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June 7, 2020 09:35 pm

America's Switch To Remote Learning For 50 Million Students Called 'A Failure'

"This spring, America took an involuntary crash course in remote learning," writes the Wall Street Journal, noting it affected 50 million students from kindergarten through 12th grade. "With the school year now winding down, the grades from students, teachers, parents and administrators is already in: It was a failure..."The problems began piling up almost immediately... Soon many districts weren't requiring students to do any work at all, increasing the risk that millions of students would have big gaps in their learning... Preliminary research suggests students nationwide will return to school in the fall with roughly 70% of learning gains in reading relative to a typical school year, and less than 50% in math, according to projections by NWEA, an Oregon-based nonprofit that provides research to help educators tailor instruction. It expects a greater learning loss for minority and low-income children who have less access to technology, and for families more affected by the economic downturn.... About 9.7 million students aren't connected to the internet, according to an estimate by the EducationSuperHighway, a nonprofit focused on connectivity in public schools. [The national average for unconnected students is 20%] "As a nation, we were not prepared to take learning online," said founder and CEO Evan Marwell... School districts didn't realize the number of students without access to devices and the internet until they surveyed parents. Districts that could afford to do so hurried to buy the technology needed to get students online. Some, such as those in Austin and Belleville, Illinois, put Wi-Fi wired buses in parking lots for students to connect from their parents' cars. Many districts prepared printed packets of work for students without online access, which were handed out in food drive-through lines at schools.... Remote learning has turned the simple task of taking attendance into a challenge. Many count students as present if they log in to do work in programs like Google Classroom, an online classroom manager. Some give attendance credit for weekly progress on completed work, while others allow parents to call in to vouch for their children. Some districts aren't bothering with attendance at all. Those that have been able to track attendance say it has been below regular levels. Some students have simply gone missing. Early into the shutdown, the Los Angeles Unified School District estimated that on any given day in a week span, 32% of high-school students didn't log in to learn.

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