Archives for category: Safety
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Bob Shepherd: How to Use Remote Learning Wisely

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2020 //
37

Bob Shepherd. Is a former teacher, editor, curriculum designer, and assessment developer. He believes that a return to in-person instruction would be “an unprecedented catastrophe.” But he defines remote learning as a guarantee that any real learning will be remote.

How to find a path forward give the dangers of reopening and the tedium of remote learning?

He writes:

Clearly, if we are to depend on remote learning, we must address some serious issues:

–How do we ensure that kids have home access to high-speed internet connections and computers and software?

–How do we ensure that poor kids who no longer have access to free breakfast and lunch programs have regular meals?

–What do we do about kids whose parent or parents have to work? Who is going to watch the kids?

–What do we do to compensate for the loss of the safety checks that schools provide with regard to dangerous home environments, ones in which kids are inadequately cared for or subject to abuse?

–What kinds of learning can be conducted remotely and how? What would ideal remote/distance learning look like? Yes, we ALL understand that remote learning stinks. It’s child’s play to make the long, long list of its deficiencies, but, if we haven’t a sane alternative, what can we do given the circumstances? What does the best better-than-nothing remote learning pedagogy look like?

These are all big questions. We should be thinking very seriously about them, now. Instead, we are thinking about how to “reopen safely,” which is like thinking about how to jump safely out of airplanes without parachutes.

One way to begin thinking about the last question–the one about remote learning pedagogy–is to ask, what can we do well at a distance? In what ways can computers actually be used effectively, at a distance, as learning tools? What are they good at? Well, they can be used

to provide easy, ready access to enormous numbers of texts. What if every poor kid in the US had a gift card for purchasing online books from a curated list, for example?

for direct instruction videos. (How many teachers have simple video-editing software and know how to use it?)

to provide directions for projects to be carried out by students on their own.

to provide demonstrations–walkthroughs of procedures, for example (think of how-to recipe videos, for example).

to provide curated links to instructive materials online. The Internet is the freaking Library of Alexandria writ large.

to collect assignments and return them with feedback. (How many teachers have been instructed in how to use Word editing features or Adobe Acrobat mark-up tools for marking manuscripts? Precious few, I imagine.)

to do online check tests or quizzes with immediate feedback. (How many teachers know how to use Zoom’s built-in quiz feature? How many know how to use online quiz-making programs like Kahoot?)

to provide instructive graphics–picture galleries, maps, timelines, and so on.

to conduct online discussions and some modicum of community via Zoom.

to provide sharepoint folders for collections of class documents. (How many teachers are skilled at organizing such sharepoints?)

to present beautifully typeset equations. (How many teachers know how to use the Mathtype add-in for Word to do that?)

NONE OF THIS IS IDEAL. OF COURSE IT ISN’T. But it’s better than risking the lives of students, teachers, administrators, staff, and relatives and acquaintances of all these. But here we are, wasting time discussing safely jumping out of airplanes without a parachute when we could be spending this time instructing teachers on using these tools and setting up mechanisms for teachers to share with one another what has been working for them in their online classes.

One thing that should be avoided like the plague, I think: online computer instruction programs with diagnostic tests and instructional modules. These are failed behaviorist programmed instruction modernized with graphics. They are extremely demotivating. Kids hate them, and what they learn from them, mostly, is to hate what they are supposed to be learning.

Categories Health, Online Learning, Safety

Jack Hassard: Georgia Is Not Ready to Open Schools

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2020 //
8

Jack Hassard has spent his career teaching science and training science teachers. He lives in Georgia, where Governor Brian Kemp is determined to open schools without regard to the state of the virus.

Hassard says, based on the science, that Georgia is not ready to open its schools.

The infection rate in Georgia is unacceptably high at 13-16%.

It is important for us to use the science to make decisions about the lives of our citizens. At this time, it is not prudent to open schools in ways that bring hundreds of students into a school building. We have seen examples of crowded high school corridors, with most students not wearing masks. This should not be tolerated.

CBS News reported:

A Georgia high school that was featured in a viral photo showing students packed tightly in a hallway has closed temporarily after nine students and staff members tested positive for the coronavirus, CBS Atlanta affiliate WGCL-TV reports. North Paulding High School in Dallas, Georgia, reopened for in-person learning August 3.

