Online school put U S kids behind Some adults have regrets HEAD TOPICS

Online school put U S kids behind Some adults have regrets

10/21/2022 8:37:00 PM

As the harmful effects of extended pandemic school closures become more apparent some educators and parents have regrets They re questioning decisions in cities across the U S to remain online after evidence emerged that schools weren t super-spreaders

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WBUR

As the harmful effects of extended pandemic school closures become more apparent some educators and parents have regrets They re questioning decisions in cities across the U S to remain online after evidence emerged that schools weren t super-spreaders As the harmful effects of extended pandemic school closures become more apparent, some educators and parents have regrets. They’re questioning decisions in cities across the U.S. to remain online long after clear evidence emerged that schools weren’t COVID-19 super-spreaders — and months after life-saving adult vaccines became widely available. In Chicago, after a six-weekHer father would log into his grandson’s classes from his suburban home and try to monitor what was happening. But it didn’t work.“I think the answer on that has been settled fairly clearly, especially once we had vaccines available,” Arwady said. “I’m concerned about the loss that has occurred.” in math and 8 percentage points lower in reading compared with schools meeting mostly in person, according to a 2022 study by Brown University economist Emily Oster.Some school officials said they lacked the expertise to decide whether it was safe to open schools. Read more:
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Former oil executive Dan Peña has made his stance on climate change clear. As far as he is concerned, it’s not an issue. Read more >> I named my baby after the COVID-19 pandemicThe new mom was inspired by her time in lockdown. Welcome to the world, Panic Scam Smith! New COVID Subvariants Rising: How Concerned Should We Be?There is concern that COVID-19 virus subvariants BQ.1 and BQ1.1 will become a major threat in the US and that XBB could alter the COVID picture globally. At this point, infectious disease experts have only predictions. MedTwitter 🤣🤣🤣…in the vaxxed, who have weakened immune systems! Juneau’s hospital to end COVID-19 testing and treatment servicesJuneau's Bartlett Regional Hospital will close its COVID-19 monoclonal antibody therapy clinic on Oct. 24 and its drive-through COVID testing site in mid-November. PCR testing will still be available through SEARHC and Juneau Urgent Care. COVID researchers infect mice with different strains — and some are way more deadly than othersBoston COVID researchers have combined the omicron variant spike protein with the original virus, testing the created strain on mice “to help fight against future pandemics.” Study: If you had COVID, several of your organs could be aging 3-4 years fasterA lead scientist behind a long-COVID study says getting infected multiple times could also worsen the aging process. COVID subvariants: What to know and should you be concerned?In Oct. 12, there were more than 1.66 million COVID-19 cases recorded across the continent up from more than 1.53 million cases recorded in Oct. 5. LOCKDOWN COMING SOON Well the smart survive...works for me. If you are healthy, no. If you have chronic health issues, a little. If you're near Boston College, it may not mater....😂🤣 contributing to increased COVID-19 spread in the community.China quarantines college students under strict COVID policy The pandemic is a time most people want to forget — but one mother has immortalized it forever with her baby’s name.-  Medscape.“For the entire month of September, we only had 8 appointments filled, and we offer around 48 appointments per month,” Bartlett’s community relations director Erin Hardin said. Classes with masked students and distancing could be conducted safely, growing evidence said. President Joe Biden prioritized reopening schools when he took office in January 2021, and once the COVID-19 vaccine was available, some Democratic-leaning districts started to reopen. However, Cross and her husband Rob, both 36, said they look back on lockdown fondly as the reason they were able to get pregnant — because they had more time to try for a baby due to being furloughed. Yet many schools stayed closed well into the spring, including in California, where the state’s powerful teachers unions , citing lack of safety protocols. In Chicago, after a six-week standoff with the teachers union , the district started bringing students back on a hybrid schedule just before spring 2021. 28, 2021. It wasn’t until the fall that students were back in school full time. Free at-home test kits are still available for free at City Hall, the Juneau Public Health Center, public libraries and the police station. Marla Williams initially supported Chicago Public Schools' decision to instruct students online during the fall of 2020. “We really liked the name, and lockdown was a good time in our lives because it was so relaxing. Williams, a single mother, has asthma, as do her two children. While she was working, she enlisted her father, a retired teacher, to supervise her children’s studies. Jodi Cross / SWNS Jodi and Rob moved in together and got married over COVID. Her father would log into his grandson’s classes from his suburban home and try to monitor what was happening. But it didn’t work. When a new strain of COVID — Omicron — was discovered last year, they knew their baby would be born during lockdown. Her son lost motivation and wouldn’t do his assignments. Once he went back on a hybrid schedule in spring 2021, he started doing well again, Williams said. “We actually had the best time in lockdown. “I wish we’d been in person earlier,” she said. “Other schools seemed to be doing it successfully.” “People might not like the name,” she continued.” Officials were divided in Chicago. The city Department of Public Health advocated reopening schools months earlier, in the fall of 2020.” She said they look back on lockdown fondly, which is why they chose to incorporate it into her baby’s name. The commissioner, Dr. Allison Arwady, said they felt the risk of missing education was higher than the risk of COVID-19. Jodi Cross / SWNS Cross added that, although lockdown was the primary inspiration behind the name, there were a few other reasons they landed on the unusual moniker. Others, such as the director of the Institute for Global Health at Northwestern University, advocated for staying remote. “I think the answer on that has been settled fairly clearly, especially once we had vaccines available,” Arwady said. “And then we got married in Gretna Green in Scotland, where there are lots of locks. “I’m concerned about the loss that has occurred.” FILE - Audra Quisenberry, right, whispers