had a low responsibility position where they could "slack off" a bit at work to help the kids, had high school aged kids who could be more disciplined or no kids at all.
I had to hire our babysitter to come to our house four hours a day for our Kindergartner to get any e-learning accomplished. She has what is likely ADHD (too early to diagnose for sure) and has had a very hard time focusing outside of a standard classroom setting. I certainly resent any implication that parents who struggled with e-learning were bad parents. In many / most cases they simply had a harder set of circumstances than those who had it easier.
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She has what is likely ADHD
Could be "Youthful Tendency Disorder". My son had a bad case when he was K-2.
https://www.theonion.com/more-... [theonion.com]
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I sure hope that is all my daughter is "suffering" from. The primary reason educators prefer not to diagnose ADHD until the ages of 7-9 is that ADHD symptoms in younger children are barely different than basic traits of being a young child. The difference between a 5/6 year old who happens to mature later than his/her peers is quite drastic. In my daughter's case she is one of the youngest in her class, and her and her youngest sister inherited genes from two very headstrong parents.
Luckily behavioral thera
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Overwhelming majority of "ADHD" is bad parenting that is enabled by medical companies selling drugs that disrupt natural behavioural impulses, and effectively cripple a child, because that child will never learn how to control their impulses.
You can resent this all you want. Your child will almost certainly resent you a whole lot more than that as an adult if you drug her up to make it easy for you though. And your child will likely thank you for not getting her drugged up for being a normal child, and actu
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Overwhelming majority of "ADHD" is bad parenting that is enabled by medical companies selling drugs that disrupt natural behavioural impulses, and effectively cripple a child, because that child will never learn how to control their impulses.
While I agree false diagnosis of ADHD is common, one thing far more common is laypeople being confident they are experts on the topic. Nearly every mainstream medical, psychological, and educational organization in the United States long ago concluded that Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a real, brain-based medical disorder. [adhdawarenessmonth.org] I assure you I will do everything in my power to treat my daughter without medication, as my parents did for me when my teachers pushed for me to be medicated. I am t
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>While I agree false diagnosis of ADHD is common, one thing far more common is laypeople being confident they are experts on the topic. Nearly every mainstream medical, psychological, and educational organization in the United States long ago concluded that Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a real, brain-based medical disorder.
A friendly reminder: these are the same institutions/institutional roles that recommended opiates for "babies who fail to fall asleep" in late 1800s and cocaine in
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Ultimate role of these "medical science advancements" hasn't changed. "How to offer parents easy parenting in form of a purchasable pill/oral mixture/nasal spray". Back in the day it was opium derivatives and coca leaf derivatives. Today it's amphetamines.
It may just be socio-economic advantages which make my situation so much different, but the therapists and teachers I have dealt with on this matter have not pushed medication at all. They have also aggressively denied providing any diagnosis prematurely. But in my case everyone knows parents in my district have the resources to pay for behavioral therapy classes and extra tutoring for kids with behavioral issues which impact their schoolwork. Perhaps if they felt my wife and I had no time or money to help
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ADHD was invented by drug companies to sell drugs.
The first diagnosis of ADHD predated the first medication (Benzedrine sulfate) by about 35 years, although it started out being named a "hyperkinetic disease." Ritalin came in 20 years later. Even though your post isn't factually accurate, I would agree the 80's and 90's saw a spike in diagnosis and then medication for ADHD which was largely fueled by drug companies and teachers who wanted kids to sit still (my teachers told my parents I was a disruption to the rest of the class).
Re: wasn't that bad (Score:2)
I assume you didn't have a young child at home. I have been on a large number of Zoom calls for our oldest child's Kindergarten class and almost none of the kids were very attentive unless they were playing a game. Unless it was show and share or something, most talking from the kids needed to be coaxed from a parent throughout each call.
Our year end standardized tests showed almost no progress in the entire 2020 semester class wide. We are in an affluent area so they have set up a number of summer programs
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Thank god the kids have gone back.
The online learning was trash, basically babysitting with an iPad and zero social interaction.
For the weeks I had my son I ended up having to burn annual leave so I could spend the time ignoring the "curriculum" and to teach him properly little things like phonics, reading, writing and arithmetic (with game / puzzle based learning), so in the end he came out ahead.