The school will be closed to in-person learning Monday and Tuesday, according to a letter sent to students’ parents and guardians on Sunday. Extracurricular activities have also been canceled for those days.

Students will be informed if they can return for in-person learning on Tuesday night, the letter stated. The letter also noted the building will be “thoroughly cleaned and disinfected” while the school is shuttered.

USA Today reported:

After only one week of school, more than 250 students and teachers from one Georgia school district will be asked to quarantine for two weeks after several teachers and students tested positive for COVID-19, according to the district’s website.

Cherokee County School District, which is just north of Atlanta, is sharing regular updates on coronavirus cases in its schools on its website.

As of Friday, at least 11 students, ranging in age from first to 12th grade, and two staff members from various elementary, middle and high schools, have tested positive for the virus, prompting the school to send almost 250 students and staff home for 14 days because of possible exposure. The students will receive online instruction during the period.

Categories Georgia, Health, Safety

Is Brian Kemp of Georgia the Dumbest Governor?

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2020 //
18

That’s a trick question because a Governor Kemp has stiff competition from several other governors, such as Florida’s Ron DeSantis.

Politico interviewed Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. He said his early reopening of schools for full-time in-person instruction was going really well, except for the photo that went viral of high school students packed together in a hall while changing classes.

Under Kemp’s abdication of leadership, Georgia is fifth in the nation on the number of cases of COVID-19.

Photos shared widely on social media last week showed hallways packed shoulder to shoulder with students at North Paulding High School northwest of Atlanta. School officials later announced that six students and three staff members had tested positive for the coronavirus, and that the school would be closed Monday and Tuesday while the building is disinfected.

In nearby Cherokee County, 12 students and two staff members from a dozen schools tested positive for the virus during their first week back at school. The Cherokee County school system reported that more than 250 students with potential exposure had been sent home to quarantine for two weeks.

Cherokee County also drew attention because of online photos. Dozens of students at two of its high schools squeezed together for first-day-of-school senior photos. None wore masks.

Categories Accountability, Florida, Georgia, Health, Safety

Arizona Superintendent: Reopening School Now is a “Fantasy”

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2020 //
29

Eli Saslow of the Washington Post interviewed Arizona Superintendent Jeff Gregorich about the prospect of opening schools in his district with the coronavirus still active in the region. The article causes me to wonder why decisions about when to open schools are made by politicians, not scientists, medical experts, and educators.

Gregorich was candid, blunt, worried.

This is my choice, but I’m starting to wish that it wasn’t. I don’t feel qualified. I’ve been a superintendent for 20 years, so I guess I should be used to making decisions, but I keep getting lost in my head. I’ll be in my office looking at a blank computer screen, and then all of the sudden I realize a whole hour’s gone by. I’m worried. I’m worried about everything. Each possibility I come up with is a bad one.

The governor has told us we have to open our schools to students on August 17th, or else we miss out on five percent of our funding. I run a high-needs district in middle-of-nowhere Arizona. We’re 90 percent Hispanic and more than 90 percent free-and-reduced lunch. These kids need every dollar we can get. But covid is spreading all over this area and hitting my staff, and now it feels like there’s a gun to my head. I already lost one teacher to this virus. Do I risk opening back up even if it’s going to cost us more lives? Or do we run school remotely and end up depriving these kids?

This is your classic one-horse town. Picture John Wayne riding through cactuses and all that. I’m superintendent, high school principal and sometimes the basketball referee during recess. This is a skeleton staff, and we pay an average salary of about 40,000 a year. I’ve got nothing to cut. We’re buying new programs for virtual learning and trying to get hotspots and iPads for all our kids. Five percent of our budget is hundreds of thousands of dollars. Where’s that going to come from? I might lose teaching positions or basic curriculum unless we somehow get up and running.

I’ve been in the building every day, sanitizing doors and measuring out space in classrooms. We still haven’t received our order of Plexiglas barriers, so we’re cutting up shower curtains and trying to make do with that. It’s one obstacle after the next. Just last week I found out we had another staff member who tested positive, so I went through the guidance from OSHA and the CDC and tried to figure out the protocols. I’m not an expert at any of this, but I did my best with the contact tracing. I called 10 people on staff and told them they’d had a possible exposure. I arranged separate cars and got us all to the testing site. Some of my staff members were crying. They’ve seen what can happen, and they’re coming to me with questions I can’t always answer. “Does my whole family need to get tested?” “How long do I have to quarantine?” “What if this virus hits me like it did Mrs. Byrd?”

