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Boston Globe: Parents Are Frustrated by Trying to School Their Children at Home

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2020 //
36

The Boston Globe interviewed parents and discovered a groundswell of exhaustion and frustration caused by the closure of schools and their new roles at home. I don’t think these parents will want more of the same when school reopens. The kids and their parents will be thrilled to see their teachers and classmates again when that happy day arrives.

It was music class that finally drove Melissa Mawn over the edge.

She was already dutifully arranging her quarantine workdays around the expectations of her three children’s math, English, and science teachers, surrendering her work station to their Zoom meetings.

Now, the music teacher was proposing a “fun activity” and Mawn’s thoughts immediately turned to the recorder — the piercing woodwind instrument that her twin 10-year-old boys are learning to play this year.

“I mean, we’re stuck here in the house, and I cannot have recorder class for an hour,” said Mawn, who is working full time from the Wilmington home she shares with her three children, her husband, and her in-laws.

“We have to live here and, like, not kill each other,” said Mawn, “and the recorder is definitely going to knock one of us over the edge.”

Mark the fourth week of school closures as the moment when parents began to crack. The state’s experiment in home schooling may have been interesting for a week or two, but as social media rants reveal, many parents are now fed up. Managing their children and their anxieties amid a global pandemic, and working from home if they still have jobs, some parents have begun resisting the deluge of demands coming from their children’s teachers.

“It’s just overwhelming. Everybody’s overwhelmed,” said Mawn, who aired her frustrations last week on a Facebook page for Wilmington residents.

“I understand a love for the arts but in a state of emergency, I can’t teach music and gym,” she wrote. “My children can play outside, in their own backyard or ride their own bikes in our driveway. That will have to count for gym.”

Around the same time, Sarah Parcak, a renowned archeologist from Maine, was drafting a lengthy, expletive-filled Twitter thread reiterating what she’d already told her son’s teacher: First grade was officially over for the year.

“We cannot cope with this insanity,” Parcak wrote. “Survival and protecting his well being come first.”

The parent rebellion is not at all fun for teachers, who have found themselves in a no-win situation since schools were closed in mid-March. First, they were hounded by some hard-charging parents who expected more daily structure and an immediate and effortless switch to online instruction. Teachers had to quickly develop new coursework and ways of presenting it, and jet into families’ living rooms via video conferencing, where their every move would be scrutinized.

Now, with teachers more regularly holding classes online, parents are pushing back, saying the expectations are unmanageable — particularly for younger children who can’t handle the technology on their own and need a parent by their side.

One mother reported that her Dorchester nursery school is offering twice-a-day Zoom meetings for her toddler and preschooler — a gesture that she appreciates but that she considers more trouble than it’s worth.

The first time they participated, she said, “it was like a nightmare.” The 4-year-old did not understand: “Why can’t they hear me? Why can’t I talk?” she said. When the girl did get time to speak, she grew shy and clammed up.

“And five minutes later she wants to do it and the Zoom call is over and then she’s hysterical,” the woman said.

One irony is that many parents have been schooled to limit young children’s screen times; now they’re being steered to it by preschool teachers.

It feels like some weird science fiction story, said the Dorchester mother

The story them goes on to quote one parent at length, who happens to be the leader of the Walton-funded Massachusetts Parents Union. she is not exactly typical because the MPU pays her a salary of $172,500 to advocate for charter schools and against teachers’ unions. Professor Maurice Cunningham, a specialist in dark money who is featured in SLAYING GOLIATH, has the story and the tax returns here.

Categories Boston, Education Reform, Parents, Students, Technology

An End to Schooling as We Know It? To Grocery Stores? To Concerts? To Live Plays? To Dances? To Offices?

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2020 //
19

A wise reader, who is anonymous, posted this comment a few days ago. I thought it was wise because we hear so many Disrupters cheering about “the end of schooling as we know it” when the reality is that most parents and students can’t wait for real school to start again. You don’t hear those same voices saying that no one will ever work in an office again; no one will every go to a concert or a play; no one will ever go to a physical store. They clearly have an agenda, and their predictions are their wishes, but they fly in the face of reality. Life goes on. It is never the same after an earth-shattering event such as a pandemic. But many things will not change. Who knows? Schools may even change for the better as parents show their gratitude to teachers and their public schools, and as the backlash against distance learning grows stronger, based on experience.

