Maureen Downey of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution interviewed me about my thoughts about what might happen after the nightmare pandemic that has changed our lives. Would more parents decide to homeschool their children? Would distance learning replace the school as we have known it? Would policy makers take a new view of standardized testing?

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Home Schooling, Online Learning, Privatization, Technology, Virtual Charter Schools

20 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

SomeDAM Poet says:

April 6, 2020 at 9:25 am

Alexa

Alexa, wash the dishes
Alexa , teach the kids
Alexa, feed the fishes
Alexa, close the lids
Alex, make the dinner
Alexa, clean the room
Alexa, make me thinner
Alexa, do it soon!
Alexa, dear Alexa
I really need you now!
Alexa, my Alexa
I need you now, and how!

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- ciedie aech says:
  
  April 6, 2020 at 1:05 pm
  
  Alexa, RAISE the kids….
  
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Mamie Krupczak Allegretti says:

April 6, 2020 at 9:59 am

I think people will realize the importance of subjectivity in teaching. As a teacher, I can see that students are making progress or not by participation in class and observing them in other ways. You can’t do that online. I have no idea who is doing the work.

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retired teacher says:

April 6, 2020 at 10:20 am

Teachers should not settle for “normal” after the crisis. Normal was test and punish and yielding to the demands of many wealthy interlopers. Our teachers and students deserve better. They deserve support, respect and teachers deserve fair pay for the difficult job they do.

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wgersen says:

April 6, 2020 at 10:51 am

If the pandemic leads to the end of grades it would be a blessing. When prestigious colleges replace grades with Pass/Fail it might be possible for schools to do the same, That would be a colossal game changer… grades, after all, reinforce the sorting and selecting that ultimately leads to the standardized tests that are used to “measure” learning…

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- dienne77 says:
  
  April 6, 2020 at 11:06 am
  
  Can I get an amen!
  
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- Mamie Krupczak Allegretti says:
  
  April 6, 2020 at 11:13 am
  
  Many schools are dealing with how to grade students right now (if at all). Even with pass/Fail, there would need to be some parameters as to what constitutes a pass or fail. So, that’s a whole other problem.
  
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  - wgersen says:
    
    April 6, 2020 at 11:27 am
    
    That’s a dialogue we should have
- Garrett A. Hughes says:
  
  April 6, 2020 at 12:27 pm
  
  Pass/Fail IS a grading system. Think outside the box – which is the real world. How do we evaluate the goods and services that we obtain there? They either meet a certain level of standard or they don’t. In the real world we don’t often give our providers a second chance, but school should be a learning experience. Kids need the opportunity to fail multiple times during the learning process – until they achieve mastery of the subject/skills that they are learning. The only “grade” should be a entry in their record: MASTERY: . It makes no sense whatsoever to assign a numerical or letter score or even a “FAIL” notice on a record. Two years from that date they could be teaching other kids those skills. Yet the record is permanent. We don’t accept work from our dentists that is flawed, even if they get 90% of it right; we want them to get it 100% right. We should strive to help our kids achieve that level of competence before stamping their card. BTW: the kids will sort themselves out with regard to a curriculum that meets their needs with this approach.
  
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  - wgersen says:
    
    April 6, 2020 at 1:30 pm
    
    Bingo! If we went to pass/fail, gradations would disappear and only mastery would matter.
  - speduktr says:
    
    April 6, 2020 at 8:01 pm
    
    You still have to decide what ‘mastery’ is, which can be as subjective as any other grading system. Someone has to decide what ‘skills’ are needed in order to demonstrate competency. What ‘skills’ do i need to ‘master in order to be competent in poetry? Suddenly a whole lot of education becomes nonessential unless it can be shown to be directly related to career choices.
Wait, What? says:

April 6, 2020 at 11:11 am

It will be fascinating to see…

that when the kids go back in August and take those “beginning of the year” assessments in reading and math only to find out there is no “Covid19 learning loss” (a.k.a summer learning loss)! Ha! However…
that parents demand projects, activities, authentic learning and actually NO screen time in schools

(- maybe AIR and the other economics turned educational experts develop VAM for equity, zip code, SES.*

the end of snow days. One unanticipated consequence of this is that districts won’t worry as much about “no tech access kids” for a day or two and snow days will be a thing of the past since school will have this down

*see the NYT article about how colleges work diligently to level the playing field but when students go home the inequities get in the way of online learning

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caplee68 says:

April 6, 2020 at 11:22 am

Well said. Especially about the big worthless test. However, when kids return, teachers will have no idea where their skills are. Some will gain others will regress.

One suggestion is, for reading and math, to replace the big test with a small pre-test followed at semester by a small post test. This information will be ONLY used to inform teachers and help develop a pathway to success for the students.

Other areas of study from physical education to science could develop assessments as demonstrations of learning as their pre-test. i.e. a science project.

Once teachers know where the students are, they can then move forward.

