{"id":1951,"date":"2020-12-24T22:00:37","date_gmt":"2020-12-24T22:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/?p=1331952"},"modified":"2020-12-24T22:00:37","modified_gmt":"2020-12-24T22:00:37","slug":"kids-are-failing-online-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/?p=1951","title":{"rendered":"Kids are \u2018failing\u2019 online learning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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As part of a recent weekly update on education during the pandemic, Los Angeles Unified superintendent Austin Beutner announced<\/a> a \u201csobering\u201d fact: students are still struggling with the switch to online learning months after in-person classrooms shuttered.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can see it in attendance figures which are below those typically seen when students are at schools,\u201d Beutner said in the address. \u201cAnd we can see it in the assessments of progress students are making in their studies. Ten weeks into this semester the portion of students in both middle school and high school receiving D\u2019s and F\u2019s have grown compared to last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some middle school students, according to a chart he released at the time, were seeing the rate of D\u2019s and F\u2019s go up as much as 30%. And the students already particularly disadvantaged\u2014those from lower-income schools, or those with disabilities or other barriers\u2014have by far been getting hit the hardest.<\/p>\n

The problems are now reverberating around the United States, as grades come in and students see sliding marks, raising concerns about how far behind students are falling\u2014and why they\u2019re being academically punished during a pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can say from my perspective, being graded makes it feels real\u2014I\u2019m more apt to try on an assignment if I know a letter grade is attached to it,\u201d said RAND Corporation assistant policy researcher Melissa Diliberti, herself a Ph.D. candidate, who has been researching how educators are approaching remote learning. \u201cBut I also, as a student, appreciate some level of leniency. It\u2019s hard to focus on things or to feel like the stuff you\u2019re doing is worthwhile or important when the world is going to pieces around you.\u201d<\/p>\n

How bad is the problem?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Los Angeles is hardly alone. Elsewhere in California, one San Diego superintendent told the Los Angeles Times<\/a> that failing grades have more than doubled during the pandemic, to more than 14% of all marks. An Oregon high school told The Associated Press<\/a> that failing grades had jumped from 8% of all grades to 38% in October. One Bay Area district told The Mercury News<\/a> that they\u2019d seen the number of students with more than one failing grade expand by more than 10 percentage points, to 29%, nearly a third of all students. The state is now facing a lawsuit<\/a> claiming it has let down Black and Latino families during the pandemic, failing to provide equal education opportunity<\/a> under the state constitution.<\/p>\n

Around the United States, as grades trickle in, it\u2019s become clear how devastating the switch to remote learning has been for many students. In Austin, early data released to local reporters<\/a> noted that failing grades had increased by 70%. (A spokesperson for the Austin Independent School District, Cristina Nguyen, said more recently updated data showed the district overall didn\u2019t see a statistically significant increase in failing grades, although secondary schools did see an increase.)<\/p>\n

One notably detailed report<\/a> from Fairfax, Va., on first-quarter grades found that F\u2019s had increased from 6% the prior year to 11% this year.<\/p>\n

The report concluded that there was a \u201cwidening gap\u201d among students: Those \u201cwho performed well previously primarily performed slightly better than expected during Q1 of this year,\u201d according to the report, while \u201cstudents who were previously not performing well, performed considerably less well.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s driving the increase?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

It\u2019s clear that many students are still struggling with the switch to remote learning, with some facing more barriers than others.<\/p>\n

The problems were hardly a surprise. From the earliest days of the pandemic, when schools first closed, educators noted declining attendance rates, often with the poorest schools seeing the largest drops. In August, for example, The Markup analyzed remote attendance<\/a> for 800 Florida schools and found that low-income schools saw the heaviest drops in participation. Other research has produced similar findings<\/a> from throughout the U.S.<\/p>\n

While students are suffering emotionally<\/a>, they\u2019re also suffering from technical hurdles<\/a> with remote technology, and those problems are disproportionately impacting students who already struggled the most with access to quality education.<\/p>\n

Still, researchers and administrators don\u2019t always have detailed enough data to track the specific things that are hurting grades the most. How many students fail to turn in an assignment, or are graded poorly, and how many never log in to the software at all?<\/p>\n

\u201cClearly there\u2019s some learning loss,\u201d said Phyllis Jordan, editorial director at FutureEd, an education think tank at Georgetown University. \u201cBut we\u2019re just not sure why they\u2019re getting F\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Attempts to fix the problem<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Some districts, including New York City, are moving to bring some students back to class. But with infection rates continuing to shatter records<\/a>, other districts are pushing back<\/a> their reopening dates, some indefinitely.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe simple fact is some students are struggling online,\u201d Superintendent Beutner said in his address last month.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best solution for this is to get students back to schools as soon as possible in the safest way possible,\u201d Beutner said. \u201cWe made a commitment to all in the school community to maintain the highest standard of safety at schools and we are taking all of the necessary steps to put this in place.\u201d The district announced plans<\/a> last month to bring some students back to school, but the most recent wave of COVID-19 cases has likely stymied<\/a> any large-scale return.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, some districts are changing what they can to reach students.<\/p>\n

Fairfax County Public Schools spokesperson Lucy Caldwell said in an email to The Markup that the district has taken \u201csome initial actions to support students during this very unusual school year\u201d and will look for more ways to do so.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome examples include: we extended the first quarter, we enabled schools to offer \u2018catch up days\u2019 to their staff and students, we have issued \u2018check in\u2019 surveys to monitor how our students are doing, and we changed the expectation for workload outside of class,\u201d Caldwell said.<\/p>\n

And some schools, Jordan of FutureEd said, are simply forgoing grades in the meantime, turning to qualitative measures of success\u2014giving broad feedback on a paper, say, without scoring it.<\/p>\n

A recent report<\/a> from Diliberti, the RAND Corporation researcher, and her colleagues found that as of fall of this year, only about 59% of teachers were giving students letter grades, while others had moved to a pass\/fail system, providing feedback without a grade, or just checking assignments for completion. Even that was a dramatic increase from the spring, when only about 35% were assigning grades.<\/p>\n

Some educators see the change in tactics as the most thoughtful way to help students through an unprecedented situation. As Jordan said one teacher put it at a recent FutureEd panel: \u201cGrace over grades.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Markup<\/a> by Colin Lecher<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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