He or she wrote:

No one is calling for the end of grocery stores for Instacart, restaurants for takeout, church buildings for live streaming, physical stores for their online versions, theatre/sports/concerts for streaming, conventions for talking heads on video, clubs for solo dance parties on Zoom, renting office space for work at home, theme parks for Virtual Reality machines, etc. in the advent of COVID-19. But, so many think that this is a “great opportunity” to shift students away from school buildings.

“But education is broken.” Talk to people in any other industry, and they’ll tell you about the broken parts of those too. But they aren’t using COVID as a means to COMPLETELY change it. Yes, there will be a permanent uptick in grocery delivery, online shopping, a day or two a week to work from home, and videoconferencing as some people fall in love with the platforms and get used to them. There may even be a parent in a two-parent household where one was laid off, and they figured out that they could live on one income by getting rid of one of their car payments and so they decide to do virtual school.

BUT, society will be itching to get back into going to concerts, stores, conventions, theme parks, airplanes, sitting inside of restaurants, church, to the office, and SCHOOL!

Categories Disruption, Education Reform, Online Education, Technology

Nancy Bailey: Stop the Talk about “Reinventing” and “Reimagining” Schools After the Pandemic Unless You Are a Parent or Teacher

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2020 //
44

Nancy Bailey has grown disgusted with the talk of “reinventing” and “reimagining” the school when the talk is coming from the same people who have wrecked the schools with their uninformed and harmful ideas for the past 20 years.

If there is going to be any “reinvention,” it should be done by parents and teachers at their own schools, she says.

Those who have failed us in the past should not be allowed to take control yet again, she says.

She writes:

Teachers and parents on the frontlines of this pandemic should be given control of how their schools are reimagined in the future. When this crisis ends, they should be given the voice on how to bring back democratic public schools and make them their own. Any revolution surrounding schools is theirs.

Those who foisted unproven and draconian school reform on America’s public schools in the past, now attack those reforms like they’re the fault of teachers and school systems. If public schools are broken it’s largely due to what these so-called reformers did to schools. They’re criticizing the mess they created!

Who…

insisted on high-stakes standardized tests?
pushed a no-play, no-recess curriculum on our youngest learners?
denied children with disabilities the services they need?
wrote and insisted on Common Core State Standards?
insisted on one-size-fits-all goals and instruction?
drove parents to distrust teachers?
ignored the mental health needs of children in our schools?
destroyed student privacy, especially online privacy protections?
reduced or removed the number of school nurses, counselors, and support staff in schools?
fired the librarians and closed libraries?
removed the arts from poor public schools?
set up EMO charter schools that drain funds from true public schools?
gave vouchers to schools unaccountable to the public?
praised and funded alternate teachers with fast-track training?
insisted on large class sizes?
said teachers don’t need to improve their knowledge with advanced degrees?
insisted teachers need to be evaluated by tests, using test scores of students they never taught!
opened the door to administrators who never studied or worked with children?
Trying to justify replacing schools with charter schools and online instruction will make for a nice profit.

Since their reforms failed, they and their ideas should be put out to pasture.

Bailey goes on to cite numerous examples of self-appointed “leaders” offering advice about what other people should do.

These are the people she wants to “put out to pasture.”

Read it.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Play, Testing

Washington Post: Trump’s Claims About WHO Were Wrong

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2020 //
30

Trump froze funding to the World Health Organization on grounds that it had not given forewarning about the virus but had parroted the Chinese government line that it was contained. Dr. Birx dutifully parroted the Trump line.

The Washington Post disagreed in an editorial.

More than a dozen U.S. researchers, physicians and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were working full time at the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to the Trump administration, according to U.S. and international officials.