As this would be effective with a small class size, emergency money must be made available for that purpose or children will be left behind forever.

These are unique times that require a unique response. It’s time to support the agenda of children!

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- retired teacher says:
  
  April 6, 2020 at 12:29 pm
  
  What you are suggesting has merit. This is a welcome “blast from the past,” before education became a political football. Before billionaires sliced and diced curricula, this is what education was in this country. It was local educators using formative assessments to inform instruction. It was local teachers using performance measures in science, music and the fine arts and some other disciplines. It was largely local autonomy that sometimes required some state accountability that was not high stakes. This was before ideological zealots bribed their way into education, and it was before billionaires worked with politicians to undermine public schools. It was before free market true believers stacked the deck against the common good. It was when public education was valued as a democratic pubic institution.
  
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ColorFermat says:

April 6, 2020 at 12:27 pm

In early 2020 BC, before coronavirus, I interviewed education historian and public school champion Diane Ravitch

Some time-travel skills. I did not know Dr. Ravitch is more than four thousand years old.

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ColorFermat says:

April 6, 2020 at 12:59 pm

“wishing they could simply say, “Alexa, home school the children.””—This will happen sooner than many people think.

“It has made parents long to be free to return to their own work.”—Free to return to their work? The language that I would expect from a factory owner.

“[parents] don’t feel competent as teachers”—The don’t feel competent, period. They spent twelve years in school for nothing. Is it their fault or school’s fault is another question. But with so many parents gleefully agreeing with Shiri Keningsberg Levi that now their children will find out how stupid their parents are, one can venture a guess that something is wrong with the system.

“the sheer tedium of sitting in front of a screen for hours on end”—It is tedious for a boomer. Kids are so used to screens they cannot do without them. They don’t want to go outside for a walk. For better or worse, many kids prefer a screen to a live human being, or rather engage with their friends using screens. They can find new friends across the world using their screens. This is new normal.

“Students should be tested by their teachers, who know what they taught.”—And teachers should be tested to make sure they follow a prescribed curricula and are actually capable to teach what they are supposed to teach.

“a lasting effect of this terrible time will be a huge reservoir of public support for the role of public schools in their communities”—Unless, of course, people realize that they can do no worse without public schools. To stay relevant public schools would have to up their game, and maybe a real meaningful reform finally will happen, kids will learn to read in half a year, not in three years. They will study proper physics not “science”, they will study proper geography, they will study foreign language starting from elementary school and it will be mandatory, they will have musical education including reading sheet music and solfege, geometry will not be limited to one year and essays will not be limited to five paragraphs… Oh, sweet dreams.

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- dianeravitch says:
  
  April 6, 2020 at 1:38 pm
  
  This is a snotty and unworthy response to concerns that real people have.
  
  I work as a writer. Does that make me a factory laborer?
  
  This is a condescending comment. You should be embarrassed. Now I see why you don’t post your name but use an alias.
  
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LeftCoastTeacher says:

April 6, 2020 at 5:02 pm

Color Fermat cracks me up. So jaded, it actually reaches the level of comedy for me, comedy and tragedy being forever joined. BC, before coronavirus, was good. Anyway, what I came to this post to write, before getting sidetracked, was that it’s too late now, but school should have been postponed until summer instead of put online. The way things are going right now, too many students are being harmed by inequality. I just read in The NY Times about a young woman afraid she’s going to fail her classes because she doesn’t have access. Unnecessary and unhealthy stress.

We could have all taken our summer break in spring and finished the school year later. Cost: little more than air conditioning. Instead, we’re in a technocratic dystopia. I pray everything you hoped for after the shutdown, Diane, comes to fruition. I really pray that school will be teacher-led instead of tech company-led as soon as possible. Even so, I will always lament this time when the enacted techno-fantasy of putting school online has cost at least hundreds of millions, harmed so many students, and stressed us teachers out beyond measure. It shouldn’t have happened.

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- SomeDAM Poet says:
  
  April 7, 2020 at 8:32 am
  
  You are way more logical than any of the people behind the current chaos.
  
  But you can be sure the tech companies like Zoom will not take any responsibility for the disaster and that techies like Gates and their willing and shilling soldiers( superintendents) will blame it all on “poor implementation” (on teachers) the way they always do.
  
  The whole online school debacle is a perfect example of the way teachers are forced to quickly (overnight, in this case) “adapt” to the half-baked (nay, raw) schemes of techies, superintendents and other deformers and then left to pick up the pieces when the inevitable epic failure occurs.
  
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speduktr says:

April 6, 2020 at 8:54 pm

So past pandemic teachers will have larger classes and fewer resources…and just what is it that will keep teachers already on the edge in the classroom? I loved my kids when I was teaching and worked long hours and spent my own money to provide resources the kids needed. Now if I walked in the next year and they said, we’re adding more students and, oh by the way, your budget for supplies has been cut in half… didn’t we just go through a year of strikes over poor working conditions, etc.? Isn’t there already a teacher shortage?

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