Nancy Bailey wisely explains the lesson of the current emergency and boils it down to this fact:
Online learning can never replace human teachers and support staff.
Parents who are staying home with their children have taken to Twitter to express their admiration for teachers. “How do teachers do this all day with 30 children,” they wonder.
Be sure to open her post and check out the links as well as the stuff I did not include here.
Bailey worries that the Ed-tech industry is zooming in to search for profits.
“While Covid-19 is of utmost concern, parents and educators, who’ve worried about the replacement of brick-and-mortar schools and teachers with anytime, anyplace, online instruction, wonder what this pandemic will mean to public education long term. Will this disaster be used to end public schools, replacing instruction with online competency-based learning?
”We’re reminded of disaster capitalism, a concept highlighted by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, how Katrina was used in New Orleans to convert traditional public schools to charter schools. Within nineteen months, with most of the city’s poor residents still in exile, New Orleans’ public school system had been almost completely replaced by privately run charter schools. (p. 5-6). Who thought that could happen?
”The transitioning of technology into public schools, not simply as a supplemental tool for teachers to use at their discretion, but as a transformative means to remove teachers from the equation, has been highlighted with groups like Digital Promise and KnowledgeWorks. Both promote online learning and it’s difficult to find teachers in the mix.
”Combining this with the intentional defunding of public schools, shoddy treatment of teachers including the unwillingness to pay them appropriate salaries, inadequate resources and support staff, crumbling buildings, and the destruction of public schooling in America, should we not question what placing students online at this strange time will mean in the future to our schools?
The pandemic has demonstrated the importance of brick-and-mortar public schools, she writes.
“In “Coronavirus Has Shown Us the Vital Role Schools Play, But Will America Listen?” Glenda Cohen outlines how parents and the nation need public schools for survival. I have added some additional services and citations.
“Public schools are on the frontline fighting against childhood hunger. According to a CNBC report: Each day, the National School Lunch Program serves over 30 million children. The fact that many children will go hungry without their public school should give us pause.
“Students rely on school counseling. Students rely on school counselors for support.
“Parents need childcare so they can work. Working parents need schools to take care of their children so they can work. When schools close, parents are unable to do their jobs. This has a negative effect on the overall economy.
“Schools provide homeless children with stability. As Cohen points out, many homeless children rely on public schools. U.S. News and World Report claims 1.36 million students in the 2016-17 school year were homeless.
“Students with disabilities need accommodations and services. Most guidelines indicate that during the Covid-19 crisis, students with disabilities must have access to the same services as students without disabilities, but this leaves out accommodations that address the differences. Here are questions and answers from the Department of Education. How will students with autism, ADHD, and many other disabilities get the services they need?
“Shortcomings of Online Instruction
“Many children don’t have access to Broadband. Nearly 12 million children, many living in rural settings, lack access to an Internet connections. While ed-tech enthusiasts will claim it’s a matter of time before everyone has Broadband, looking for funding to do so indicates it will take time for this to occur.
“What happens with student privacy and information? Parents already worry about their child’s online personal identifiable information when they work online at school. How is a student’s online information protected when they work online at home during a public heath crisis? Here’s information about Covid-19 and FERPA.
“Socialization is missing. Speaking to someone on a screen is better than nothing, but it’s still isolating.
“Students work online alone. Many students need guidance and might not be able to focus on screens.
Children enjoy social gatherings that schools provide. The Covid-19 virus has left students agonizing over the field trips and school social events that they will miss, that cannot take place online.
How good is the instruction? There’s no research to show that working only online is better than teacher instruction.
“Parents have to supervise their children. Usually parents have to monitor their student’s work and make sure they stay on task.
“Teachers Are Loved and Respected.
“A college student whose classes were cancelled and switched to online stated they would miss their teacher who had provided extra help and whose class everyone enjoyed.
“Teachers have been the unsung heroes during this Covid-19 crisis. They have struggled the last few weeks to take care of their students, cleaning and disinfecting their classes due to an overwhelmed custodial staff, along with keeping students calm, comforting confused children and teens.
Now they struggle to go online to provide lessons from home. As blogger Nancy Flanagan notes in “Once Again Teachers are First Responders:”
“Keeping a functional learning community together is job #1. Meaning: every child, K-12, who is out of school involuntarily, knows for sure that the adults who have been his/her teachers, playground supervisors or joke-around buddies in the hallway, still care. Staying connected and checking in matter much more than reviewing fractions or watching a dissection video.
“Online learning can never adequately replace public schools and teachers. In such a desperate time, closing public schools due to this pandemic is showing Americans how reliant we are upon those schools to fulfill, not just an educational purpose, but the real social and emotional needs of children and families.