For the
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distance learning itself is not a failure, just it (Score:5, Informative)
I think there are two questions here. The first is whether or not distance learning is feasible at all and the second is if the public school system was able to do it effectively.
The answer to the second question is almost certainly ânoâ(TM). My local school district - despite itâ(TM)s A and A+ rated schools - needed 6 weeks to even prepare to start distance learning and during that time the kids basically had nothing to do. After learning started it was comically limited, with most of my neighbors kids saying they did no more that a few hours a week per week ( class + homework ) per subject. Compounding the problem, none of the schools in the state plan to make up the 6 weeks of absence which means the kids in those schools are all going to have lost 2 months of learning at a minimum and realistically as much as 4 months. If there is a plan to help the kids bridge this gap, no one has heard of it. Affluent parents are getting private tutors so their kids cover the subject matter, but what will happen to those kids whose parents canâ(TM)t afford that?
The answer to the first question is arguably âyesâ(TM). My daughters private school prepared both staff and students for distance learning even before the lockdown. Once the lockdown was announced they seamlessly transitioned to full time distance learning ( with the exception of some classes like PE and art which became significantly more flexible ). In some sense distance learning was arguably more effective - presumably because there was less distractions - and in several subjects my daughters grades actually went up.
I certainly hope as we head into the fall there is much better planning because there is a good chance more distance learning is going to be required ( or at least partial distance learning ).
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The answer to the second question is almost certainly ânoâ(TM). My local school district - despite itâ(TM)s A and A+ rated schools - needed 6 weeks to even prepare to start distance learning and during that time the kids basically had nothing to do.
If they're as crippled as you are by your Apple hardware I can understand why.
That was only half sarcasm. Apple's efforts in education have been unusually bad for the past decade. All flash, no substance.
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The good news is, most every school district has now been exposed to the possibility that remote teaching/learning is a thing they may have to implement. Prior to the pandemic, this was likely not even a consideration for most districts.
The 1st time corollary: If nothing else is true, the second, fourth, and seventh time you do something, you are markedly more adept at the skill.
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Of course, the demographic for a private school is different, starting with every kid there comes from a family that could afford it (even if just barely), so a much greater chance of having a good internet connection, decent home computer, and even a greater chance of a parent working from home.
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That's partly true, but one of our children attended a private high school. Many of the students were there on scholarships, which were funded by the tuition of students whose parents could afford it. I knew one of the children had a single working mother with a high school education, and the scholarship paid virtually all his tuition.
I have no idea how common this kind of private school is, but it should probably be more common.
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True enough, but scholarships aren't generally given out by a lottery, they tend to select for more talented or harder working students and more concerned parents.
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The answer to the second question is almost certainly ânoâ(TM)....I certainly hope as we head into the fall there is much better planning...
I don't know how the fuck you got modded insightful. Of course there was no planning! Of course it went badly.
When you get hit with a disaster that you haven't planned for, budgeted for, or trained for and have to improvise on the fly, just surviving is being successful.
The fall won't be much better. You're asking people to learn lessons from a 3 month emergency scramble and reimplement it better with no additional funds or training 2-3 months later. Worse, this is inherently a task in herding children, whi
There's a metric they forgot. (Score:2)
How many kids are suffering from test anxiety that makes them vomit and petty head games from both peers and authorities?
Zoom style meetings don't work (Score:3)
I can tell you from observing my own kids that classroom sized meetings on Zoom or whatever are boring as hell for the kids and painful to sit through. Lucky for my kids my wife was home to play teacher, but it was genuinely hard to get them to do the work. My kids sure were not going to do the work on their own. Hard to substitute the classroom environment at home - especially with kids in different grades doing different things.
Re: Zoom style meetings don't work (Score:2)
I am not sure I agree with that, both my daughters ( elementary and middle school ) did zoom style classes and both girls were pretty engaged. Admittedly these are private schools so no more that 16 per class.
