11/17/2023 0 Comments Fewer children are school remotely inEducators’ interest in online instructional materials exploded, too, according to Schwartz, “and it really put the foot on the gas to ramp them up, expand them, and in theory, improve them.” By June 2021, the number of school districts with a stand-alone virtual school rose to 26 percent. The pandemic sparked growth in stand-alone virtual academies, in addition to the emergency remote learning that districts had to adopt in March 2020. Their students were a year behind in math and nearly a half-year behind in reading, and courses offered less direct time with a teacher each week than regular schools have in a day. But the research on these programs, which focused on virtual charter schools that only existed online, showed poor outcomes. For the most part, the educational technology companies and developers creating software for these schools promised to give students a personalized experience. school districts offered virtual school, mostly for students with unique circumstances, such as a disability or those intensely pursuing a sport or the performing arts, according to a RAND survey Schwartz co-authored. “Until we can reach that goal, I don’t have high confidence that the next prolonged school closure will be substantially more successful.”īefore the pandemic, only 3 percent of U.S. “We haven’t done anywhere near the amount of planning or the development of the instructional infrastructure needed to allow for a smooth transition next time schools need to close for prolonged periods of time,” Schwartz said. While it’s ambitious to envision that every school district will create seamless virtual learning platforms - and, for that matter, overcome challenges in education more broadly - the lessons of the pandemic are there to be followed or ignored. Effective remote learning won’t happen if schools aren’t already employing best practices in the physical classroom, such as creating a culture of learning from mistakes, empowering teachers to meet individual student needs, establishing high expectations, and setting clear goals supported by frequent feedback. And many problems with remote learning actually trace back not to technology, but to basic instructional quality. Being ready would require strategic planning, rethinking the role of the teacher, and using new technology wisely, experts told Undark. But, given the abundance of research on what didn’t work during the pandemic, school leaders may have the opportunity to do things differently next time. The stakes are highest for those who need it most: low-income children and students of color, who are also most likely to be harmed in a future pandemic or live in communities most affected by climate change. schools shifted to remote instruction on an emergency basis, the education sector is still largely unprepared for another long-term interruption of in-person school. Students need lessons that connect directly to what they were learning before school closed.” “It’s not good enough for teachers to simply refer students to disconnected, stand-alone videos on, say, YouTube. Schwartz, a senior policy researcher at RAND. But man, it’s a tall order,” said Heather L. “We absolutely need to invest in ways for schools to run continuously, to pick up where they left off. Success will hinge on big changes, from infrastructure to teacher training, several experts told Undark. Yet society very well may face new widespread calamities in the near future, from another pandemic to extreme weather, that will require a similarly quick shift to remote school. With the public health crisis on top of deaths and job losses in many families, students experienced increases in depression, anxiety, and suicide risk. The results were abysmal: low test scores, fewer children learning at grade level, increased inequity, and teacher burnout. While there were some bright spots across the country, the transition was messy and uneven - countless teachers had neither the materials nor training they needed to effectively connect with students remotely, while many of those students were bored, isolated, and lacked the resources they needed to learn. The transition to online learning in the United States during the Covid-19 pandemic was, by many accounts, a failure.
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