A number of CDC staffers are regularly detailed to work at WHO in Geneva as part of a rotation that has operated for years. Senior Trump-appointed health officials also consulted regularly at the highest levels with the WHO as the crisis unfolded, the officials said.
The presence of so many U.S. officials undercuts President Trump’s charge that the WHO’s failure to communicate the extent of the threat, born of a desire to protect China, is largely responsible for the rapid spread of the virus in the United States.

The administration has also sharply criticized the Chinese government for withholding information.

But the president, who often touts a personal relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping and is reluctant to inflict damage on a trade deal with Beijing, appears to see the WHO as a more defenseless target.

Asked early Sunday about the presence of CDC and other officials at the WHO, and whether it was “fair to blame the WHO for covering up the spread of this virus,” Deborah Birx, the State Department expert who is part of the White House pandemic team, gently shifted the onus to China, and the need to “over-communicate.”
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“It’s always the first country that get exposed to the pandemic that has a — really a higher moral obligation on communicating, on transparency, because all the other countries around the world are making decisions on that,” Birx told ABC’s This Week. “And when we get through this as a global community, we can figure out really what has to happen for first alerts and transparency and understanding very early on about … how incredibly contagious this virus is.”

Categories Education Reform, Health, International, Lies, Trump

Leonie Haimson: Why is NYC Spending Millions on Idle Buses?

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2020 //
14

Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters asks why the NYC Department of Education is spending millions for school buses that are useless while planning to cut the budget of the schools by $827 million?

She writes:

If DOE suspended our busing contracts now, the DOE would save $700 million through the end of the year – even after paying for the two weeks in March when they were used. This would prevent the need for most of the cuts planned for next year, including most importantly the entire $100 million planned for school budgets.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Reform, New York City

San Francisco School Board Decides to Give All Students an A

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2020 //
70

The San Francisco school board resolved the question of how to grade students for a school year cut short by giving everyone an A.

The city’s school board settled on the idea during a meeting Tuesday, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The grades will be given to every middle school and high school student. Elementary schoolers don’t receive letter grades.

“Why not just give students As,” school board member Alison Collins told the Chronicle. “Let’s just consider this a wash and just give all students As.”

“This is an unprecedented situation,” another board member, Rachel Norton, told the Mercury News. “To continue to have grades as an accountability system doesn’t really seem to meet this moment very well.”

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, San Francisco

Tim Wu: How America Outsourced Its Ability to Fight Pandemic

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2020 //
16

Tim Wu is a law professor at Columbia University. He ran for Lt. Governor in New York on a progressive ticket with Zephyr Teachout.

On April 24, 2012, the Federal Trade Commission, the nation’s principal gatekeeper for health care mergers, published an innocuous-seeming notice granting a request for “early termination” of its review of a $108 million health care acquisition. Newport Medical Instruments, a small developer of cheap, portable ventilators, was being acquired by Covidien, a much larger American company headquartered in Ireland for tax purposes. Covidien makes, among other things, larger and more expensive ventilators.

The government’s review was not extensive. One of the lawyers involved, a former F.T.C. staff member, notes that he successfully steered the merger through the F.T.C. “without second request” — without extensive review.

We now know that approving that merger without conditions had severe costs. It would cripple what had been a prescient federal program, begun in 2007, to build an emergency stockpile of up to 40,000 portable ventilators with the eventual help of Newport Medical Instruments. But Covidien terminated the project, apparently in large part because it was insufficiently profitable.

That cancellation set back the federal ventilator program by at least seven years. In fact, 13 years later, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, and despite a new contract with another company, not a single ventilator has been delivered.

It is easy to criticize the F.T.C. for missing the dangers to public health in the Newport merger. But it’s a mistake to see the episode as an isolated blown call or a case of insufficient diligence. The real problem is that United States’ approach to corporate consolidation is broken, and nowhere is this more clear than when it comes to health care. As it stands, the F.T.C.’s power to review mergers takes little account of what makes health care different from other industries. And tragically, the Newport merger is only one in a long line of disasters.