The middle schooler did find the optional âsocialâ(TM) meetings âa total waste of timeâ(TM) ( in her words ) but she didnâ(TM)t complain about about any of the classes except PE which she thought didnâ(TM)t need any meetings since they had her submit apple watch data for t
I was a K12 computer science teacher (Score:4, Interesting)
Nobody was prepared for it (Score:3)
Re: Nobody was prepared for it (Score:3)
This. I'm also in MA and have had the same experience. I'm on the fence about whether distance learning could eventually work, but teachers and school districts were just not ready for the sudden switch this time around. The problems were amplified by the fact that there was ambiguity about when, or even if, the schools would reopen this year. So temporary, thrown-together plans for remote learning eventually turned into permanent plans. Some school districts did a better job than others.
My wife teaches
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I'm not sure it would cost more on an ongoing basis, except that the sudden need for distance learning meant that the schools had to bear the costs of distance learning on top of the sunk costs for maintaining the now empty classrooms.
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That still allows most of the HVAC to be shut down most of the time, and a considerable consolidation of space. Not a lot of labs in elementary and middle school. Also cuts down on janitorial services. Since the teachers would be working from home as well, the bandwidth will be fairly well distributed.
I don't know how it's handled everywhere, but when I was going to elementary school, PE took place in an adjoining public recreation facility (run by parks and recreation, not the school system).
Re: I was a K12 computer science teacher (Score:2)
Yeah, right.
Distance learning fails on many fronts. Not least that it doesnâ(TM)t work.
Google being the primary reason why. Why think when you can Google the answers?
The second is most homes do not have high speed internet and computers to go with it.
The third is, most online courses are pathetic. Online pedagogy is lamentable.
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Kids were once educated up to the 8th grade with practically nothing in one-room school houses. I know it's trite, but it's also true. Funding may be part of it, but it's the universal hammer for all problems in education. We already spend scads of money on education while performance remains flat.
If you want to improve education for all children, you have to accept that 1. not all kids are the same blank-slate, some are smart and some are dumb and a lot are just average, and 2. there is no program, trick,
Whoever got paid to study this got paid too much (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Schools mandate switching from in-person classes to distance learning over the course of a weekend.
2. School IT departments spent their weekend trying to figure out how to help teachers utilize whatever tools were on hand and/or could be obtained on short notice to facilitate distance learning.
3. Teachers, who got very little warning and very little technical training, have to figure out how to use the poorly-documented tools in conjunction with lesson plans intended for classroom use.
4. Students, a spectrum with one end representing those who could be sent home with textbooks and tests and self-teach with Youtube videos and some e-mail correspondence, the other end representing those who are straight up disruptive and actively undermine not only their own education but that of others, and all points in between, now have to figure out whatever technical solution was cobbled together to do their assignments, and then, y'know...do them.
5. Two months later, some bureaucrat is shocked - SHOCKED - that such a system had different results to a standard classroom format.
I want this person's job. That person assuredly got paid more than I do to state the bleeding obvious. I'm sure the prior successes listed on their resume include stating who was buried in Grant's tomb and reassuring people that the Pope is, in fact, Catholic.
Now, if schools want to have distance learning that *doesn't* suck, we'll have to design the curriculum around it. It won't be easy, but complaining that a brand new car doesn't drive very well underwater is going to ring just a bit hollow to anyone with a brain stem. In-person teaching methods simply won't work well if teachers are expected to do in-person teaching over the internet.
Re:Whoever got paid to study this got paid too muc (Score:5, Insightful)
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Oh fuck off you fucking blowhard.
There was zero reason for schools to plan for a disruption like this. There were zero budgets to plan for it. It's not even possible to plan for, because the home life for many students can't support distance learning.
Sure, you can plan for the rich kids with attentive parents and an internet connection, but how do you plan for the rest? And you can't just not, because our whole educational system is built on the theory that everyone gets an equal educational opportunity.
If
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1. Schools mandate switching from in-person classes to distance learning over the course of a weekend.
This! So much this! We got *NO* notice. For us Friday afternoon the Rutte government announced schools would stay open. Sunday afternoon the Rutte government announced no schools on Monday everyone should work from home.
We spent the Sunday madly trying to get technology setup at home. Monday the school held an emergency all hands meeting with staff. Tuesday we were setup, and our setup slowly evolved over the following week. It was a clusterfuck due to no warning and lack of preparation.
We managed, but we'r
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Several things.. (Score:2)
As others have said, a big part of the issue was that the school system had to switch over in a ridiculously short period of time. This isn't necessarily a bad thing -- the longer a change takes, the larger bureaucracy tends to grow. But in this case, the time was way too short to be reasonably effective.