“We’re left with stark revelations about this country’s shortcomings, while at the same time we witness the heroism of teachers and staff who care for all children at this dark time. It is that caring and love that have always been the hallmark of what teaching and public schools have been all about. It is and will continue to be what saves public education and the teaching profession.
“This crisis will not throw students into a future of nothing but online learning. It will instead remind parents and students of how much their public schools and teachers mean to them.
“Or, as American television producer, television and film writer, and author @shondarhimes lamented on Twitter: been homeschooling a 6-year old and 8-year old for one hour and 11 minutes. Teachers deserve to make a billion dollars a year. Or a week.
“We must have hope for the future, hope for our democracy, and the great and enduring role of teachers and brick-and-mortar schools, which are temporarily closed.”
I think the bigger threat to public school students is the upcoming recession. I’m afraid they’re going to gut public school funding FIRST as the economy tanks, like they did in the 2009 crash.
For some kids who it will be the second time in their school career that their schools were gutted.
so many 2008 and years after IOUs written to our state’s public education budget never paid back, even in years when the state’s economy was said to be booming
“Secretary Betsy DeVos
Mar 16
We all have an important role to play in slowing the spread of #coronavirus and keeping our nation’s students, parents and teachers safe. Please review the new guidelines released today by
@realDonaldTrump
and share them with your family and friends”
It’s just amazing to watch how utterly useless the Trump Administration is- I mean, many of us knew they weren’t qualified for these positions and we noticed over the years they get very little work done and seem to spend most of their time on television promoting a far Right worldview, but even I wouldn’t have predicted this complete collapse.
They do nothing. They seem to think they’re pundits. They watch the disaster unfold and comment on it. DeVos could literally be replaced by an intern who makes occasional posts to social media. It’s all she does.
Nancy hits another home run, calling our attention to not only the problem, but to possibilities of political miscreants who use this for their own gain, confusing their own good with the good of society.
Agree, RT.
Nancy Bailey nails it.
Been worrying about this too, but didn’t want to say this out loud.
Capitalism doesn’t mean that everything, which floats to the top is good. Think: SCUM floats on top.
The scale at which on-line learning will be taking place will expose its severe limitations in every respect, especially regarding millions of kids without internet access. The self discipline required will require amazing parental support once again leaving the neediest behind. Edu-meddlers who think that their software is a silver bullet will be extremely disappointed. They have little clue regarding the intangible benefits of physically attending school.
Opportunists abound in the midst of a crisis, and this one will be no different. As Nancy Bailey points out, schools do so much more than educate. They provide social and emotional attachments for young people. In some cases schools provide social supports for families as well.
I believe this crisis will reveal the inadequacy of technology. While the tech moguls claim that computers can replace teachers, there is no evidence to support this assertion. Students can learn from computers, but their impact is limited. Computers can teach students discrete, sequential content, but they do not work well for the social sciences or the arts. On-line instruction seems to work the best with motivated middle class students, but it is less successful with the poor and very young.
Computers may give students a window to the world, but they prohibit whole participation in it. Technology is isolating. Most students learn better in a social setting which allows students to develop meaningful relationships with others. Even in academics, student engagement promotes social-emotional connections along with content. Nobody knows the impact of on-line instruction on developing brains and eyes. Of course, there are also the privacy concerns as well.
This article from the NYT demonstrates the limited capabilities of on-line instruction. As it points out, it does not work well for poor students or credit recovery programs. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/business/online-courses-are-harming-the-students-who-need-the-most-help.html
Amazing how good people fall for it. A couple of days ago, a colleague with whom I worked briefly decades ago but respect immensely liked a LinkedIn story on Gates taking on more foundation duties. I never comment on these, but I was the only negative response reminding him how Gates (non)education funding has damaged a constituency he cares about deeply.
I fear short term less testing/more computers in classroom trade off will be a Pyrrhic Victory for the ages. And while I will vote for Biden because he looks like nominee, if I were a public education single issue voter, I’m not sure much will change on that one issue regardless. It’ll just be more benign under Biden for people who don’t read this blog…more infuriating for those who do. I hope I’m wrong.
STILL SCARY: ”
It’ll just be more benign under Biden for people who don’t read this blog…more infuriating for those who do.”
I hope you are wrong, too.
https://tutucker.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/computerized-reading-programs/?fbclid=IwAR3na-nA4X1b7L_qyk1uZrphZ-qlNWQlgR-qU7hiTkktr4EOH4HywOE8EUI
I posted on this already on a similar post.
the necessity for a warm body to lead the classroom
but will add this tidbit.
If in ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
With Trump in the white House,
it looks like Armageddon has already arrived.
Money more important than people?
Machines completely taking the place of people?
When someone finally has that bag of gold
in the middle of the desert, the desert which
the only planet we have has become, Hope
he/she enjoys that bag of gold..
