Thursday, April 21, 2022
PMT: The Hidden Cost of the Pandemic
Almost exactly two years ago, on April 16, 2020, I wrote here about my fear that the pandemic-- then just gearing up-- would devastate educational attainment, particularly for the poor and minorities. Here is part of what I wrote then:
According to the Washington Post, the schools in Fairfax County, Virginia (a wealthy area just outside of DC) have pretty much melted down. First, they took a month off, with no classes after March 13 until this week, when they were supposed to start distance learning. That transition, even with so much prep time, didn't go very well. The system they use, Blackboard, proved to be unreliable. Perhaps worse, it was insecure, and miscreants were able to enter the virtual classrooms and post chat comments like "F___ you, yiu smell like gay" (which is not only offensive, but pretty confusing-- how can the sense of smell be the basis of online harrassment?).
After a few hours of that, they shut the whole thing down until Monday. Which, by my calculation, will be the fifth week of lost instruction for a 189,000-student district that should have resources many smaller districts lack-- and still couldn't pull it off...
The cost to those students who aren't plugged in or who are suffering through failures like the one in Fairfax will be significant. Five weeks is a lot of school, no matter the level. You can't usually, for example, expect to pass an AP test if you missed five weeks of material (this year, apparently, they are adjusting the tests-- but that just means that AP students will be less prepared for college).
And, of course, all of this will hit the least affluent the hardest. Their schools have fewer resources to handle the transition, and the families have less access to technology and WiFi. This is just another aspect of the pandemic that is going to exacerbate income disparities over the long run.
The disruptions caused by COVID-19 are largely masked right now by disconnection and dispersion. But when we look back at this in 20 years, the tragedies wrought by a thousand small blows will be very clear to see.
It appears that my fear is coming true, unfortunately. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that about 22% of American students are on track to be considered "chronically absent" by the end of the year, about twice the normal level. Sadly, the worst of it is falling on poor and minority communities, meaning that this will deepen and widen the troubling disparities in our society, including income and wealth gaps that are already shockingly wide.
Part of the problem is that once people drift away from going to school, it is really hard to get them back. I see this even among kids ripe for college-- if they take a "gap year" without a firm plan for the end of that year, it tends to turn into a gap lifetime.
It's a common reaction to blame the kids, or the families of those kids, who don't go to school. That's too easy, though, and it solves no problem. If we continue to exacerbate the disparities in our society, it will be bad for us all.
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In this year I am concerned what is really meant by chronic absence. If it is just a number of days out of school it may not be a fair assessment of the 2021-22 school year. While school resumed many children were quarantined, 5 to 10 days depending on the school district, during this past school year. And some kids more than once. One of my concerns is the low level of vaccination in the 5 to 12 age group. I know there are legitimate concerns about the vaccine side effects in this age group.
The assault on the public education system by politicians this past year is equally concerning. I am still trying to understand how a math text book promotes CRT. And I fear some legislators have forgotten the concept of binary numbers and think the term is referring to sexuality.
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The assault on the public education system by politicians this past year is equally concerning. I am still trying to understand how a math text book promotes CRT. And I fear some legislators have forgotten the concept of binary numbers and think the term is referring to sexuality.
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