Homeschoolers, and home school consortiums and co-ops have been doing this (online learning) pretty much forever. But with the historical animosity between the school system and homeschoolers, I suspect
So Fucking What? (Score:2)
I work in a massive public education system and I can't be bothered to care about peoples' grading of our FORCED EXPERIMENT into MASS remote learning as a failure. The schools weren't prepared for it nor had they the reason nor resources to be prepared for it. Same with the students. Same with the parents of the students.
It's a fucked up situation. Everyone knows it. Self-aggrandizing by arm-chair quarterbacking how the under-funded, under-valued, and frequently under-attack public school system performed i
Re:So Fucking What? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are unable to accept critical feedback about educating the future of our planet you should resign, immediately. Hell, if you are unable to accept critical feedback in a publicly-funded position you should resign.
Somehow this "no-accountability" attitude has pervaded 75% of civil service jobs. I'm willing to put up with it at the DMV because (let's face it) people are jerks and the DMV employees have to deal with every single one of them. But if you can't get your act together to make things *better* for our kids, get out. (There may be a job opening at the DMV for you.)
Yes, you already knew it was going to suck. Instead of whining about it on Slashdot, man up and make things better for next time. No, you aren't going to get the money or resources you want. Be creative.
No remote learning but CRISIS learning (Score:5, Informative)
Let's be clear, this was not a planned switched.
This was in most cases 1-3 days notice for teachers to shift to remote learning.
No training, no tools, just figure it out and best of luck.
Where I live teachers scrambled, especially at the lower elementary level to figure out how to navigate this.
Again, this was a crisis and there was no plan other than to close the schools and figure it out.
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Re:No remote learning but CRISIS learning (Score:5, Informative)
To top it off, we didn't have good contact information on all of our students. So getting a hold of the students required either many phone attempts and for some we literally had to drive to their homes. Considering I had 154 students, contacting all of them took a LOT of time
Not all of our students had consistent internet and some students were forced to stay in other towns because they had divorced parents and one parent was better suited to have the child home. Children with 504 plans and special accommodations were also tough to incorporate into distance learning. I ended up creating individualized packets for those students.
We were also told throughout the process that it was temporary and we would be returning back to class next week, in two weeks, next month, and then finally not at all. Throw in all the "Teachers aren't doing any work and shouldn't be paid" arguments that were being discussed by the school board and it made for a really stressful Spring semester.
Knowing what I know now, I am spending the summer creating an integrated education plan that includes all material available in class, online, and translated via Google Translate for ELL students. My plan for next semester also includes an upgraded student contact sheet that they will complete online while in class so that I can maintain correct contact info. Education is changing, and hopefully for the better.
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You make me really, really happy I left teaching a decade or so ago. God that sounds like it sucks. I left because I didn't get paid enough, and god, you should all be getting hazard pay at this point.
Knowing what I know now, I am spending the summer creating an integrated education plan that includes all material available in class, online, and translated via Google Translate for ELL students.
And you should get double hazard pay for that effort.
Thanks for doing what you do. I continue to advocate for teachers to get better pay, and this is exactly why.
Re:No remote learning but CRISIS learning (Score:4, Interesting)
There were only 1-3 days notice because too few people were paying attention to what was coming. Most people were waiting for someone else to tell them what to do and the people in charge everywhere utterly failed to do any planning.
We offered to help my kids' teachers make photocopies of worksheets and stuff so the classes would have something to do if school closed. They declined, acting like we were crazy to think schools could possibly ever close. This was after some schools in the area had already closed temporarily due to kids having been exposed to the virus at home. Some businesses in the area, including my own, had already started shifting to work from home, and schools and businesses in other parts of the country were already closed. But somehow it was inconceivable that the virus would come to our town?
Our school closed a few days later for a day so they could do a deep clean, then a day turned into a few weeks, then a few more weeks, then for the rest of the school year statewide. We had to wait over a week for anything from the school for the kids to do at home. We had to wait weeks for anything remotely structured. Even now, we only get an hour or two of work per day. The work is only review and all optional, due to equal access concerns. Thankfully, we have lots of teachers in my family who helped get us more resources and lessons for our kids.
