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This is something I did a complete 180 about. I used to think closing schools wouldn't hurt anybody and that performance would at worst remain stationary. My r

• goalieca 5y ago
  I know people who have special needs and others who have terrible internet where the parents and kids can’t video at the same time. Remote learning is just one problem, we need the full spectrum of school activities and programs too! All of those little things that communities have built over the last few decades really really matter!
• z3t4 5y ago
  Another reason why accessibility is so important. Someone might be doing their homework/research from a smarttv or hacked kindle.
• aardvarkr 5y ago
  Don’t forget those who had to work during the pandemic. Many many high school students whose families were in a bad position financially had to work and would frequently be listening to zoom class while working a cash register for example. How effectively do you think they could listen and participate, or even care?
  • spywaregorilla 5y ago
    I'm not convinced this was a common thing. Source?
• InitialLastName 5y ago
  My SO is an elementary school teacher in a post-industrial urban school. Her students (mostly poor, and crucially almost all with parents who were working in-person through the lockdown) were effectively remote-only from March 2020 until earlier this month, and it's had some substantial visible effects on them. Among other things: - Missing that in-person school time meant losing a lot of "leaving home" practice for a large chunk of kids. Current second graders were in-person for 6 months of kindergarten, and remote from there. This means there are a lot of mechanical and social things they haven't had to do (sit quietly next to each other, tie their shoes, ask to go to the bathroom). - The "summer slide" has been much more severe than usual. A large chunk of the students didn't get much education out of being remote for first grade, so a much-larger-than-usual chunk of the cohort are substantially behind grade level for basic skills, especially reading. - Related to above, there has been a huge backlog of students who need to be evaluated for various special education and disability needs who just haven't been able to be accommodated and who, due to the process difficulties for the last year, probably won't be able to be evaluated based on their data from last year (leaving them severely under-supported for another year while the data is collected).
  • geerlingguy 5y ago
    As someone who's battled with that last point, it's not only the 'intake' side of things (it can be weeks or months before you can get an evaluation, then weeks afterwards before any results can be tabulated)—but even if you do get any kind of evaluation, good luck finding counselors. Only about 10% of the counselors we called would even call back, and of that 10%, almost all of them said they would not accept any new patients, indefinitely. A couple had openings within a year or so, and one or two had any availability in a shorter time frame. Not sure what all the reasons are, but I'm guessing it's the perfect storm of more kids needing more services in this unprecedented time, more counselors on the older side retiring early, and funding for these programs being a continual battle.
    • PeterisP 5y ago
      A local response from some child psychiatrists is that they're swamped by existing patients, as the pandemic changes have been very harsh on kids already having issues with e.g. self-harm or being shut-in so relapsing patients are returning and not leaving much space for new ones.
    • InitialLastName 5y ago
      Yes, for sure in that situation the staff shortage and backlog of students have made a system that is difficult to navigate in normal times essentially intractable.
    • lotsofpulp 5y ago
      > Not sure what all the reasons are It is undesirable work for undesirable pay with undesirable volatility, to many people.
  • vxNsr 5y ago
    Yup that’s why every private school that had honest staff and wasn’t bound by the National Teachers Union who were playing political games was in person most of last year. Kids come first. Until this summer the chance of them getting sick or transmitting was super low, with delta it’s a little higher but with sane precautions most of the risk can be alleviated. In a few years time you’re gonna see real disparities between even religious private school kids (which don’t necessarily have better education standards) and public based solely on who was in person. If you’re trying to win one over your political opponents get out of this, it’s not game.
• packetlost 5y ago
  Not to mention the fact that a massive part of school is just learning to socialize with people who aren't your family and that you may or may not particularly like.
  • Spivak 5y ago
    And there's not really an age where this stops either. Socialization is an ongoing life-long process. I'm sure all the exceptions will be in my replies but we need social interaction in order to not go crazy. And with our shitty hyper-individualistic culture, work and school is the only non-parasocial human interaction a lot of people get.