We got back two of those tests already — both positive. We’re still waiting on eight more. That makes 11 percent of my staff that’s gotten covid, and we haven’t had a single student in our buildings since March. Part of our facility is closed down for decontamination, but we don’t have anyone left to decontaminate it unless I want to put on my hazmat suit and go in there. We’ve seen the impacts of this virus on our maintenance department, on transportation, on food service, on faculty. It’s like this district is shutting down case by case. I don’t understand how anyone could expect us to reopen the building this month in a way that feels safe. It’s like they’re telling us: “Okay. Summer’s over. It’s been long enough. Time to get back to normal.” But since when has this virus operated on our schedule?

I dream about going back to normal. I’d love to be open. These kids are hurting right now. I don’t need a politician to tell me that. We only have 300 students in this district, and they’re like family. My wife is a teacher here, and we had four kids go through these schools. I know whose parents are laid off from the copper mine and who doesn’t have enough to eat. We delivered breakfast and lunches this summer, and we gave out more meals each day than we have students. I get phone calls from families dealing with poverty issues, depression, loneliness, boredom. Some of these kids are out in the wilderness right now, and school is the best place for them. We all agree on that. But every time I start to play out what that looks like on August 17th, I get sick to my stomach. More than a quarter of our students live with grandparents. These kids could very easily catch this virus, spread it and bring it back home. It’s not safe. There’s no way it can be safe.

If you think anything else, I’m sorry, but it’s a fantasy. Kids will get sick, or worse. Family members will die. Teachers will die.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Health, Safety

Fauci: To Open School or Not

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2020 //
52

Dr. Anthony Fauci hems and haws as he dances around the question of whether to open schools. He is trying his best not to anger the touchy Trump, not to provoke an angry tweet. He is worried about the death threats that follow when he takes issue with Trump’s bombast. He thinks children should be in school, except when they shouldn’t be. He has become the Delphic Oracle of COVID-19. Interpret his responses as you wish.

From an article in the Washington Post:

POWER UP’S FAUCI INTERVIEW: The nation’s top infectious-disease expert wants kids to be able to return to school under certain conditions, even though the novel coronavirus is worsening in many states across the country.


In an interview with Power Up, Anthony S. Fauci cautiously supported the Trump administration’s push to reopen elementary and secondary schools — and in some cases, college campuses — this fall.

But he leavened his advice by explaining sending kids back into classrooms depends on how bad the virus is in various places.
• “The default principle should be to try as best you can to get the children back to school,” Fauci told us. “The big, however, and qualifier in there is that you have to have a degree of flexibility. The flexibility means if you look at the map of our country, we are not unidimensional with regard to the level of infection.”
•

“The bottom line is everybody should try within the context of the level of infection that you have to get the kids back to school, but the primary consideration … should be the safety, health and the welfare of the children, as well as the teachers and the potential secondary effects on parents and family members,” he added.



Fauci explained the need to protect the psychological and physical well being of children — especially those “who rely heavily on school for proper nutrition” — and to prevent a “negative downstream ripple effect” of parents being overburdened if schools remain shuttered.


“As you know, there are some sections of the country — where the infection is really quite well controlled and there are others in which it’s smoldering a little and there are others in which we’re clearly having a surging of infection,” Fauci added.


Here’s what the doctor recommends:


• States with minimal virus: “So if you’re in one of those areas, generally referred to as the green states … with some overlap with others and generally, you can get back to school with the kinds of precautions that you do in general society,” he said.


• States with “smoldering infections”: “You might want to tighten that up a bit and do things like, you know, the hybrid models where you have part online, part in person,” he said.


•States with high infections: In consultation with local authorities, and the Centers for Disease Control, “they may want to pause before they start sending the kids back to school for a variety of reasons.”