At work, I asked my boss if we could have a team meeting to plan for working from home. Would we keep the same priorities? Would we all keep the same hours? How would we replace the hallway interactions that sometimes resulted in breakthroughs? How would we maintain our social relationships that helped us be a productive team?
He was genuinely surprised that I was concerned about the virus. This was after a major outbreak in our city. This was after our offices in other parts of the country were already working from home. This was after our offices in China had been closed for well over a month.
We never met. All offices closed a few days later and we won't go back to the office regularly until next year at the earliest. We had no plan to work together while apart. It's fine now, but we could have planned ahead and not wasted the first few weeks.
Saying this was a surprise lets leadership at many levels in many organizations off the hook for their total failure to plan. Teachers, principals, and superintendents failed to see what happened in the next town over and think, "What if that happened here?" The state failed to look at neighboring states. The country failed to look at the rest of the world.
All of us were let down by so many people. We have very few leaders. We should never forget that.
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It gets even worse. Due to federal laws IDEA and IEPs (Individual Education Plans) for special ed students, teachers were told only to do enrichment, meaning no new content. If they couldn't teach all students they couldn't teach any student was the message from leaders.
Betsy DeVoss could have relaxed this Federal Requirement due to the crisis but chose not to do so hamstringing scools. [expressnews.com]
Even after the closures teachers wanted to ramp up but were told "you have to wait" until we get guidance from the Feder
Give it time (Score:3)
I believe my son's teacher struggled to make the move, she probably spent so much effort figured out what to do in the classroom, the sudden change was just too much. Other teachers in my son's grade were far more involved.
I don't fault the teacher, the school, or the district. It was a crappy situation to be placed in suddenly. Next year will be the true test, are they prepared if the kids cannot return to a normal school schedule?
3 months of wasted time, but consider (Score:2)
3 months where students had to be parented for their problems by their parents.
3 months with the responsibility to do something without peer pressure either to do something or not to do something.
3 months with no fear from other students.
3 months with social workers making visits to troubled homes.
3 months where public school is lined up statistically with home school.
Summer reading program (Score:2)
Preliminary research suggests students nationwide will return to school in the fall with roughly 70% of learning gains in reading relative to a typical school year...
Remember when your local library would have a summer reading program? Some of them even had a small prize. (The kid who won it always had some physically impossibly high count of books 'cause his parents were liars.) Time to do it again.
Reading is the one thing we can solve without even trying. If you have any sort of screen at all, you can read a book from your local library's online checkout system. And out from under the tyranny of a school English class, you can actually select good books. Schools
Went through it at my school... (Score:5, Interesting)
And I wouldn't call it a failure, at least in Minnesota. I'd call it a "Well, that didn't go well, but how can we do it better?"
First, let's address the primary challenges right off the bat:
#1) No state or district (that is not already an online school) was prepared for this.
#2) Most teachers were not comfortable or fluent with the digital instruction they were expected to provide.
#3) A varying number of students had poor-quality or no internet access at home.
#4) Human beings by nature are social creatures. Distance learning is not conducive to that.
Second, let's also identify where distance learning did fail:
#1) Digital instruction works best when students work at their own pace, but teachers taught it at a group-pace.
#2) Because instruction was paced, and because a large number of students didn't participate, the pace was set very low to maximize participation.
#3) Many parents didn't supervise, guide, or facilitate student instruction.
#4) There was a strong negative correlation between student performance and socio-economic status at our school. The performance gap grew.
Finally, if distance learning is going to succeed (in America), then we need to make the following changes:
#1) Make the internet a damn utility already, and provide it to 100% of families. Watching buses go out with wi-fi reminds me of pictures of water trucks in Haiti after the earthquake in 2012. Damn Republicans should start here if they want to make this country great again.
#2) Every state should have a teacher-led-and-developed curriculum developed and managed within their department of education, with materials provided to every school in the state aligned with that curriculum. (Our last day at our school had our teachers doing "curriculum alignment maps", where they need to provide documentation showing how their instructional materials fit into our state curriculum. While it gives districts individual choice on what materials to use for instructions, every teacher in every district wastes their time reinventing the wheel.)
#3) Teach teachers how to teach digitally. My summer tech intern told me that the smoothest course he had during distance learning was senior English, because the teacher was already using Schoology the first day of school. He said the only thing that changed for distance learning: "Less talking."