  • CharlesW 5y ago
    I'm wondering: Do we understand the long-term impact of this lack of "social school" from how homeschooled kids do post-education?
    • packetlost 5y ago
      Anecdotal, but I grew up in a cult that encouraged home-schooling. While I was lucky and did not get home schooled, nearly every person I know who did was socially stunted in some way.
      • ryandrake 5y ago
        I wouldn't say the homeschooled people I have encountered were "stunted" but definitely "different enough to not gel smoothly with the rest of society." They kind of just run in totally different circles: They socialize but with a totaly disjoint set of kids. All their friends are from their church and they don't know anyone in public school, their parents take them to totally different movies (Christian movies, no Marvel superheroes), listen to totally different music. Can't talk sports with them because they literally can't name a football team. No culture overlap at all. Totally siloed off in their own world. Maybe these traits are specific to Christian homeschoolers and not homeschoolers in general, but frankly I have never met someone who was homeschooled because of secular, rather than religious reasons.
• BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  Once enough time has passed to give proper retrospective stats, I am very curious to know if there is a clear dividing line between the harm of remote learning at the elementary grades compared to high school or college or if it gradually tapers off in later elementary school into the baseline education reduction in high school. I'll also admit to not thinking that a missed semester of school was a big deal. Why'd I ever think that? I only thought of the glacial pace of American middle and high schools and elementary grades simply skipped my mind entirely. There's no way to teach a child to read over Zoom.
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• lithium_throw 5y ago
  I know a headteacher from a fairly disadvantaged area in the UK. He said a lot of the kids will never recover. Hopefully soon, it will no longer be contraversial to say that lockdowns (especially any that lasted longer than the initial "flatten the curve for 2 weeks" we were all promised) caused more harm than good. For a (Western) society that is obsessed with helping the needy, it's just incredible that something that obviously would hurt the poorest very hardest was also something that could not be disagreed with.
  • asoneth 5y ago
    > was also something that could not be disagreed with. At the time I recall significant disagreement on this point between politicians, the news media, the school boards in my area, and my neighbors. After much debate, our local public schools ultimately did decide to maintain full-in person school for as long as possible due in no small part to equity concerns. Everyone seemed uncertain about whether this was the right thing to do, and I don't recall anyone on either side insisting that disagreement was forbidden.
    • lithium_throw 5y ago
      I was referring to the broader topic of lockdowns in general, but at least where I was, it was the narrative that "selfish" parents who "didn't want to look after their own kids" wanted to keep the schools open, and therefore risking the very lives of the teachers.
      • asoneth 5y ago
        That's rough. Some of the discussions here also got heated and a couple people on both sides of the debate did sink to leveling personal attacks and questioning others' motivations, patriotism, intelligence, sincerity, empathy, etc rather than understanding their point of view. It's amazing how damaging it can be to have even a small number of people who have decided to abandon good-faith discussion. I'm not sure how you prevent folks like that from getting a foothold, but seems like it's worth figuring out.
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• scop 5y ago
  I commend you for changing your opinion. That is no small task these days.
• vmception 5y ago
  I don't know how this is surprising. We locked down to protect boomers and obese people because we could and they are such a large <<' part of the population and we value their contributions to society and lives. There would be consequences, fairly obvious ones, and we coordinated quickly anyway. I thought everyone knew that. You did a 180? like, you supported lockdowns because you didn't know that?
  • kingkawn 5y ago
    Indeterminate impacts of long-covid on people, including children, also played a role in the extension of the initial lockdowns.
    • nradov 5y ago
      There is no reliable scientific evidence of significant "long Covid" effects on many children. Even before the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, children were commonly infected by the other four endemic coronaviruses. A small minority experienced post viral syndrome but the vast majority made full recoveries.
