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> First, we review research showing that social class is associated with unequal access to digital tools, unequal familiarity with digital skills and unequal us

> First, we review research showing that social class is associated with unequal access to digital tools, unequal familiarity with digital skills and unequal uses of such tools for learning purposes I have several friends who are elementary and middle school teachers. This echoes what they’ve been saying: The pandemic response among parents has been starkly divided across class lines. Families with stay-at-home parents are, obviously, the least impacted. However, many of their children from less well-off households simply disappear completely during quarantine periods. The problem is so bad that they have scheduled time each afternoon to try to call all of the parents whose children didn’t log on to the remote learning session (with their school-provided computers with school-provided cellular connections). If they can reach the parents at all they often indicate they don’t even care that their kids were absent because they don’t believe in the distance learning. The indifference is mind-boggling as a parent, but it’s real. That said, leaving schools fully opened at all times wasn’t really a viable option. Kids may not be as vulnerable to COVID as adults, but put 20-30 of them in enclosed rooms and the virus will spread. Local school districts here tried to stay open as long as possible but they quickly ran into a lack of teachers as the teachers became ill (multiple times in several cases) or simply quit because they couldn’t risk it for themselves or their families at home.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
retrac 5y ago
> The indifference is mind-boggling as a parent Imagine you were raised by parents who had unpleasant experiences with formal education and/or by parents who had an attitude themselves of "my kid isn't getting any use out of those six hours" anyway. That's often the mindset behind the attitude, not so much as that parents don't love their kids and want what they see is the best for them. (Of course there's plenty of abuse and full-on neglect motivating such absenteeism, too.)
whoknowswhat11 5y ago
I can talk a bit about private schools. Many of them adapted quickly. Outdoor classrooms, meeting at parks. Tons of flexibility from teachers / staff. Very quick remodels of spaces - ie, take a wall out of a classroom so it open straight outside with a rolling door etc, very high levels of ventilation. Some doing weekly testing - test on Thursday, turn in Friday, results by Sunday to make decisions on stay at home / come in. Vaccine mandates for all adult staff. In other words, for parents of private school students, the value of in-person learning is clear, and the schools are delivering it. The risk in an outdoor classroom, students and teachers masked, teachers vaccinated, is relatively minimal. Student viral load in terms of spread is not so high either from what I've heard. Even inside, with in and out fans running, significant ventilation I'm not sure risk is as terrible as its made out to be. We'll see how this all plays out. From what I've seen, those kids are doing great (and yes, camping trips replaced sleepovers etc in these families - but their kids remaining socially engaged with friends etc).
- bachmeier 5y ago
  > In other words, for parents of private school students, the value of in-person learning is clear, and the schools are delivering it. There's nothing surprising about that. You have a group of parents with money and a desire to educate their children in a particular way, so they went ahead and spent the necessary money and put in the necessary time to make it happen. That doesn't help much for the parents that have to send their kids to an underfunded public school in a big city.
  - sreque 5y ago
    I think there have been enough studies now to show that the problem with most public schools in the U.S. have little or nothing to do with underfunding. Thomas Sowell's recent book, "Charter Schools and their enemies", shows that Charter schools with less funding can insanely outperform public schools they compete with in inner cities, even though the public schools have more funding per student. https://www.amazon.com/Charter-Schools-Enemies-Thomas-Sowell/dp/1541675134 https://www.amazon.com/Charter-Schools-Enemies-Thomas-Sowell...
    - willcipriano 5y ago
      The US spending is on a per student basis is on par with other OECD nations[0], it is incumbent upon the teachers unions and department of education to explain why they can not achieve what the rest of the world has with the same funds, not the taxpayer to throw more money onto the bonfire. [0]https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd
      - tyoma 5y ago
        US schools serve as a de-facto provider of social services. Think free lunches and breakfast, school nurses, screening for disease/disabilities, sports and multitudes of after school activities to keep kids occupies until parents return, transportation to/from school, etc. Those services are a separate line-item i (I imagine) every other country. A better and more instructive comparison would be money spent only on instruction, adjusted for PPP and maybe student poverty.
dantheman 5y ago
It's amazing that private schools were somehow able to operate. Perhaps instead of doing something didn't work, we just split the kids into 2 groups, Monday-Wednesday, and then Tuesday-Saturday. Then we'd only have 10 - 15 kids per class. Give them more self directed study and homework. Have some pre-recorded video classes they can do on other days and have a proctor to help handle a larger # of kids. There are many alternatives to remote only learning.
- artursapek 5y ago
