This is the latest roundup in our “Best Of” series, spotlighting top highlights from this year’s coverage as well as the most popular articles we’ve published each month. See more of the standouts from across 2020 right here.
As coronavirus cases surged in the spring — and then again in the autumn — educators, families and district leaders did their best to pivot to a socially-distanced Plan B, building a new system of remote instruction overnight in hopes of maintaining learning and community.
Distance learning, that surfaced solutions and innovations that were working for some districts, and that pointed to the bigger questions of how disrupted back-to-back school years may lead to long-term consequences for this generation of student.
As we approach the new year, we’re continuing to report on America’s evolving, patchwork education system via our coronavirus education reporting project at The74Million. Clear that our education system will begin 2021 in a similar state of turmoil. (Get our latest reporting on schools and the pandemic delivered straight to your inbox by signing up for The 74 Newsletter)
But with the first vaccines being administered this month, we’re seeing our first glimpse of a light at the end of this chaotic tunnel — hope that the virus will quickly dissipate, that schools will fully reopen, and that we’ll then find a way to help all of America’s 74 million children catch up. Here are our 20 most read and shared articles of the year
Parent Priorities: Polling data released this past May from the national nonprofit Learning Heroes found parents were engaged in their kids’ distance learning but wanted more contact with teachers, both for their kids and for themselves as at-home learning coaches. Nearly half of more than 3,600 parents surveyed said personal guidance would be extremely helpful, but just 15 percent have gotten it. Only 39 percent said they had a clear understanding of teachers’ expectations, and few were getting the texts and phone calls they said are the most effective means of communication. The poll illustrated new implications of a longstanding, fundamental lack of information, which previous Learning Heroes surveys have found feeds parents’ near-universal belief that their children are doing far better in school than they really are. As schools plan for eventual reopening, Learning Heroes President Bib Hubbard told Beth Hawkins, they should carefully consider what parents say is working for them — because while families are giving schools and teachers the benefit of the doubt now, that may not last. “There’s a lot of grace right now,” Hubbard say. “But I think that’s going to change next fall.”
Displaced: No two experiences of this pandemic have been the same, particularly when it comes to school communities. When we launched this project in late May, it had been several months since COVID-19 shuttered districts across the country. In what would have been the final months of the 2019-20 academic year, tens of millions of students, educators and parents saw their lives upended overnight. Still, half of America’s school employees aren’t teachers. When the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States, millions of other workers integral to the American education system were similarly uprooted. As the country (and its school communities) continued to navigate its way through a disaster for which it was grossly unprepared, a team from The 74 set out to track how life and work has changed for the diverse universe of characters who make our classrooms work. From parents to teachers, counselors and even district warehouse managers, the pandemic has been a time of unprecedented hardships and challenges. Here: Eight faces and unforgettable stories from across the country that begin to capture the real story of the pandemic’s impact on the wider community.
Skills Gap: A paper from economists Eric Hanushek of Stanford University and Luger Weissmann of the University of Munich presents a sobering prediction of how school closures could impact the U.S. economy for the next 80 years. The paper estimates that the shutdowns could ultimately lead to losses ranging from $14.2 trillion for a third of the school year to almost $28 trillion for two-thirds. That’s because “learning loss will lead to skill loss, and the skills people have related to their productivity,” writes international education expert Andreas Schleicher, of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The U.S., Schleicher said, was actually better positioned than many other nations to make the transition to remote learning. But looking ahead, he said the country could do a better job of directing education spending toward quality F instruction and the students who need resources the most.
School Safety: Looking to spur the New York City Department of Education to take preventative action on airborne COVID transmission in schools, the United Federation of Teachers announced this past summer that it was taking the longstanding issue of poor ventilation into its own hands. President Michael outgrew told The 74’s Zoo Kirsch in an exclusive interview this past August that the union was sending its own health and safety workers into 30 “red flag” schools with the worst ventilation systems to do their own air quality testing. The move came as the FT escalated its criticism of the city’s school reopening plan, saying it failed to meet student and staff safety standards on several fronts. Less than half of New York City’s roughly 1,400 school buildings are equipped with heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, which maintain indoor air quality. “One of the biggest risk factors is time spent in under ventilated spaces indoors. You want to control the emissions and removal,” said Joseph Allen, who runs the Healthy Buildings program at Harvard’s Chan school of Public Health and estimates that 90 percent of U.S. schools are under ventilated. A 2000 NYC report said, The FT receives more complaints from its members about poor indoor air quality in schools than about any other health and safety issue.
You must be logged in to post a comment.