#4) Create content material accessible by all teachers in the state that already has lessons structured into TED-like talks that students watch independently. Rather than require teachers to both create materials AND guide instruction, just give them all the time they have to guide instruction. In short: flip the classroom [washington.edu].
#5) Restructure the class to let students complete work at their own pace, and get rewarded for a credit when the material is complete.
That being said, none of these recommendations will solve the biggest challenge of all: families who do not support learning at home. Which is why I personally feel that, for the good of our country, we really, really need to have school resume onsite in the fall. If we don't, literacy rates will go down, and incarceration rates will go up. [wordpress.com]
Jobs of the future (Score:5, Interesting)
Not true. It was successful in training them for the job of the future. That is, living off universal basic income and playing video games or finding ways to entertain yourself all day.
Loss of Student, er Money, Next School Year (Score:2)
This terrifies the Academic Industry!
When a high school student, I was told by teachers that the USA Federal Government pays the County School System $$$ for each student in attendance for that day. 180 school days (in my county) equals lots of potential payments for each student in attendance. They said that's why the school wants you to attend -- to get the Federal $$$. Truancy laws and officers are here to keep the $$$ flo
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> ey said that's why the school wants you to attend -- to get the Federal $$
The last time I had any occasion to look, that was true of all their funding at district and state level as well. Federal funding typically covers only about 8% of the cost of a public school. It is by no means the determining factor, so let's not cast this in federal t4erms.
> If students leave for homeschooling or private schooling, the County School Systems stand to lose a lot of $$$.
Quite so. They will lose city and state
Failure? Says WHO? (Score:2)
Who determines whether it's a failure or not? The professional educator class, who will lose their jobs if homeschooling and distance learning is proved successful.
it was okay (Score:2)
One school required school hours which wasn't great, the other said just do the work. My kid is passing PE virtually which is downright weird.
The insurmountable problem is, from middle school on, at least half the reason to go to school is a building full of of captive peers every day. The problem I saw with homeschooling a middle school boy for a year was "no girls to start learning to navigate". His arithmetic took off but he sure missed having knucklehead friends. And even I don't want to hang out with m
I predict no discernable difference (Score:4)
The kids that will do the best, onsite or remote, are the ones whose parents invest their time and energy into seeing that their kids excel at school. They attend the parent-teach conferences and ask pointed questions about their child's performance and also probe the teacher's methods and attitudes. They always check the homework (but not do it). If they sense the teacher is not competent then they'll take appropriate action, which could be changing classes, changing schools, hiring tutors or sending their kids to private schools.
I taught science and math at the high school level for ten years during the seventies and loved every minute of it. And, nine out of ten kids planned to go to college back then. My problem was that I could not afford to stay in education because the salary was too low. I had the highest degree and the second highest paid teacher and my take-home was $750/mo.
I started my own computer consulting business and ran that for 15 years. I decided to dip my toe into teach again and did a year substitute teaching around the city and county. I was stunned by how things changed. In the mid nineties nine out of ten kids were not going on to college and few of them didn't even plan to go to a votech school. Also, the lack of control of problem students was a serious problem. I was 6' 6" and weighed 240 pounds so I had no problem handling belligerent students without using force, but female and effeminate males teachers were often humiliated in their classroom and couldn't control the kids.
Back then, typically, half of all new teachers each year found out that they didn't like teaching or were not good at it, and resigned. The next year half of those who stayed resigned, etc., for a few years. IOW, the kids weeded out teachers very quickly, especially those who were inconsistent in their discipline or did not know or couldn't effectively teach their subject matter. The latter problem is serious because schools were allowed 27% "dislocations" -- teachers allowed to teach subjects outside the areas their degree were in. This is why we had coaches who knew nothing about teaching math and science trying to teach it. They were nothing more than glorified and expensive baby sitters and kids who wanted a good science base for the future college work were harmed the most.