  Private schools didn't have insane months-long "remote learning" because they're accountable to their students/families, who pay tuition and choose to attend that school over other schools. It's free market capitalism at work and it's beautiful.
- retrac 5y ago
  The idea of split time was discussed in the public system here in Canada in many places, at the start. But come summer the general attitude and public discussion seems to have taken a very all-or-nothing turn.
  - __blockcipher__ 5y ago
    Somehow nobody seems to feel a need to justify why would we make any changes* to in-person schooling. Instead it just seems to be a foregone conclusion that having kids in school is dangerous. Why is split learning even on the table? Who are we trying to protect? The kids? The teachers? Are most people in these hyper-partisan democrat areas (I'm speaking from a US perspective, but it's largely the US that has voluntarily wrecked now almost 2 years of education) aware that the kids are not at serious risk of COVID? Are they aware that, not only is the mortality of common comparisons like Influenza way higher, but that the common rebuttal of "but what about long COVID" is basically an evidenceless assertion and there is no evidence that children are getting permanent damage from their largely asymptomatic COVID infections? Are they aware that, even if it were right to try to prevent kids from ever getting infected with SARS-2 (spoiler: it's not), that we don't even have quality studies proving that going to school is even associated with greater COVID infection? Are they aware that, unlike the H1N1 pandemic, it's actually pretty miraculous that SARS-2 almost entirely spares children? That therefore to undergo these measures like school closures and constant indoor masking of toddlers, and 6 foot distancing, and plastic dividers, and restricted extracurricular events, has no relation to actually keeping children safe, except insofar as those measures very clearly harm the wellbeing of children? I weep for what we've done to children throughout this. We as adults are supposed to be the ones saying, "hey, even if there's risk to us adults, you guys are more important, and we're never going to ask you to sacrifice your life out of some misguided effort to prevent the transmission of an endemic highly infectious human coronavirus, and on the contrary we will make whatever sacrifices are necessary to keep you guys growing and developing". Instead we turned around and said, "kids are inherently gross, they're spreading this killer virus like crazy, if they develop a cough and hug their grandmother and the grandmother later dies of COVID then they killed their grandma". As someone who lives in California - which together with New York and Illinois has led the country in absurd and ineffective and incredibly authoritarian COVID policy - I feel like I don't recognize my fellow citizens. * Well, any changes because of COVID specifically. Obviously there's things like later school start times for teenagers, etc that are no-brainers that should have been implemented long ago
ASinclair 5y ago
> If they can reach the parents at all they often indicate they don’t even care that their kids were absent because they don’t believe in the distance learning. The indifference is mind-boggling as a parent, but it’s real. Is it because they don't believe in distance learning or just learning in general? Maybe they relied on school as a glorified daycare. Education was just a side effect.
- pc86 5y ago
  I don't think relying on primary and secondary education as glorified daycare is class-specific, or all that surprising a statement. Plenty of my HS and college classmates who are successful economically were complaining publicly about having to "deal with" their kids during the day while trying to work.
- grumpyprole 5y ago
  In the UK, opportunities for the working class are certainly much harder to come by. Entrance to many professions is closed-off by not going to the right private school, not having the money to pay for tuition to get into a grammar school or not having enough money or connections to work for free as an intern. Our government, businesses and the media are mostly run by privately educated individuals. We don't have "the American dream". It's not unsurprising to see why some parents might see state education as just day care.
  - michaelt 5y ago
    Aren't unpaid internships mostly for industries that have shitty job prospects anyway? I mean, I know unpaid internships are widespread in things like fashion design and poetry and journalism - but there's no need to do unpaid internships if you're trying to get into programming or accounting.
    - grumpyprole 5y ago
      My point was that when people turn on their TV and they don't see people like them in the media and in the arts, it must not exactly inspire.
908B64B197 5y ago
> whose children didn’t log on to the remote learning session (with their school-provided computers with school-provided cellular connections). That's just laziness.
beckman466 5y ago
> If they can reach the parents at all they often indicate they don’t even care that their kids were absent because they don’t believe in the distance learning. The indifference is mind-boggling as a parent, but it’s real. maybe because for the working class the classroom is seen as one of the last places where working class children can receive a tiny bit of the patience and encouragement that is needed to help develop a child's own learning process. i am talking about 'holding hands during the first attempt' encouragement. encouragement together with a viable learning path/trajectory that is focused on creating resilient learners. the parents say that they don't believe in 'distance learning', not school it's entirety. it's disingenuous for you to insinuate that the two are the same. they're not.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

