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Putting aside the general trends you've identifier, in the spirit of my previous comment, #3 -- "online charter school", I think this is definitely, 100%, absol

Putting aside the general trends you've identifier, in the spirit of my previous comment, #3 -- "online charter school", I think this is definitely, 100%, absolutely, absotively, definitely, 100% dead. Just not happening -- the COVID remote school experiment was a failure on every axis other than public health, and everyone from parents to children to teachers to administrators acknowledges this.

yamtaddle 4y ago
Right—I just think public school districts are already in a bad personnel crunch, and that they'll revive online options (not all of them, but quite a few will try it) rather than significantly increase wages, because bad online school will be preferable to 40+ students per class and/or to holding classes only half-time and having kids do "study hall" in a gym or cafeteria the rest of the time, which is already de-facto the state of things at some schools in my area—including "good" ones—that are losing teachers and can't get more or get enough substitutes. These issues are largely hidden from parents so far, but that's not gonna last as it keeps getting worse, and they'll demand a fix. They could fix it with a large wage hike, but I don't think they'll do it, and they'd need to be doing that now not to still have a significant gap in coverage for at least a couple years. I do expect many or most of these online experiments will happen in physical school buildings, not at home, though, because parents want the daycare aspect—two teachers monitoring & assisting 100 online-learning students in a big room, or whatever, or 30 students in a room looking at screens with some kind of low-wage paraprofessional, or something. I think we're in for more online learning efforts because I don't think we can afford enough decent-or-better in-person teachers anymore to support the old model. But maybe I'll be surprised and we'll pass far-larger school budgets instead. [EDIT] Though, I guess it's also possible we'll just accept public schools taking a permanent nose-dive in quality post-Covid and not do anything to try to fix it. I'd say that's more likely than significantly increasing teacher wages, in fact.

yamtaddle 4y ago

Right—I just think public school districts are already in a bad personnel crunch, and that they'll revive online options (not all of them, but quite a few will try it) rather than significantly increase wages, because bad online school will be preferable to 40+ students per class and/or to holding classes only half-time and having kids do "study hall" in a gym or cafeteria the rest of the time, which is already de-facto the state of things at some schools in my area—including "good" ones—that are losing teachers and can't get more or get enough substitutes. These issues are largely hidden from parents so far, but that's not gonna last as it keeps getting worse, and they'll demand a fix. They could fix it with a large wage hike, but I don't think they'll do it, and they'd need to be doing that now not to still have a significant gap in coverage for at least a couple years. I do expect many or most of these online experiments will happen in physical school buildings, not at home, though, because parents want the daycare aspect—two teachers monitoring & assisting 100 online-learning students in a big room, or whatever, or 30 students in a room looking at screens with some kind of low-wage paraprofessional, or something. I think we're in for more online learning efforts because I don't think we can afford enough decent-or-better in-person teachers anymore to support the old model. But maybe I'll be surprised and we'll pass far-larger school budgets instead. [EDIT] Though, I guess it's also possible we'll just accept public schools taking a permanent nose-dive in quality post-Covid and not do anything to try to fix it. I'd say that's more likely than significantly increasing teacher wages, in fact.