in the ear of her classmate, Logan Bowhay, both 6, as they wait to meet other schoolmates via online Zoom, at Premier Martial Arts, Aug. 24, 2020, in Wildwood, Mo. (Jeff Roberson/AP File) From March 2020 to June 2021, the average student in Chicago lost 21 weeks of learning in reading and 20 weeks in math, equivalent to missing half a year of school, according to Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, which analyzed data from a widely used test called MAP to estimate learning loss for every U.S. school district. Nationally, kids whose schools met mostly online in the 2020-2021 school year performed in math and 8 percentage points lower in reading compared with schools meeting mostly in person, according to a 2022 study by Brown University economist Emily Oster. The setbacks have some grappling with regret. “I can’t imagine a situation where we would close schools again, unless there’s a virus attacking kids,” said Eric Conti, superintendent for Burlington, Massachusetts, a 3,400-student district outside Boston. His students alternated between online and in-person learning from the fall of 2020 until the next spring. “It’s going to be a very high bar.” Dallas Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde initially disagreed with the Texas governor’s push to reopen schools in the fall of 2020. “But it was absolutely the right thing to do,” she said. Some school officials said they lacked the expertise to decide whether it was safe to open schools. “Schools should never have been placed in a situation where we have choice,” said Tony Wold, former associate superintendent of West Contra Costa Unified School District, east of San Francisco. “With lessons learned, when you have a public health pandemic, there needs to be a single voice.” Still, many school officials said with hindsight they’d make the same decision to keep schools online well into 2021. Only two superintendents said they’d likely make a different decision if there were another pandemic that was not particularly dangerous to children. In some communities, demographics and the historic underinvestment in schools loomed large, superintendents said. In the South, Black Americans’ fear of the virus was sometimes coupled with mistrust of schools rooted in segregation. Cities from Atlanta to Nashville to Jackson, Mississippi, shuttered schools — in some cases, for nearly all of the 2020-2021 school year. In Clayton County, Georgia, home to the state’s highest percentage of Black residents, schools chief Morcease Beasley said he knew closing schools would have a devastating impact, but the fear in his community was overwhelming. “I knew teachers couldn’t teach if they were that scared, and students couldn’t learn,” he said. Rhode Island was an outlier among liberal-leaning coastal states when it ordered schools to reopen in person in the fall of 2020. “We can’t do this to our kids,” state education chief Angélica Infante-Green remembers thinking after watching students turn off cameras or log in from under blankets in bed. “This is not OK.” But in the predominantly Latino and Black Rhode Island community of Central Falls, more than three-quarters of students stayed home to study remotely. To address parent distrust, officials tracked COVID-19 cases among school-aged Central Falls residents. They met with families to show them the kids catching the virus were in remote learning — and they weren’t learning as much as students in school. It worked. Among teachers, there’s some dispute about online learning's impact on children. But many fear some students will be scarred for years. “Should we have reopened earlier? Absolutely,” said California teacher Sarah Curry. She initially favored school closings in her rural Central Valley district, but grew frustrated with the duration of distance learning. She taught pre-kindergarten and found it impossible to maintain attention spans online. One of her biggest regrets: that teachers who wanted to return to classrooms had little choice in the matter. But the nation’s 3 million public school teachers are far from a monolith. Many lost loved ones to COVID-19, battled mental health challenges of their own or feared catching the virus. Jessica Cross, who taught ninth grade math on Chicago’s west side at Phoenix Military Academy, feels her school reopened too soon. “I didn’t feel entirely safe,” she said. Mask rules were good in theory, but not all students wore them properly. She said safety should come before academics. “Ultimately, I still feel that remote learning was really the only thing to do,” Cross said. A representative from the American Federation of Teachers declined in an interview to address whether the union regrets the positions teachers took against reopening schools. “If we start to play the blame game," said Fedrick Ingram, AFT’s secretary-treasurer, “we get into the political fray of trying to determine if teachers did a good job or not. And I don’t think that’s fair.” Regrets or no, experts agree: America’s kids need more from adults if they’re going to be made whole. The country needs “ideally, a reinvention of public education as we know it,” Los Angeles Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said. Students need more days in school and smaller classes. Short of extending the school year, experts say intensive tutoring is the most efficient way to help students catch up. Saturday school or doubling up on math or reading during a regular school day would also help. Too few school districts have made those investments, Harvard economist Tom Kane said. Summer school is insufficient, Kane says — it’s voluntary, and many parents don’t sign up. Adding school time for students is politically impossible in many cities. In Los Angeles, the teachers union filed a complaint after the district scheduled four optional school days for students to recoup learning. The school board in Richmond rejected a move to an all-year school calendar. There are exceptions: Atlanta extended the school day 30 minutes for three years. Hopewell Schools in Virginia moved to year-round schooling last year. Even the federal government’s record education spending isn’t enough for the scope of kids’ academic setbacks, according to the American Educational Research Association. Researchers there estimate it will cost $700 billion to offset learning loss for America’s schoolchildren – more than three times the $190 billion allocated to schools. “We need something on the scale of the Marshall Plan for education,” said Kamras, the Richmond superintendent. “Anything short of that and we’re going to see this blip in outcomes become permanent — and that would be criminal.” ___ Gecker reported from San Francisco. Collin Binkley in Washington, D.C. , Sharon Lurye in New Orleans, Arleigh Rodgers in Indianapolis, Claire Savage in Chicago and Brooke Schultz in Harrisburg, Pa., contributed to this report. ___ .