retrac 5y ago

> The indifference is mind-boggling as a parent Imagine you were raised by parents who had unpleasant experiences with formal education and/or by parents who had an attitude themselves of "my kid isn't getting any use out of those six hours" anyway. That's often the mindset behind the attitude, not so much as that parents don't love their kids and want what they see is the best for them. (Of course there's plenty of abuse and full-on neglect motivating such absenteeism, too.)

whoknowswhat11 5y ago

I can talk a bit about private schools. Many of them adapted quickly. Outdoor classrooms, meeting at parks. Tons of flexibility from teachers / staff. Very quick remodels of spaces - ie, take a wall out of a classroom so it open straight outside with a rolling door etc, very high levels of ventilation. Some doing weekly testing - test on Thursday, turn in Friday, results by Sunday to make decisions on stay at home / come in. Vaccine mandates for all adult staff. In other words, for parents of private school students, the value of in-person learning is clear, and the schools are delivering it. The risk in an outdoor classroom, students and teachers masked, teachers vaccinated, is relatively minimal. Student viral load in terms of spread is not so high either from what I've heard. Even inside, with in and out fans running, significant ventilation I'm not sure risk is as terrible as its made out to be. We'll see how this all plays out. From what I've seen, those kids are doing great (and yes, camping trips replaced sleepovers etc in these families - but their kids remaining socially engaged with friends etc).

bachmeier 5y ago
> In other words, for parents of private school students, the value of in-person learning is clear, and the schools are delivering it. There's nothing surprising about that. You have a group of parents with money and a desire to educate their children in a particular way, so they went ahead and spent the necessary money and put in the necessary time to make it happen. That doesn't help much for the parents that have to send their kids to an underfunded public school in a big city.
- sreque 5y ago
  I think there have been enough studies now to show that the problem with most public schools in the U.S. have little or nothing to do with underfunding. Thomas Sowell's recent book, "Charter Schools and their enemies", shows that Charter schools with less funding can insanely outperform public schools they compete with in inner cities, even though the public schools have more funding per student. https://www.amazon.com/Charter-Schools-Enemies-Thomas-Sowell/dp/1541675134 https://www.amazon.com/Charter-Schools-Enemies-Thomas-Sowell...
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    The US spending is on a per student basis is on par with other OECD nations[0], it is incumbent upon the teachers unions and department of education to explain why they can not achieve what the rest of the world has with the same funds, not the taxpayer to throw more money onto the bonfire. [0]https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd
    - tyoma 5y ago
      US schools serve as a de-facto provider of social services. Think free lunches and breakfast, school nurses, screening for disease/disabilities, sports and multitudes of after school activities to keep kids occupies until parents return, transportation to/from school, etc. Those services are a separate line-item i (I imagine) every other country. A better and more instructive comparison would be money spent only on instruction, adjusted for PPP and maybe student poverty.

dantheman 5y ago

It's amazing that private schools were somehow able to operate. Perhaps instead of doing something didn't work, we just split the kids into 2 groups, Monday-Wednesday, and then Tuesday-Saturday. Then we'd only have 10 - 15 kids per class. Give them more self directed study and homework. Have some pre-recorded video classes they can do on other days and have a proctor to help handle a larger # of kids. There are many alternatives to remote only learning.