Outdoor learning: “I’ve spoken to superintendents and principals, and recommend if possible, outdoors, better than indoors. If possible, keep the classrooms well ventilated with the windows open if possible, wearing a mask, physical separation, desks that are put further apart, if you could possibly, physically do that,” Fauci said.


Fauci’s analysis of the virus — and how it influences school openings — is a far cry from his boss’s recent forecasts.
President Trump continues to maintain the novel coronavirus that has killed at least 156,000 Americans will just “go away.”

And though there’s still no national testing strategy, he continues to push for school reopenings — though it isn’t ultimately up to the president whether they do so. His Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has also downplayed the risks of the virus among children, falsely claiming children are “stoppers” of the virus. [Ed. note: they’re not.]



The school showdown comes as the academic year is already starting in some states, and infections are being discovered.


• In Corinth, Miss., for example, after six students and one staff member were infected, 116 students were sent home to quarantine. Few were spotted wearing masks in Dallas, Ga., after a photo of a packed hallway at North Paulding High School went viral, where masks are not required but strongly encouraged.


Most American parents think it is unsafe to send their children back to school, according to a Washington Post-Schar School survey conducted by Ipsos released on Thursday, with over 80 percent of parents preferring to resume school at “least partly online.”


Fauci also weighed in on the other big issue facing Americans this fall – whether it’s safe to physically go to voting booths in November. The doctor, who Trump has sidelined in recent months because of conflicting opinions and a more popular public profile, said  Americans could go to voting booths if they’re careful.
• “Universal wearing of a mask, maintain physical distance of at least six feet, avoid crowds, outdoors better than indoors. And then if the other is avoid situations like going to bars and places where you know infection is spread pretty easily,” said Fauci.


When pressed on whether he’d recommend mail voting as safer during a pandemic, Fauci declined to answer “because that almost certainly is going to be used as a soundbite.” 

“It’s a sport now in Washington to pit me against the president and I don’t really want to do that,” Fauci said. “But someone will take a quote and bingo, it’ll be me against the president and I don’t want to do that,” Fauci explained.


Trump has repeatedly, and baselessly, bashed mail-in voting as fraudulent as many states ramp up their mail voting systems to provide options for those people who prefer not to physically go to to the polls due to the coronavirus.
Fauci said polling places should operate like grocery stores and shops.
• “

We see a big X and then six feet away is another big X speed away is another big X,” Fauci told Power Up. “I don’t see any reason why, if people maintain that type of physical distancing, wearing a mask and washing hands – why you cannot, at least where I vote, go to a place and vote.”


Plead the fifth: Fauci also declined to respond to calls for Congress to implement rapid covid-19 testing on Capitol Hill.
The doctor’s reticence to answer questions that could be perceived as political highlights the fraught relationship between the president and his team of medical experts.

Fauci, who has received death threats against him and his family, says he is shocked by the polarized response to public health guidance during the pandemic.


“Of all the outbreaks that I’ve been involved with way back from the day of, of HIV and Ebola, Zika, pandemic, flu, and anthrax — there’s always a little bit of people that might push back on a message, but it was never with threats against you and your family, your wife, and my daughters,” said Fauci. “I mean, harassing my daughters? Wow. No, I never would have ever imagined that.”
•

“It’s a highly divisive situation,” he added. “But as long as I’m able to go out there and give the kinds of messages that I’ve been giving, I don’t feel constrained because I give a message to the public about what they need to do … I think that we might be able to prevent people from acquiring infection if they listened to my public health message and I could do that effectively without getting into the political divisiveness.”


Fauci’s longtime friend and colleague, Deborah Birx, has also recently been on the receiving end of Trump’s attacks after months of favor. Trump this week went after his White House coronavirus task force coordinator for last weekend describing the virus as  “extraordinarily widespread” across the nation.

Birx is drawing criticism from old allies who blame her for being too close to Trump and helping to mismanage the virus.


In our interview, Fauci signaled support for Birx and endorsed her recent recommendation to wear masks at home — “it should be seriously considered” — to limit the spread, especially if people live with someone who is older or has preexisting medical conditions. 


“What we’re seeing, as Dr. Birx described, is that we’ve had a flare and a surge in certain Southern states, which thankfully, in several of them we’re starting to turn the corner and come down,” Fauci told us.