  • bachmeier 5y ago
    Just FYI, this idea that the only impact of covid is deaths in people over 65 and obese people is simply bad reporting. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics If you want to stick to deaths, we have by age Under 5: 183 5-11: 119 12-15: 152 16-17: 125 That's a total of 579 deaths among kids 17 or less in spite of the fact that schools and most activities were closed. We don't know what the total death count would have been with everything open, but 579 child deaths used to be considered a lot, and it would have been a lot higher without the precautions that were taken.
    • ghoward 5y ago
      For the number of children in America, those numbers are tiny. Really. And do we have the data on the comorbidities those children had?
• jseliger 5y ago
  I've taught English to undergrads (mostly freshmen), on and off, for 13 years, and it's apparent that no one I'm aware of has a great model for teaching reading and writing skills online, at least to college students. Most of the efforts I've seen attempt, mostly unsuccessfully, to replicate the classroom model, or attempt what looks mostly like a busywork model. College students are likely more motivated on average than K-12 students. It's possible for the highly motivated to learn a lot, but, for the median student, things look much grimmer. I'm not a luddite and would love to see successful online education that works at least as well as offline. So far, I'm not hugely optimistic, for the median student: https://seliger.com/2013/08/19/computers-and-education-an-example-of-conventional-wisdom-being-wrong/ https://seliger.com/2013/08/19/computers-and-education-an-ex....
  • qsort 5y ago
    To be fair that's a very hard problem. I have no formal teaching experience, but I taught several competitive mathematics seminars for elite high school students. Transposing the classroom model is unsatisfactory, working remotely strongly encourages you to pursue asynchronous models. But on the other hand a lesson is more than just a youtube video, you definitely want some degree of interactivity. It sounds really silly, but I wonder if internet-first models like Twitch streams with rich interactive chats are actually closer to the solution.
  • toast0 5y ago
    I think there's this expectation that online/computer based education would reduce/eliminate teachers and allow for mostly unsupervised learning, and I just don't see how that would work for reading and especially writing. Maybe reading, a bit, because a lot of people will get most of the way there with learn by example and a couple check ins. And then lots of practice. Writing seems difficult to computerize. And having a classroom full of students doing roughly the same thing seems a lot less labor intensive than each student at their own pace with a teacher available with enough context to appropriately critique and encourage and provide useful resources. The arithmetic portions of elementary mathematics seem a lot more amenable to computerization. The computer can easily judge the answers, and while it takes a lot of time and practice to master some of the skills, the breadth of skills is really not that deep, so there's not a whole lot of context that needs to be considered when help is needed. I don't know that this still holds at higher level math, but there's parts that might. On the other hand, group instruction can allow for peer assistance with tricky things which may help both parties understand the material more.
• skizm 5y ago
  I agree with this for like 95-99% of people. I do think there are a few internally motivated students who will thrive in this environment. Obviously you can't make policy around those few, but it would be interesting to give students the option going forward now that there is some sort of infrastructure set up around remote learning. The primary issue I see is that a large group of very non-motivated students will probably take advantage of this option and just slack off even more. These are the ones that need the in person structure the most. Overall though, agree that it has been a total disaster apart from being a rare learning opportunity for policy makers.
  • qsort 5y ago
    Yeah, I agree that a mixed model can possibly work, but I worry you'd be running into similar problems as those that came out during the pandemic. I'm a big believer that meritocracy and an ethics of self-motivation can genuinely help disadvantaged but talented people, but that requires offering them a place where they can dedicate themselves to developing that talent. I worry that talented but poor people would actually those that get hit the most by mixed solutions like that. > I agree with this for like 95-99% of people. Honestly, K-12 education is completely useless for the top 5% in the first place. You simply can't design a system around those people.