artursapek 5y ago
Private schools didn't have insane months-long "remote learning" because they're accountable to their students/families, who pay tuition and choose to attend that school over other schools. It's free market capitalism at work and it's beautiful.
retrac 5y ago
The idea of split time was discussed in the public system here in Canada in many places, at the start. But come summer the general attitude and public discussion seems to have taken a very all-or-nothing turn.
- __blockcipher__ 5y ago
  Somehow nobody seems to feel a need to justify why would we make any changes* to in-person schooling. Instead it just seems to be a foregone conclusion that having kids in school is dangerous. Why is split learning even on the table? Who are we trying to protect? The kids? The teachers? Are most people in these hyper-partisan democrat areas (I'm speaking from a US perspective, but it's largely the US that has voluntarily wrecked now almost 2 years of education) aware that the kids are not at serious risk of COVID? Are they aware that, not only is the mortality of common comparisons like Influenza way higher, but that the common rebuttal of "but what about long COVID" is basically an evidenceless assertion and there is no evidence that children are getting permanent damage from their largely asymptomatic COVID infections? Are they aware that, even if it were right to try to prevent kids from ever getting infected with SARS-2 (spoiler: it's not), that we don't even have quality studies proving that going to school is even associated with greater COVID infection? Are they aware that, unlike the H1N1 pandemic, it's actually pretty miraculous that SARS-2 almost entirely spares children? That therefore to undergo these measures like school closures and constant indoor masking of toddlers, and 6 foot distancing, and plastic dividers, and restricted extracurricular events, has no relation to actually keeping children safe, except insofar as those measures very clearly harm the wellbeing of children? I weep for what we've done to children throughout this. We as adults are supposed to be the ones saying, "hey, even if there's risk to us adults, you guys are more important, and we're never going to ask you to sacrifice your life out of some misguided effort to prevent the transmission of an endemic highly infectious human coronavirus, and on the contrary we will make whatever sacrifices are necessary to keep you guys growing and developing". Instead we turned around and said, "kids are inherently gross, they're spreading this killer virus like crazy, if they develop a cough and hug their grandmother and the grandmother later dies of COVID then they killed their grandma". As someone who lives in California - which together with New York and Illinois has led the country in absurd and ineffective and incredibly authoritarian COVID policy - I feel like I don't recognize my fellow citizens. * Well, any changes because of COVID specifically. Obviously there's things like later school start times for teenagers, etc that are no-brainers that should have been implemented long ago

ASinclair 5y ago

> If they can reach the parents at all they often indicate they don’t even care that their kids were absent because they don’t believe in the distance learning. The indifference is mind-boggling as a parent, but it’s real. Is it because they don't believe in distance learning or just learning in general? Maybe they relied on school as a glorified daycare. Education was just a side effect.

pc86 5y ago
I don't think relying on primary and secondary education as glorified daycare is class-specific, or all that surprising a statement. Plenty of my HS and college classmates who are successful economically were complaining publicly about having to "deal with" their kids during the day while trying to work.
grumpyprole 5y ago
In the UK, opportunities for the working class are certainly much harder to come by. Entrance to many professions is closed-off by not going to the right private school, not having the money to pay for tuition to get into a grammar school or not having enough money or connections to work for free as an intern. Our government, businesses and the media are mostly run by privately educated individuals. We don't have "the American dream". It's not unsurprising to see why some parents might see state education as just day care.
- michaelt 5y ago
  Aren't unpaid internships mostly for industries that have shitty job prospects anyway? I mean, I know unpaid internships are widespread in things like fashion design and poetry and journalism - but there's no need to do unpaid internships if you're trying to get into programming or accounting.
  - grumpyprole 5y ago
    My point was that when people turn on their TV and they don't see people like them in the media and in the arts, it must not exactly inspire.

908B64B197 5y ago

> whose children didn’t log on to the remote learning session (with their school-provided computers with school-provided cellular connections). That's just laziness.

beckman466 5y ago

> If they can reach the parents at all they often indicate they don’t even care that their kids were absent because they don’t believe in the distance learning. The indifference is mind-boggling as a parent, but it’s real. maybe because for the working class the classroom is seen as one of the last places where working class children can receive a tiny bit of the patience and encouragement that is needed to help develop a child's own learning process. i am talking about 'holding hands during the first attempt' encouragement. encouragement together with a viable learning path/trajectory that is focused on creating resilient learners. the parents say that they don't believe in 'distance learning', not school it's entirety. it's disingenuous for you to insinuate that the two are the same. they're not.