Lockdown, distance learning likely to increase social class achievement gap

Source: Hacker News

Article note: ...duh? Students in environments with the resources and inclination to carve them out time and space to learn in did better... just like usual, but without the (not actually that large) leveling effects of classroom time. Schools that aren't over-subscribed and at the ass-end of decades of of systematic de-funding were able to provide better support... just like usual. Students with the cultural priming and wherewithal to ask for help got more help... just like usual, but without the easy obligate check-in of classroom time. Basically, all the remaining efforts to level and allow for mobility crumbled. Even with college students I got a major view of this. And they're not missing out on socialization like the younger students. I don't actually disapprove of a period/option of remote learning given the level of uncertainty and danger early in the pandemic. Designing good split-modality instruction is even harder than in-person or remote, and especially if it isn't a high certainty schedule, so that's not a fix. And my usual gripe about offloading the costs of the pandemic to individuals applies to later developments: no one is picking up the tab to put decent modern ventilation into poor schools... we barely have air conditioning in most of them. No one is paying to pack schools with enough qualified instructional staff to make split-modality tractable (and that, in conjunction with health risks and preexisting bullshit, is burning out the remaining teachers).
Comments
This entry was posted in News. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *