Jeff Bryant reports here that too many school districts failed to prepare teachers how to teach remotely, leaving them to improvise.
He begins:
Michael Barbour, a professor at Touro University California and an expert on K-12 online learning, believes that more than half of the nation’s school superintendents “should be fired.”
Improving remote learning would have meant creating spaces for teachers to collaborate and share models of effective online instruction and lesson planning.
His blistering criticism stems from the fact that, deep into the 2020-2021 school year, many schools are still struggling with virtual learning during the pandemic.
Stories of school districts’ online learning systems crashing are widespread. Teachers complain about not being included in decisions about online curriculum and pedagogy. Alarming numbers of students are not engaged or not showing up, especially in low-income areas and among communities of color.
The chaos is especially concerning given that 76% of parents say their children are attending school remotely, either full time or part time, according to a recent nationwide survey. Moreover, a majority of parents, 54%, think that improving online learning is more important than figuring out how to reopen schools for in-person instruction.
“Any school leader who didn’t reach out to teachers to ask what had worked well and what didn’t, and then use that [to prepare for the fall reopening], committed a dereliction of duty,” Barbour tells me, recalling the moment when schools closed suddenly in spring 2020. “After all, we knew this was a pandemic… not a one-time thing.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
One of my initial goals was to create a systemwide infrastructure to provide high quality PD and uniformed recommendations for our virtual learning in our public schools. Unfortunately, my state chose a pro-voucher privatizer for State Chief.
Jen,
I am so disappointed that you did not win.
North Carolina’s public’s schools are in for major defunding.
So sad.
Jen, I was super bummed out that you lost and shocked that our popular governor Roy Cooper had zero coattails. Didn’t voters understand that Cooper, in order to get anything positive done, needs supportive Democrats around him in Raleigh?
Interesting comments. Personally I do not know even IF there is an answer, at least a workable one at present. Teaching problems were HUGE to begin with and now?
Home communication is horrendous, parents calling children away from the teaching;
More than one child in the room trying to listen and communicate with 2 different teachers et al, , because of this my daughter is willing to face the consequences of in in class learning even though she is fully aware of the danger. It is just because she cares about the kids and feels she is just spinning her wheels, no real progress is possible, an impossible situation with remote learning. I am scared to death but understand her feelings.
Education is a LOT more than 2 + 2 = 4 as is so tragically shown by the era of Trump, ignorance, bigotry, me first and to H… with everyone else, ad nauseum and the sheep who follow him.
Human interaction is essential,, the human touch, caring for others etc, things about which real education is about.
The sheep who follow Trump have no idea of the crisis he is creating and have such a myopic view of reality.
I do not know the answer but my fears are great. Sometimes no good solution is available. Once a suicide occurs, and I feel that that is what has happened to our country, or if not completed, is well on its way to happening, it is way too late to change that history. Our country can never be the same after George W and Trump. If Biden wins, and this morning it looks better for him, the problems he faces with the exploding virus, our divided country, climate crisis situation, at my cynical old age my concerns are huge.
The “dump it in teachers’ laps and let them figure it out for themselves” philosophy is nothing new. That is precisely the approach that was taken with Common Core.
The big winners are the tech and software companies who are pushing their wares to teachers and the superintendents, tech specialists, and “teacher ambassadors” who can earn perks for the use of those products by teachers, and often parents as well.
Thanks Diane.
All that middle and upper management not earning their 52 week checks if you ask me. This could have been a summer of some real initiative and leadership at those levels. Catch the leaves before they fall instead of just sending us out with blowers. Most importantly, re-purposing lots of management jobs to do what teachers do. A lot of this work would be about choosing the “lesser of mandates” though. The big public districts really don’t have much wriggle room with personnel when jobs are connected to mandates.
When we were being trained (virtually) before school,started this year, I felt like the subject of one of Senator Claghorn’s tirades. “Boy I’m throw’in it at you but you’re not catching it.”
It would help if they at least gave you a glove to catch the 90 mph curve balls.
What’s your issue?
You keep droppin’
Hand’s a tissue
Ball’s a bobblin’
Learn to catch
The stuff I throw
Just dispatch
Or simply go
It could be worse. All but one district in Utah is fully open, and schools are having to close down to quarantine like crazy. Meanwhile, all school sports are allowed to continue, even for schools that are shut down.