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But it was so well planned! (Score:2)
9-12 teacher here (Score:3)
Here are some of my observations from the trenches (currently I teach in an urban private school, I have taught in the suburbs, and my kids attend a suburban public district):
1) Most teachers are perfectly fine using the technology. Before this happened, we were all using learning management systems along the lines of what universities use. So communication of assignments / grades / etc. was not a problem. Zoom raised some issues because of the "meeting crashers" but once we all turned on the waiting room feature (and once Zoom stopped using 32-bit integers as meeting IDs) that went away. Many of us had even recorded videos and done basic editing because we've occasionally done "flipped classroom" instruction, where the students watch the lecture at home and then work on the problem sets in class (I teach math and CS). A lot of teachers took educational technology like document cameras (or in my case, a Surface with pen) home so that they could have something equivalent to a whiteboard.
2) Special education students are probably the biggest victims of this situation. We did not have enough time to figure out how to address their needs. I know that in my own school, there's a lot of professional development going on this summer to talk about what we can do better if this happens again.
3) Assessment was a big issue. Take home assessments do not work well at the high school level. They barely work at the college level. I took a graduate course in mathematics last fall and the professor gave take home exams. She was reaming us out because people were posting problems on places like Chegg. We did not have enough time to figure out a good way of assessment. If we do this again in the fall, it's likely to be a blended model (meaning we would have some in-person days). Most of us plan on doing assessments only when we have the kids in the room with us.
4) Students' situations were all over the place. My own kids were high performing before, and were still high performing. Some students improved because they had more time to do their school work; other students were emotionally wounded by the whole scenario. Some students stopped doing work because they thought they could get away with it. I have some high performing advisees who choked at the beginning and then pulled themselves together after a few weeks (with their parents' help). Some kids were given too much work, but more were not given enough. My son was not getting enough work, so my wife and I supplemented with extra writing assignments and math contest problems. By the way, I recommend Noetic Learning for math contest problems if your kid is entering grade 7 or below. There's a fee, but the problems are well written.
5) This was hard on everyone: students, parents, and teachers. We learned a lot. Like just about every problem in American education, it usually comes down to societal issues -- segregation, poverty, parental educational backgrounds, access to internet connectivity. I'm taking a graduate seminar in computing this summer and this week we're talking about attempts to improve broadband access through satellite constellations and 5G. Rural counties in particular suffered here.
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The urban school district sent my step-daughter home with a 12" laptop and the "accessibility" on it was to use ZoomText and her TVI put high contrast yellow and black stickers over the let
The approach is wrong (Score:2)
Yeah, we went through it with our kids. It sucked.
The approach is wrong. They attempted to recreate the classroom experience online, because that's what they know how to do. But that doesn't work , because duh, you aren't in the classroom.
There are effective online learning tools though, like (for foreign languages, for example) Duolingo and Memrise. They aren't anything like traditional classroom learning, but they work because they actually are designed for the medium they are in; they don't just do the
And who's watch were the kids on? (Score:2)
The fucking parents. Granted my son's school work was pretty much optional as far as the school itself was concerned, we got him to do it. We even learned the "new way" of doing math to help him with it. We read books and worked on projects all in the name of school work. It sucked for us, the parents, since we had to learn how to do this on the fly and ultimately we had a much higher respect for his teachers than we did before.
Don't blame the system so much. We do that enough when they're actually sit
Teachers aren't able to Create Curricula (Score:2)
The main problem with how things were done with my kids is that the teachers each had to come up with a plan for teaching the kids themselves. Teachers can design lesson plans based on and over-arching set of objectives that need to be met, but they are really not qualified to design a complete online course that meets all of the goals of education.
What the kids ended up with was a hodge podge of busy work with no coherent goals.
They weren't being taught how to do most anything.
They were given assignments w
Not the same as real class (Score:3, Interesting)
My job didn't cancel, so I am doing what work I can remotely and at the office.
Our children are all at home, rampaging through the house like Uruk-hai on crack. They have their own Zoom meetings throughout the day. Some are Webex, some are Zoom, some are Google Meet, some are a couple other platforms. Some of the invitations come through facebook, some through Gmail, some via text message, through class dojo, etc - so just finding the right invite for the right kid is a challenge, not to mention making sure the devices have all the apps needed. None of the kids are old enough yet to login by themselves (usually manually typing in meeting ID and password). After the first week, none of them wanted to sit through another Zoom meeting more than they wanted to do *anything* else - this means having to separate them all far enough apart that they can hear, and at the same time checking on all of them to make sure they are still in their classes. Our record was five different Zoom meetings at one time. This means five different devices. Yes, we can do that we have devices and bandwidth to spare - but many families can not.