Goliath still lives. It would be better to delay education than to pretend it’s happening online. There is no education worse than fake education. Telling students they can adequately learn in isolation is like telling them that they can get adequate nutrition by eating tree bark. It will cause more harm than good. All they same people who have been pushing big data and tech in the classroom are now pushing online distance learning. How convenient. It’s not learning. It’s disaster profiteering. Shame on them. Online school is fake school, and no school is better than fake school.
Last sentence edit: …it’s better to delay schooling than to give fake schooling.
Parents and kids will not be clamoring for home schooling. They can’t wait to get back to real school!
My school district is run by a non-educator superintendent from investment banking. The mayor and the governor certainly don’t understand how education works. Absent real leadership, the leadership of people who have experience teaching with and without online gimmicks, we are swimming in a sea of confusion right now. I don’t know what to do. I could use the terrible Common Core based StudySync app, which would cause my students and parents to clamor for it to stop. It’s a frustrating, meaningless app. Or should I avoid the app, and try to create something online? If I do that, what could I possibly create that would suffice? Very little. What if I do nothing and wait for guidance? Is that the right or the wrong thing to do? I don’t know.
This crisis doesn’t expose any problems with public schools, but it does lay bare some of the many problems caused by wealthy, outsider investors meddling in school board and all other elections. From Washington D.C. to Los Angeles, we need strong, smart leadership. Instead we have salesmen.
I only know one thing. Whatever I do, I intend to somehow be not part of the problem, but part of the Resistance.
Hi, everyone.
Just wanted to share that Montana’s Office of Public Instruction is joining the ranks of those requesting a waiver from federal testing requirements:
https://helenair.com/news/state-and-regional/opi-seeking-waiver-for-all-school-testing/article_31c5e168-308e-58f9-983e-6bb980490bfc.html#utm_source=helenair.com&utm_campaign=%2Fnewsletter-templates%2Fnews-alert&utm_medium=PostUp&utm_content=af4f5cbc702d90b62b9eb8ed1ca3deaf8bc5f3f1
Where is Mr. Rogers when we need him?
PBS is doing some incredible work at the national PBS level and also in some areas I have checked out. The partnership with LAUSD is impressive.
In St. Louis, the local PBS station is as well. I remember watching the local pbs in school in the ’50s televising science shows! And, of course the local show where the host read stories to kids.
Today the local station their focus is on the thousands of families who do NOT have internet. Real tv and cell phones are their access to and from the media. The local station has dozens of phone aps for to access educational sites and programming beyond what we see routinely (which is all good stuff). Their “tool kit” for teachers and now for family access is wonderful
And, they are considering the suggestion to have real teachers introduce programs and read to kids – sort of a live pledge drive interruption only with teachers smiling in the camera welcoming kids.
I expect a lot of communities around the country are using their local access stations for programs, reading with children, science experiments, and more. If not – – they should be!
And, the best part is …. IT’S PUBLIC TV! Privatizers be warned! It’s PUBLIC TV. Donate and underwrite all you won’t but no profits!
There’s concern about PBS, online learning, and getting teachers to embrace it.
https://www.pbs.org/education/digitalinnovators
How much of it is reflective of Common Core?
https://pando.com/2014/06/05/revealed-gates-foundation-financed-pbs-education-programming-which-promoted-microsofts-interests/
Aside from Arthur and Clifford, I’d say their programming is not nearly as good as it used to be. Most of it seems digitally generated and involves canned instruction. Compare that to the older programs like Reading Rainbow, Wishbone, etc. that did not talk down to children. As you point out, where’s Mr. Rogers when you need him?
I wouldn’t tell teachers not to use it, just to wonder about whether there’s an ultimate goal there to replace them.
I’m reading this as I listen to my 15 yr old son throw a hissy fit upstairs. We moved him to private HS where they don’t sit kids in front of computers all day even though each child has a laptop. His school went “online” yesterday due to the pandemic and he is NOT having a very good time of it. I keep hearing “THIS IS STUPID!!!!”, “THIS SUCKS!!!!”, “THIS IS JUST BS BUSY WORK!!!”. The foot stomping and slamming will hopefully end shortly…..I’m expecting the cursing to ramp. This didn’t work well for him (or his classmates) when he went to public school. I know his private school is trying their best to keep the kids “learning and engaged”, but without the teachers that he has relationships with, this isn’t going to go well. RedInk and Khan Academy are not his friends right now!
I’m glad you posted this, Diane. It’s been very much on my mind.
Ed Tech will use this situation to gain a stronger foothold into public education. We need to be vigilant about this. While I think they can play an important role, it must be re-iterated:
Technology is an excellent and important TOOL for the teachers and schools, in many different applications. It is NOT, however, anywhere near to a replacement for those teachers and schools.