  • odessacubbage 5y ago
    my high school actually had a good structure for this kind of model. all class attendance was effectively optional and there was no homework outside of a few big quarterly projects (every classroom has a drawer full of practice assignments you could refer to as-needed). you were essentially given complete freedom... provided your gpa stayed at least 3.0, if you fell below you'd be put on academic probation which required you to come to class and do homework etc until your grades improved. in general i dislike the notion of 'unmotivated students' more often ime you have kids who not being provided an educational experience that aligns with their motivations.
  • icelancer 5y ago
    > I agree with this for like 95-99% of people. I do think there are a few internally motivated students who will thrive in this environment. No doubt. Perhaps ironically, outliers that thrive on independent study (I likely would have been one of these people) drive inequality up!
• snarf21 5y ago
  It can be an easy mistake to make. Too often we assume that everyone is high functioning and higher than average aptitude with higher than average support. I'm sure all those kids did okay during distance learning. It is all the other kids that will struggle. We forget that there were kids in our classes that struggled even with the full support and structure of school. I think it may allow us to change our approach to education moving forward. We had a forced experiment that created a lot of data. Hopefully we all learn something from it. I always take it back to a conversation I've had with co-workers about meetings. Frequently, people all leave the same meeting with different expectations and understandings. This is despite a long meeting, discussion, white boards and back and forth. Communication is hard and a skill we tragically under develop. Education is the same, you have abstract concepts that must be converted into internal mental models by students at different levels and abilities.
• spoonjim 5y ago
  What do you do for a living? I also found school to be a huge waste of time but I was a very high IQ kid. When I would be stuck at home I would just read books or mess around with chemical reactions. Plus I had a very comfortable middle class life. But the average IQ kid cannot self study like that and the average income family may not have a private room for the kid to study, may have abusive situations at home, etc.
  • qsort 5y ago
    > What do you do for a living? I'm a software developer, I have been working from home since the pandemic started and that's probably what led me to my initial opinion - I had almost no drop in productivity and I (wrongly) assumed school wasn't kinda sorta like my job. > I also found school to be a huge waste of time but I was a very high IQ kid. I was top ~1% as well. I agree K-12 is inherently useless for the top few percent, but I still think "normal" school is massively wasteful, even when you only take into account the middle 90%. Most of it just felt fake if I'm being honest: dumbed down versions of reality fed by teachers to students with the mutual understandment that it's all bullshit, so that eventually there's going to be a garbage test where the teacher knows the grades in advance. I'm Italian though, not American, so YMMV. > average income family may not have a private room for the kid to study, may have abusive situations at home, etc. Yes, completely agree. I thought they'd be second-order effects but they weren't. My parents were working class but I don't recall money ever being a pressing issue, we were "poor" but not "really poor", so that might have skewed my perspective as well.
• CountDrewku 5y ago
  It's a HUGE issue when you look at low income, lower class individuals. A lot of the kids in those circumstances only get reprieve from their terrible home lives by going to school. This is not to say it doesn't affect kids in other income classes but the effect is far worse on the lower class. The younger the child is the worse as well.
• dougmwne 5y ago
  I will comment that I kind of love this process of fact finding. We could have an endless political debate a about teaching methods, tech in the classroom, distance learning, teacher quality, school funding and so on. We could have an unquestionable doctrine that smaller class sizes lead to the best education or other maxims. We could have heartfelt beliefs in teacher compensation. But at the end of the day, you try something and it either works or doesn't work, and you really and truly have an opportunity to learn what works best. The best possible way to honor the tough years that students had during the pandemic is to supercharge our learning about learning, take the distance education lessons to heart and let previous dogma be overturned with new best practices.
• david38 5y ago
  For more I think is having someone around to ask questions of.
• sureglymop 5y ago
  To me, going remote significantly improved my life. I have ADHD and in classrooms with people around my i cannot focus at all :( Now because of covid, my university not only livestreams all the lectures but also uploads the recordings. It's absolutely perfect for someone like me. I still go to some lectures and exercise groups for social reasons but i stay home 2-3 days a week and on those days i can just hyperfocus completely.