The Federal Trade Commission is staffed by skilled lawyers and economists who try their best, within their authority, to stop the worst abuses. (I’m biased: I was at the F.T.C. from 2011 to 2013.) But the agency’s own rules treat the market for ventilators as little different than the market for, say, bowling balls. The scope of review is too narrow for the concerns that arise when it comes to potentially lifesaving products like ventilators, pharmaceuticals and hospitals. In fact, in the Newport case, even if the lawyers had suspected Covidien’s motives, there was probably little under existing law that they could have done.

The problem is systemic. Consider that over the past decade, the F.T.C. has found itself largely unable to stop another abuse: the transfer, by large pharmaceutical companies, of individual drug brands to tiny companies that subsequently raise the prices of the drugs by factors of thousands. (The F.T.C. has the power to review transfers retrospectively and undo them.)

Perhaps the most notorious example was the sale of Daraprim, a drug used to treat a life-threatening parasitic infection, from Impax Laboratories to Turing Pharmaceuticals. Turing raised the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to nearly $750.

And Turing isn’t even the worst offender. For $100,000, a company named Questcor bought from Aventis the rights to a $40 treatment for infantile spasms. Questcor jacked up the price by an astonishing 69,900 percent — from $40 to an $28,000. (A company that bought Questcor in 2014, Mallinckrodt, jacked it up even more, to $39,000.)

In most markets, such exploitative tactics are difficult to sustain, because customers would revolt. But health care markets are different. For many drugs or treatments, there are no realistic substitutes. And the markets are further complicated by insurance and government involvement — and ultimately, by the fact that we care about human health in ways that are hard to quantify.

Perhaps the greatest calamity, in terms of harm done, has been the F.T.C.’s inability over the past two decades to stop hospital consolidation, despite its best efforts and growing evidence of negative effects. In theory a hospital merger might produce welcome efficiencies, but in practice too many hospital mergers tend to yield higher prices and lower quality of care (measured by morbidity), not to mention bed shortages. After a bad hospital merger, patients pay more and die more.

To its credit, the F.T.C. has tried hard in this area, litigating aggressively to stop the most outrageous hospital mergers. Yet despite notable victories in court, the agency’s case-by-case approach has not effectively stopped the waves of hospital consolidation.

Very few observers who are not on the industry’s payroll find it easy to defend what has happened over the past decade when it comes to health care mergers. Action is overdue. The F.T.C. might, as Commissioners Rohit Chopra and Rebecca Slaughter have urged, dig deeper into its own authority and begin writing special rules for the worst abuses. Congress, which is considering the first major antitrust overhaul since 1914, might create special scrutiny for health care transactions, sensitive to their broader effects.

What’s certain is that we can do better. In an alternative universe, the F.T.C. lawyers scrutinizing the Newport deal, equipped with greater authority and resources, might have flagged the acquisition as suspicious, consulted the Department of Health and Human Services and made the deal contingent on full performance of the federal contract for ventilators. And now, instead of squabbling for supplies, we might be facing the coronavirus crisis with a stockpile of new ventilators — grateful for the foresight of the federal government and the vigilance of the F.T.C.

Tim Wu (@superwuster) is a law professor at Columbia, a contributing opinion writer and the author, most recently, of “The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age.”

Categories Deregulation, Education Reform

CEO of Scandal-Ridden IDEA Charter Chain Resigns

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2020 //
7

Tom Torkelson, c-founder of the IDEA charter chain, has stepped down as CEO and will be replaced by the other co-founder JoAnn Gama.

Based in Texas, IDEA is a favorite of Betsy DeVos, who has sent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to the chain to help it expand. Less than two weeks ago, DeVos gave another $72 million to IDEA. The chain previously had received more than $200 million from DeVos. She sure likes IDEA.

Torkelson and Gama arrived in the Rio Grande Valley aspartame’s ofTeach for America and started IDEA in 2000. It has become a charter behemoth in the past two decades.

