It feels as if schools have now entered a third phase of the pandemic, filled with child vaccines, adult boosters, rolling quarantines and learning recovery efforts — and of course mounting questions about the infectious new Omicron variant. If the 2019 school year was defined by emergency measures and campus closures, and the 2020 school year was about triaging the best possible classroom plans for unvaccinated school populations, the 2021 school year has thus far been one steeped in hope and urgency: Hope that vaccines will bring an end to the global health emergency and allow classrooms to safely return to normal, and urgency surrounding the students who have been pushed off track over the past 20 months — from core skills to key milestones to college and career goals.
Our most widely circulated education coverage this year focused largely on how school is still looking a whole "lot" different today than it did two years ago, how educators and policymakers are both recognizing the need for urgent learning recovery efforts, and how emerging political fights over schools and curriculum are straining an already stretched system.
Investigation:
When the pandemic forced Minneapolis students into remote learning, district officials partnered with Gaggle, a digital surveillance company that uses artificial intelligence and a team of content moderators to track the online behaviors of millions of kids across the U.S. every day. Now, public records obtained by The 74 offer an unprecedented look at how the Minneapolis school district deployed a controversial security tool that saw rapid national growth during the pandemic but carries significant civil rights and privacy concerns. The data highlight how Gaggle puts children under relentless digital surveillance long after classes end for the day. In Minneapolis, officials say the tool helps identify youth at risk of suicide. But some worry that rummaging through students’ personnel files and conversations on their school-issued Google and Microsoft accounts could backfire.
Learning Loss:
Wealthy newcomers from expensive cities like New York and San Francisco propelled housing prices in Austin, Texas, into the stratosphere in 2020, pushing out families of modest means and sending demographic shockwaves through the area’s schools. It’s just one manifestation of the pandemic’s K-shaped recession, a downturn barely felt by the affluent people at the top of the K but devastating to the people at the bottom. As schools prepared to reopen this past fall, research was showing that COVID had put the most disadvantaged students even further behind while propelling privileged children ahead and hollowing out the middle. Meaning the span of academic mastery in individual classrooms — seven grade levels in “normal” times — had widened even further, to as many as nine grade levels. In this chapter of The 74’s series examining the link between the pandemic’s economic turmoil and challenges in classrooms, Beth Hawkins takes you inside an Austin school that’s poised to meet the needs of its “bookend students” — the kids the furthest ahead and behind — and may be a model for addressing the COVID classroom crisis.
Critical Race Theory:
Calls for teachers to wear body cameras, mountains of records requests and threats against school administrators are among the flash points in an emerging new front in the nation’s culture wars, as parents and other opponents of critical race theory push back against its perceived influence in the classroom. As of June, when this feature was originally published, nine states had banned implementation of the once-obscure theory, which in the minds of many encompasses a host of racial and equity-related initiatives, from culturally responsive teaching to social-emotional learning. For many teachers, the backlash felt like a new kind of McCarthyism, where they fear being harassed, fined or fired for a wide array of classroom activities associated with the examination of structural racism in America. “It’s a huge distraction at a time when we can’t afford a distraction,” Dan Domenico, executive director, The School Superintendents Association, told reporter Linda Jacobson ahead of the start of the 2021 school year. “This has been a year the majority of students were not exposed to the kind of learning they should have been exposed to. Now you’re going to paralyze teachers because they are afraid to teach.”
School Safety:
Five days after extremists used the fringe video gaming platform alive to livestream a mob attack on the U.S. Capitol in January, a youthful white nationalist logged on to the site and offered his take about the future of a movement he helped create — a radical agenda, experts warn, that’s targeted at teens. As the Capitol riot reawakens many Americans to the persistent reality of white supremacists among us, experts on extremism are sounding the alarm about the ways alt-right groups weaponize video games and streaming platforms to recruiting and radicalizing influential young minds. For teens whose isolation has been heightened by the pandemic, the desire for connection makes them particularly vulnerable, especially in the current political climate. But experts say parents and teachers can intervene before it's too late.
Mental health:
Between April and October 2020, emergency room visits rose 24 percent for 5- to 11-year-olds and 31 percent for 12 to 17-year-olds, a trend experts already attribute to the stress of the pandemic. Add to the crisis. -related disorders in youth. When students returned to in-person learning last winter, these traits began to show up in classrooms—and teachers became the first line of defense. Fearing what this could mean for the start of the 2021 school year, teachers began signing up for mental health first aid certification over the summer. Curriculum administered by nonprofits, including communities in schools, reminds adults nationwide that they are not "superheroes"—but they can guide young people toward getting help in a mental health challenge, while helping many struggles. Can reduce stigma and judgment around. Epidemic awakening. In the first installment of a special three-part series produced in partnership with the Texas Tribune, Beak McNeil looks at how this training has helped teachers at one Texas school, as well as other teachers across the country, learn about their students' often hidden mental health issues. Helped to deal with health issues.
Remote learning:
Middle school teacher Brandy Brandt knocks on the door of a San Antonio apartment for the third time. "It's Ms. Brandt! Davy, are you there?" she called. Finally, Davy's older brother opened the door. "Aren't you really going away?" he said, trying to be as angry as a smile on the corner of his mouth. "You know we're not giving up!" Brandt replied. During the first half of the 2020-21 school year, teachers from Rawlinson Middle School visited nearly 100 homes with children in urgent need of support and engagement. Half of the school's 1,350 students learn remotely during that time frame, and thus are at high risk of chronic absenteeism, with teachers knocking at the first sign of trouble. "I felt a sense of urgency," said principal Sherry Miracles, "if they're not getting their schooling, it's our responsibility." "I'm not going to allow a 12-, 13-, 14-year-old to drop out of school. Not in my mind."
Acceleration of Learning:
In a report released last May, researchers offered some advice for education leaders. As they decide how to spend their federal stimulus dollars and address learning loss in the coming school year, they should consider the lesser impact of treatment – the need to make up the material they missed before proceeding. Specific gap-closing exercises—and new evidence suggests there's a better way. TNTP and learn analyzed the experiences of 2 million students during the current academic year and found that, on learn math app, classes featuring acceleration – a strategy in which students are challenged by grade-level lessons and specific as needed Instructed in the missing skill - saw a dramatic increase. Students receiving this type of support completed more than 25 percent of the grade-level work they would have done to access the treatment. On the contrary, the students' struggle in healing continued.
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