I am fully supportive of my colleague, Dr. Birx. I have been a colleague and a friend for over three decades. And that hasn’t changed one bit. She’s a very talented person and she’s an extremely hard worker and I support her fully.”


Categories Health, Safety, Trump

Larry Cuban: The Best Post on Dilemmas of Reopening

By dianeravitch
August 2, 2020 //
14

Larry Cuban reposts here the best summary of the dilemmas of reopening the schools during a pandemic.

Trump and DeVos think that they can sit in D.C. and order the schools to open up for in-person instruction or lose funding.

An order is not a plan. School boards and superintendents have to figure out how, when, and whether to reopen, and how to pay for it.

They know that in-person instruction is far superior to remote instruction.

For most, their top priority is to protect the lives and health of students and staff.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Health, Safety

New York City: Parents Press DeBlasio to Support Outdoor Classes

By dianeravitch
July 27, 2020 //
11

Chalkbeat reports that many parents are calling on Mayor DeBlasio to endorse outdoor classes.

A Brooklyn lawmaker has joined the growing chorus of parents and activists calling on the city to close streets around school buildings for use as car-free space for recreation, lunch, small group instruction and other activities.

In just two days, City Council Member Brad Lander received proposals from 14 schools from his district — stretching from Boerum Hill and Park Slope to Sunset Park and Kensington — to use surrounding streets. He called on the Department of Transportation to establish an “Open Streets: Schools” program to help coordinate and oversee a citywide operation.

“Families, teachers, school staff and many others are deeply concerned about the safety of sending students back to indoor school in the fall, about whether their school facilities can be made safe (e.g. what about the schools where windows don’t open),” Lander wrote Thursday to the transportation department.

Lander’s letter is part of the effort to maintain social distance guidelines while providing in-person learning this year. Schools are figuring out how to safely hold socially distant classes for their hybrid of in-person and remote schedules, opting to repurpose cafeterias, auditoriums and even office space as classrooms. The push to look outdoors comes as much of the scientific evidence points to less transmission of the coronavirus outside, and as many families remain concerned about the ventilation inside classrooms despite promises from city officials that HVAC systems and ventilation upgrades are underway. Schools are also grappling with how to figure out how to follow social distancing rules with limited space, which means that most children will attend school next year between one and three days a week.

“This is especially dire for students in our most crowded schools, who may end up with up to 66 percent fewer school days simply by virtue of where they live,” Lander wrote.

The letter suggests that blocks could be closed to traffic during school hours to make room for students. Temporary tents could be set up for shade or rain protection, or in some cases, blocks could be fully closed to allow schools to set up semi-permanent tents and outdoor classroom spaces.

Categories Class size, Health, New York City, Safety

CDC Caves to Political Pressure, Waters Down Guidelines for Reopening Schools

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2020 //
55

Trump decided a few weeks ago that he could help his prospects for re-election if he could get schools across the nation to reopen fully, regardless of the state of the pandemic in their community, regardless of the risks to students and staff. He has threatened to cut off federal funding to schools that refuse to reopen fully, and he proclaimed that he and Pence were pressuring the CDC to weaken its guidelines.

At first, the CDC held firm, urging schools to practice social distancing, to require personal protective equipment, and not to reopen unless all safety precautions were in place.

But the CDC buckled to the White House pressure. It changed the tone of its guidance, now stressing the necessity of reopening over the importance of safety.

Now the CDC sings the song that Trump, Pence, and DeVos want to hear.

The top U.S. public health agency issued a full-throated call to reopen schools in a package of new “resources and tools” posted on its website Thursday night that opened with a statement that sounded more like a political speech than a scientific document, listing numerous benefits for children of being in school and downplaying the potential health risks.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published the new guidance two weeks after President Trump criticized its earlier recommendations on school reopenings as “very tough and expensive,” ramping up what had already been an anguished national debate over the question of how soon children should return to classrooms. As the president was criticizing the initial C.D.C. recommendations, a document from the agency surfaced that detailed the risks of reopening and the steps that districts were taking to minimize those risks [the document was incorrectly dated 2019].

“Reopening schools creates opportunity to invest in the education, well-being, and future of one of America’s greatest assets — our children — while taking every precaution to protect students, teachers, staff and all their families,” the new opening statement said.

The package of materials began with the opening statement, titled “The Importance of Reopening America’s Schools This Fall,” and repeatedly described children as being at low risk for being infected by or transmitting the coronavirus, even though the science on both aspects is far from settled.

“The best available evidence indicates if children become infected, they are far less likely to suffer severe symptoms,” the statement said. “At the same time, the harms attributed to closed schools on the social, emotional, and behavioral health, economic well-being, and academic achievement of children, in both the short- and long-term, are well-known and significant.”

While children infected by the virus are at low risk of becoming severely ill or dying, how often they become infected and how efficiently they spread the virus to others is not definitively known. Children in middle and high schools may also be at much higher risk of both than those under 10, according to some recent studies.

Beyond the statement, the package included decision tools and checklists for parents, guidance on mitigation measures for schools to take and other information that some epidemiologists described as helpful.

The new materials are meant to supplement guidance the C.D.C. previously issued on when and how to reopen schools, with recommendations such as keeping desks six feet apart and keeping children in one classroom all day instead of allowing them to move around.

The new statement released on Thursday is a stark departure from the 69-page document, obtained by The New York Times earlier this month, marked “For Internal Use Only,” which was intended for federal public health response teams to have as they are deployed to hot spots around the country.

That document classified as “highest risk” the full reopening of schools, and its suggestions for mitigating the risk of school reopenings would be expensive and difficult for many districts, like broad testing of students and faculty and contact tracing to find people exposed to an infected student or teacher.

An Associated Press/NORC poll this week found that most Americans said they were very or extremely concerned that reopening K-12 schools for in-person instruction would contribute to spreading the virus. Altogether, 80 percent of respondents said they were at least somewhat concerned, including more than three in five Republicans.

Thanks to Trump, the public can no longer trust the impartiality of the CDC. Under pressure, it revised its guidelines to please the president. Science will not “get in the way” of Trump’s political campaign. Any student or teacher or other school personnel who dies because of a premature opening will be blood on the hands of Trump, Pence, DeVos, and the CDC.

The CDC and its director, Dr. Robert Redfield, are hereby enrolled on the blog’s Wall of Shame.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Health, Pence, Safety, Trump, Wall of Shame

Dave Grohl: In Defense of Our Teachers

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2020 //
29

Musician Dave Grohl wrote this article in The Atlantic in honor of his mother, who was a dedicated teacher. America’s teachers need a plan, not a trap, he writes.

My mother was a public-school teacher.

As a single mother of two, she tirelessly devoted her life to the service of others, both at home and at work. From rising before dawn to ensure that my sister and I were bathed, dressed, and fed in time to catch the bus to grading papers well into the night, long after her dinner had gone cold, she rarely had a moment to herself. All this while working multiple jobs to supplement her meager $35,000 annual salary. Bloomingdale’s, Servpro, SAT prep, GED prep—she even once coached soccer for a $400 stipend, funding our first family trip to New York City, where we stayed at the St. Regis Hotel and ordered drinks at its famous King Cole Bar so that we could fill up on the free hors d’oeuvres we otherwise could not afford. Unsurprisingly, her devoted parenting mirrored her technique as a teacher. Never one to just point at a blackboard and recite lessons for kids to mindlessly memorize, she was an engaging educator, invested in the well-being of each and every student who sat in her class. And at an average of 32 students a class, that was no small feat. She was one of those teachers who became a mentor to many, and her students remembered her long after they had graduated, often bumping into her at the grocery store and erupting into a full recitation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, like a flash mob in the produce aisle. I can’t tell you how many of her former students I’ve met over the years who offer anecdotes from my mother’s classroom. Every kid should be so lucky to have that favorite teacher, the one who changes your life for the better. She helped generations of children learn how to learn, and, like most other teachers, exhibited a selfless concern for others. Though I was never her student, she will forever be my favorite teacher.

It takes a certain kind of person to devote their life to this difficult and often-thankless job. I know because I was raised in a community of them. I have mowed their lawns, painted their apartments, even babysat their children, and I’m convinced that they are as essential as any other essential workers. Some even raise rock stars! Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, Adam Levine, Josh Groban, and Haim are all children of school workers (with hopefully more academically rewarding results than mine). Over the years, I have come to notice that teachers share a special bond, because there aren’t too many people who truly understand their unique challenges—challenges that go far beyond just pen and paper. Today, those challenges could mean life or death for some.

When it comes to the daunting—and ever more politicized—question of reopening schools amid the coronavirus pandemic, the worry for our children’s well-being is paramount. Yet teachers are also confronted with a whole new set of dilemmas that most people would not consider. “There’s so much more to be addressed than just opening the doors and sending them back home,” my mother tells me over the phone. Now 82 and retired, she runs down a list of concerns based on her 35 years of experience: “masks and distancing, temperature checks, crowded busing, crowded hallways, sports, air-conditioning systems, lunchrooms, public restrooms, janitorial staff.” Most schools already struggle from a lack of resources; how could they possibly afford the mountain of safety measures that will need to be in place? And although the average age of a schoolteacher in the United States is in the early 40s, putting them in a lower-risk group, many career teachers, administrators, cafeteria workers, nurses, and janitors are older and at higher risk. Every school’s working faculty is a considerable percentage of its population, and should be safeguarded appropriately. I can only imagine if my mother were now forced to return to a stuffy, windowless classroom. What would we learn from that lesson? When I ask what she would do, my mother replies, “Remote learning for the time being.”

Remote learning comes with more than a few of its own complications, especially for working-class and single parents who are dealing with the logistical problem of balancing jobs with children at home. Uneven availability of teaching materials and online access, technical snafus, and a lack of socialization all make for a less-than-ideal learning experience. But most important, remote setups overseen by caretakers, with a teacher on the other end doing their best to educate distracted kids who prefer screens used for games, not math, make it perfectly clear that not everyone with a laptop and a dry-erase board is cut out to be a teacher. That specialized skill is the X factor. I know this because I have three children of my own, and my remote classroom was more Welcome Back, Kotter than Dead Poets Society. Like I tell my children, “You don’t really want daddy helping, unless you want to get an F!” Remote learning is an inconvenient and hopefully temporary solution. But as much as Donald Trump’s conductor-less orchestra would love to see the country prematurely open schools in the name of rosy optics (ask a science teacher what they think about White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s comment that “science should not stand in the way”), it would be foolish to do so at the expense of our children, teachers, and schools…

America’s teachers are caught in a trap, set by indecisive and conflicting sectors of failed leadership that have never been in their position and can’t possibly relate to the unique challenges they face. I wouldn’t trust the U.S. secretary of percussion to tell me how to play “Smells Like Teen Spirit” if they had never sat behind a drum set, so why should any teacher trust Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to tell them how to teach, without her ever having sat at the head of a class? (Maybe she should switch to the drums.) Until you have spent countless days in a classroom devoting your time and energy to becoming that lifelong mentor to generations of otherwise disengaged students, you must listen to those who have. Teachers want to teach, not die, and we should support and protect them like the national treasures that they are. For without them, where would we be?

Categories Health, Safety, Teachers

Rachel Cohen: Pandemic Creates Opening for Public Funding of Home Schooling

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2020 //
14

Rachel Cohen writes that the pandemic is encouraging many parents to consider home schooling and to pressure Congress to pay them to do it.

I disagree.

Before the pandemic, about 2 million children were home schooled, mostly by parents who were either evangelical Christians or who worried about the diverse culture of the public schools or bullying or low standards.

But parents who work don’t want to home school. Most parents prefer that their children learn from knowledgeable teachers alongside others and engage in the academic, social, and cultural activities at school.

The vast majority of parents are eager for school to resume so they can return to work.

Of course, the anti-public school lobby will take advantage of the pandemic to try to divert funding from public schools to private bank accounts.

The home school organizations have long been wary of federal aid for fear that it will open the door to federal accountability, which they don’t want.

Although the national media occasionally finds a brilliant child who was home schooled, there are few families that can muster the knowledge and experience that are provided by experienced teachers of English, history, science, mathematics, foreign languages, and other studies.

If home schoolers get federal funding, they should be tested to determine if they are adequately prepared. Their children should take the same tests as others in the state. Their homes should be inspected to ensure that they are safe spaces. Where public money goes, accountability should follow. And that’s why most home schoolers don’t want public money.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Funding, Home Schooling, Privatization, Safety
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