The chain attracted bad publicity for its free-spending ways. One of its worst ideas was leasing a private jet for nearly $2 million a year for exclusive use of its executives and their families. After getting negative press, the board canceled the lease, and now the executives fly first class.

Jacob Carpenter wrote in The Houston Chronicle:

Torkelson’s resignation caps a remarkable run for the charter pioneer, whose ambition, charisma and results-driven approach helped propel IDEA’s remarkable expansion over the past 20 years. In recent months, however, Torkelson’s push to lease a charter jet and the disclosure of questionable financial practices under his watch prompted scrutiny of the charter.

IDEA students, the vast majority of whom are Hispanic and come from low-income families, routinely score well-above average on state standardized tests and enroll in college at high rates compared to their peers. Skeptics argue IDEA’s success is inflated by high academic standards that deter families from enrolling students with more intensive academic and behavioral needs.

Torkelson and Gama started IDEA in the late 1990s while working as teachers in the Rio Grande Valley, opening a single school together in the border city of Donna. After meager growth in its first decade, IDEA rapidly expanded in the 2010s in the Valley, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso and Fort Worth.

The network operates 91 schools in Texas enrolling 49,500 students, along with five campuses in Louisiana. IDEA is scheduled to open its first four Houston-area schools this year on two sites in northern Harris County.
Torkelson served as a key figure in IDEA’s expansion, pushing to enroll 100,000 students across the country by 2022. Earlier this year, Torkelson told the Houston Chronicle that he wanted IDEA to become “the largest high-performing school system in the United States of America.”

Torkelson also played a significant role in fundraising for IDEA, which has received tens of millions of dollars from philanthropic groups to aid its expansion.

However, some of Torkelson’s financial and operational moves led to criticism over the past several months.
Torkelson’s desire to lease a charter jet as a method of reducing travel hassles between the network’s hubs drew sharp backlash in December 2019.

One month later, more scrutiny followed the disclosure that IDEA spent about $400,000 annually on luxury boxes and tickets for events at San Antonio’s AT&T Center. IDEA officials said more than 1,000 employees received tickets each season as a reward for performance, with the “lion’s share” allotted to campus-level staff and students

During Torkelson’s tenure, several relatives of IDEA executives and board members also engaged in business dealings with the charter, including a company co-owned by Chief Operating Officer Irma Muñoz’s husband that billed more than $600,000 for uniforms, other clothing and gear.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Scandals, Texas

New York Times: Kids Say They Miss School

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2020 //
13

The New York Times asked children how they felt about learning online at home and most said they would rather be at school.

This article was written by Henry Dodd, age 11, whose father works for the Times.

Kids are getting more bored by the day. We wish we could go back to school to see our friends. But some of us are also really scared about getting the coronavirus, and we don’t want our friends and family to get it either.

That’s what kids across the country told The New York Times (where my dad works) when they were asked about learning from home during the coronavirus outbreak.

Some are having fun with their parents and their brothers and sisters, but most are missing their teachers, their friends and their normal lives. (As Dahlia Stringer, who is 11 like me, said in her letter, “Everyone knows little sisters are annoying” — little brothers sometimes are, too.) And a lot are frustrated about missing out on things like spring break, field trips and graduation.

“I’m hoping that things will be back to normal someday,” wrote Sasha Udovich, 9, from Los Angeles.

Same. Home-school is definitely boring, but I really hope we can make it through this safely and return to how things used to be. I miss my friends.

Here are some of the feelings about learning from home that kids across the country shared in letters and emails. They were gathered together and lightly edited by Adeel Hassan, who works with my dad.

Dahlia Stringer, an 11-year-old from San Francisco, has a lot to say about home schooling.

Let’s start with the positives: Family time, freedom and snacks.

I like that I can stay with my parents the whole day because I really, really love them. I like that we can have our own P.E. with our dad. The only thing I don’t like is math. But I still would have been doing that in school, so I guess it’s better to do it at home at least.

— Judah Rajski, 7, Tampa, Fla.

Alice: I like being home because you can eat and drink while you are doing your schoolwork. And you get to do your homework with your sister. You can ask mom or dad to help you, because they are both at home now. You don’t even have to raise your hand.