And then there are all the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks that tech is heir to" - this app now needs to update for five minutes. Somehow this app has lost permission to use the webcam. Chrome can't use the webcam because Zoom did not release it correctly. Now the mic works and the video is dead. Hey, rebooting solved the issue, now we have to login in to the email (or was it facebook) again to get the link to the class meeting. Oops, now the ipad is dead because it ran the battery out and it wasn't plugged in right. Suddenly a classmate vanishes or there is 26-way feedback or someone's image breaks apart and tears due to compression. Someone just walked past a camera in the background or there is a puppy barking and the attention of the entire class pivots. A classroom provides a relatively distraction-free environment; 25 kids simultaneous bedrooms/living rooms does not.
I have a CS degree, a EE degree, 25+ years field tech experience, and my tech troubleshooting skills are very current. The first couple weeks was heck for *me* getting everything setup and running reasonably well. I am working, my wife is working - and so we have to make the choices between doing our jobs (food and shelter are nice) or helping the kids attend their classes. Doing our jobs won, so the children got very little out of the whole experience.
The last day of class my daughter's class had a "bring your bear to Zoom" day. She said hi to her friends, put her bear in front of the camera, and then ghosted. We didn't catch her until her class was over. Par for the course.
Results will vary greatly (Score:2)
I have a kid in elementary school, and another who just finished preschool. The elementary is in a well-ranked public district. At first they just declared school closed for a week, then when it became more obvious they wouldn't be able to come back after a couple weeks, they started shifting things online.
The teacher began by emailing a bunch of attachments for us to print out every school day. Great except that our printer is 7 years old, and the only thing we still have that can talk to it is an 11-ye
Parent of a 5th grader (Score:2)
Our district tried and did pretty good, but the site they used was a pain in the ass to use, there were links to other sites for lessons and activities. You had to maintain or generate accounts on several sites . It was a pain
A Learning Opportunity (Score:2)
At Home: The need to have quality Internet access. I can see this being a school "requirement" in the future.
At School: The need to have all lesson plans available virtually. Days where schools would be closed due to snow, high temps, flooded school, etc, will simply become Teach-At-Home days.
Government Level: The Internet should be considered a critical utility like power & water. Require ISPs to provide reasonable Internet access nationwid
Priorities (Score:2)
How many percent of an aircraft carrier would it cost to solve the problem of giving all pupils a proper education and the technological means for this?
What about internationally (Score:2)
Open question: did any international /. readers have similar experiences (or better/worse) as in the US? Anyone live in a place where the remote learning went smoothly?
News flash: Kids are no different from adults (Score:2)
Online learning and large amounts of Zoom / Microsoft Teams / what-have-you is sub-optimal for the majority of adults. Why do we think it would somehow work for most kids? (Yes, yes, Slashdot readers are all the abnormal on the spectrum savants who have been brilliantly learning and working from home their entire careers with absolutely no hiccups or downside. Y'all are the outliers and good for you here's your gold star etc. Please save me your bullshit personal anecdotes).
Why Do We Accept These Lame Excuses? (Score:2)
Schools really shot themselves in the foot as it's apparent most teachers are tech incompetent and parents can't provide basic services such as broadband internet and a basic computer.
There's really no excuse for either. It's 20 fucking 20 and computers are dirt fucking cheap.
Not having a internet is akin to not having electricity. Yet we let people get away with it.
Honestly, these kids had a lot more going against their learning than this pandemic.
It wasn't planned, so what did anyone expect? (Score:2)
This was not a planned shift to online learning, so schools and teachers had perhaps a week or two to do what they could. Most teachers and administrators are pretty clueless with technology for this unless already using it or trained, and in how to create and run an online course effectively. Of course it's a failure by any reasonable standards of what we'd want to have happen.
Agreed - it doesn't work for most people (Score:2)
I've got a first grader and third grader. The third grader can be at least a little bit independent and I can get him to do his work mostly on his own...the first grader is another story. She hates the online work, the pace drives her crazy and she's been used to her teacher working a bit ahead with her on math and reading. Unfortunately, I think most early grades are going to find that this is basically a wasted period in terms of material coverage.
Educational software has always stunk and continues to do