Shelby: You can go outside and play when you finish your work, while at school, you have to read silently after you finish.

— Shelby Sanders, 10, Alice Sanders, 6, Baton Rouge, La.

It gives me time to work and complete assignments on my time throughout the day. Rather than sit in school for six hours, I can break up the work throughout the day and use the extra time to work around the house or go outside.

— Ana, 15, Southbridge, Mass.

The positive thing about being home during the coronavirus pandemic is that I get to spend time with my family and share with them what I’m learning. I get to involve my parents in activities that I have only done with my friends. I also get to see what my siblings are learning and help them.

— Miabella Capote, Denver, N.C.

I enjoy staying home as long as I don’t think too much about why I’m not at school. I actually have more time on my hands than I know what to do with. I’ve been trying to use that extra time for productive things, like learning how to cook.

— Charlie, 17, Kirkland, Wash.

Samuel: The best thing about being at home is you get to hang around your family more and not being able to be around other people helps you get outside, and do some exercise.

Anna: I do like learning from home because I get more work done than I usually do because I have my parents’ assistance. I don’t because I am away from all of my friends and my teacher’s assistance. It is also difficult to see and do assignments online. But I do get to take breaks, go to the bathroom when I want, eat snacks, go outside, etc. I also don’t have to do any homework if I get all my work done for the day.

— Samuel Rogers, 12, and Anna Rogers, 12, Berea, Ky.

Declan Walsh, a 9-year-old from Brooklyn, says that he misses his friends at school. And he’s bored, too.
But there is a lot that makes it hard.

The worst is that the teachers might not always see your hand when you’re raising it. I really miss my friends and play dates. My mommy, and sometimes my daddy, have to help because it’s too hard sometimes.

— Noah Bresler, 6, Brooklyn

Life without school is much more boring then I thought it would be. Without the summerlike feeling of no work and being able to see friends, it’s actually very depressing.

— Una Hoppe, 14, Beacon, N.Y.

It’s really easy to get distracted at home. I like going to school and using the time at school to do schoolwork. Now all schoolwork is done at home, so my brain thinks there’s more homework because my brain hasn’t adjusted to staying home the whole day. Learning is difficult because before you were jogging and now you are crawling.

— Juny Tranel, 11, San Francisco

The thing I miss most about school is my friends, but I FaceTimed my friend today and I liked it.

— Ruth Rajski, 6, Tampa, Fla.

It’s hell. My teachers think what a responsible amount of work to be assigning is 40 minutes (about a class period) plus half an hour plus of homework. This is from EVERY teacher, so it adds up real fast. Over the last few days, I’ve had more work than I would usually have if schools weren’t closed — and I have to do it all sitting in the same spot for hours.

— Jasper Smith 17, Brooklyn

Because the work is optional, and the homework is not for a grade, I know many friends who choose not to work on it. Along with that, the assignments do not go along with what I’m currently learning at school. The homework is assigned to the entire grade, the levels of students academic-wise are different. Some students may be taking geometry, while others may be taking algebra or math. The assignments are often easy for a certain group of people, while for others it’s difficult.

— Bryan, 14, Pennsylvania

“I like our video morning meeting every day with my teachers and friends,” says Ella Diwan, 6, of Manhattan. “It makes me feel like I’m still at school. My baby sister won’t leave me alone, so I decided to let her join.”
“I like our video morning meeting every day with my teachers and friends,” says Ella Diwan, 6, of Manhattan. “It makes me feel like I’m still at school. My baby sister won’t leave me alone, so I decided to let her join.”
The technology can be fun, but it doesn’t always help.

I’m doing online learning through Google Classroom, and sometimes it’s difficult. My math problems won’t attach, the file didn’t save properly. But we have to work through that, and it’s necessary to help others.

— Eleanor Pitcher, 14, Wales, Mass.

I like our video morning meeting every day with my teachers and friends. It makes me feel like I’m still at school. My baby sister won’t leave me alone, so I decided to let her join.

— Ella Diwan, 6, Manhattan

I’m a visual learner, and so I prefer to take a hands-on approach, including marking up and annotating the work before me on actual paper. However, with online learning, it’s difficult, and I find myself writing much more than I usually would. My phone is right next to me, so it’s so easy to pick up my phone and text my friend, who I see on the screen, or check the newest post on Instagram and TikTok.

— Daniella Ojugo, 17, Burlington, N.J.

It’s harder to focus at home as there’s no one to discipline you for playing on your phone or talking to a friend. It’s harder to grasp certain concepts, specifically those that are more hands-on. It’s harder to ask questions since there’s no way to virtually raise your hand. And it’s harder to keep a smile on my face, because I don’t know if or when I’ll see my teachers and classmates in person again.

— Josephine Dlugosz, 18, Woodstock, Conn.

Image
Sasha Udovich, 9, left, and Anna Schofield, 8, finding a way to say hello in Los Angeles.
Sasha Udovich, 9, left, and Anna Schofield, 8, finding a way to say hello in Los Angeles.
Many kids miss their friends and would rather be at school.

I miss my friends and having a regular schedule. I used to complain every day about having to go to school, but being in quarantine has really made me appreciate being in class. I’m sure that when I go back in the fall, I’ll probably go back to disliking it again, but for now I wish I was back in school.

— Molly Lawrence, 16, Hyattsville, Md.

I would prefer to go to school rather than be taught curriculum at home, because then I would be able to play with my friends at recess and talk with them at lunch. My parents don’t know what my teacher would teach, so I can’t learn the new science curriculum. I can only review science I have already been taught.

— Kaelin Cunningham, 11, Fairfax, Va.

It’s not as glorious as it seems. It gets boring. I personally am starting to miss my friends and my teachers. I sit inside all day and work. Yes, I am grateful for what I have, and I am grateful I still have a family. Staying home and doing distant learning has made me discover deep respect for teachers I didn’t even know I have. Now I see how hard they work for their students. I see how much they care.

— Tatum Connolly-Wazewski, 13, New Windsor, N.Y.

There are days where I don’t want to do any work, and it’s really easy to just not do it. Learning at school definitely helps motivate me to get my work done, because I’m in the environment to do work and there’s really nothing else I can do. At home I have the liberty to literally do anything other than schoolwork.

— Valeria Ramos, 16, Riverdale Park, Md.

I feel like I understand more at school than at home looking at the screen. I think some of my teachers try their best to teach me through video calls, but for some subjects, it doesn’t always work or help. Sometimes I am lost. Even if I ask a million questions, I don’t feel that it is the same, and I can’t believe I am going to say this, but I would rather be at school than home. I find it distracting that I am at home and learning at the same time, because there are so many distractions — you either hear the TV on, someone’s cooking, police and ambulance sirens in the background, etc. I can say emotionally my teachers have been very helpful and caring, which I love the most.

— Syeda Saima, 15, Queens

Image
Anna Rogers, 12, of Berea, Ky., depicted the global impact of the coronavirus.
Anna Rogers, 12, of Berea, Ky., depicted the global impact of the coronavirus.
The virus is scary. And thinking about it can make you sad.

Every day I take a walk around my neighborhood with my parents and when I see my friends, I’m told I’m have to stay six feet away. I get really sad I can’t be with them. I’m also scared they’ll never find a cure and I’ll never get to play close with my friends again. I’m hoping that things will be back to normal someday.

— Sasha Udovich, 9, Los Angeles

I’m in my last year of middle school, and I will probably have to finish it from home. I wonder about the students next year, students who I’ll spend the next four years with, whose family died because of this, whose parents died because of this. I wonder about my family. Are they going to get sick? I wonder about the children who’ll die. I wonder if I’ll be one of them. If my family will be the one this virus reaches next. I start high school next year, and I wonder how.

— Louisa Elena, 13, Jacksonville, Fla.

My little brother asks every morning if the germs went away yet — he really misses school like me.

— Tessa Podvesker, 7, Montclair, N.J.

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Juny Tranel, 11, of San Francisco, says that he tries hard not to get distracted at home.
Juny Tranel, 11, of San Francisco, says that he tries hard not to get distracted at home.
It’s hard to know what the future will be like.

Online school is the equivalent of no school. The one-on-one time, the accountability, the schedule and routine are all gone. No parent is perfect, and no parent can effectively replace seven to eight teachers, all with different subjects. The issue is the loss of many factors for success. Isolation, no routine, even just the lack of repercussions for not doing work. All of this leads to a decline.

— Pres, 17, Fayetteville, Ark.

Thousands of juniors (including myself) have selected rigorous courses for our last full year before our apps our due. Many of us are taking five or six A.P. classes and finally getting leadership positions for the clubs and activities we dedicated so much time to. As I sit at home, I feel that the edge that I have been working so long for is slipping away. I was ready to make this last full semester count.

— Fahad Mohsin, 17, Northborough, Mass.

I feel as if I can’t take a break or “turn off” school. I’m up at 7 a.m. and doing some form of school work or studying until 7 p.m. I even take my flashcards down while I make lunch.

— Madisen Cordell, 17, Lake Stevens, Wash.

Most schools in America have senior prom, Senior Ditch Day, senior prank, senior banquets, and most important, graduation. No one signed a contract giving me the right to any of that, but then again, I feel entitled to my senior year.

When I walked out of school on March 11, I didn’t expect that to be the last time I would see the people and the places that helped me mature into the person that I am today. Now when people ask what high school taught me, I can honestly say that I learned something outside of math and science: Nothing in life is promised.

— Rachel Osband, 18, San Jose, Calif.

Categories Education Reform, Students

Chalkbeat: Big Education Philanthropists Are Missing in Action on Coronavirus Response

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2020 //
13

Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat checked to see what the billionaire philanthropists are doing in response to the coronavirus. The answer: Not much.

When asked to underwrite charter schools, Teach for America, and wacky teacher-evaluation systems, they shell out hundreds of millions of dollars. When the nation’s schools are closed by a pandemic, and it’s clear that millions of children need food security, computers, and internet access, the money slows to a dribble. When the nation’s schools face massive budget cuts because of declining revenues, and these cuts will increase class sizes, cause layoffs, lead to drastic cuts in the arts and athletics, Will they wake up and pitch in to help?

He writes:

Here’s how four of the largest education foundations and grantmakers are responding:

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation says its “commitment to and overall objective of our education strategies are not changing.” But it is prioritizing supporting teaching by expanding “access to interactive, student-facing digital content and high-quality print materials” and “supporting data collection efforts to understand the impact of COVID-19 on educators and families.”

The City Fund, which is funded primarily by John Arnold and Reed Hastings, said it has committed new $100,000 grants to in its 14 active cities, and also allowed those organizations to repurpose $100,000 of existing grants to respond to the coronavirus. That will total nearly $3 million in emergency support. In Oakland, for instance, the Oakland Reach has used this to provide small cash payments of families in need. In D.C., money has gone to a fund to make Wi-Fi and laptops available to students. In St. Louis, a nonprofit has created a “remote learning innovation fund.”

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has awarded over $1.6 million to education groups, including money to those aiming to expand broadband access in the San Francisco Bay Area, to disseminate resources to parents, and to provide guidance to school districts moving instruction online.

The Walton Family Foundation did not offer details. But along with the Kauffman Foundation, it has contributed to a $2 million education relief fund in Kansas City designed to support teachers, families, and schools with costs and challenges associated with COVID-19.

So far, most of the private grants in response to the virus amount to a few million dollars at most. By comparison, the federal stimulus for K-12 schools totaled $13.5 billion — and many worry it won’t be anywhere near enough, considering that high-poverty school districts are facing a daunting combination of greater needs and less money.

When billionaires pony up only a few million in the face of a national catastrophe, that’s not a contribution. That’s a tip. That’s surely not “putting children first.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Philanthropy, Privatization
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