You’re Not Going Back to School Full-Time
College Opening Plans Will Fail
July 26, 2020What is Going On With Testing?!?!? Summer & Fall 2020
August 9, 2020...At Least Not for Very Long
Preface
The Situation
I think the only high schools that have a legitimate shot of doing full-time, in-person instruction this fall are the boarding schools who are sequestering their students. For everyone else, I think it'll be, at best (read: worst), a brief flirtation with full-time education and then a scramble to figure out a game plan.
Some districts are preparing for this. Many districts are not. Private schools find themselves in a tough spot, as they need tuition checks to keep rolling in, and parents don't want to pay private school prices for e-learning.
I think the early opening colleges with aggressive plans will be the canary in the coal mine. I think they'll end up being cautionary tales for K-12. In my view, by the time school starts in August, most districts will have decided that in-person education is not feasible.
Agree with me or not, my purpose isn't to convince anyone. My purpose is to talk about what comes next. Here's what your options may be and some things you may not have thought about.
What the Fall May Look Like
Hybrid Education is my preferred outcome, and it's much more likely to happen if students never attempt to go back to school full-time.
Virtual School is not great. I've never had a student who is at grade-level in math or had a good grasp of tougher concepts in science and language arts in virtual school. I think there's probably a lack of accountability, and it's made easier by a lack of face-to-face interaction. Education becomes more transactional. Frankly, when it comes to math, virtual school students cheat. If you meet one virtual school kid who is bad at math, you met a kid whose bad at math. If you've taught dozens of them over the years, you've met a system which doesn't work because online calculators are so very easy to find on google.
Opt for anything with live instruction, whatever option that may be. I teach online, solely, and I have for years. There's nothing I can't do online that I could do in person (at least with teenagers), and it's easy for teachers to adapt to. It'll give your students chances to interact and do things spontaneously. Teachers are suckers for melodramatic presentations of their work, because they do believe their job is much harder than most. I don't buy that argument. So, when you start hearing "building a plane while flying it." Don't listen. Switching to live-online is not hard. Teachers had plenty of time to think about this and didn't. I do feel bad for the teachers, they'll catch the blame from administrators and from parents. In that sense, they're going to have a lousy fall.
Problems
Teachers under pressure. Teachers are people and most people don't like pressure. Teachers get it from above and below. Parents will be frustrated, principals and superintendents will be frustrated. Teachers will be squished, and that tends to bleed over on students.
Lack of quality control. To be honest, most of the quality control in education--on a day-to-day level--is teacher mediated and regulated by the norms of a traditional school environment. Those things are essentially absent, putting the onus entirely on the teacher. In short, teachers will have to care more and push harder to get the same out of students.
Lack of challenge. While AP courses and IB courses will still be offered, some may be canceled. Frankly, they won't be the same online. Had districts made a concerted effort to plan ahead, they could have very closely replicated those experiences.
Confused.This is a little redundant, but I think the goals will shift at least twice over the semester. Education--at least public education--doesn't optimize for results. That would require a complete overhaul of public education and a reining in of teachers unions (good idea in my book). My guess is public education will optimize for that old standby: educational minutes. So, they'll give kids enough busy work to keep them occupied roughly eight hours a day. When parents get sick of that for a litany of reasons, they'll optimize for some proxy of engagement or some other drivel. At the end of the day, one of the few things that preserves American education from slipping below mediocrity is the traditional school day. Whenever I read the educational arguments for sending kids back to school, that's what they boil down to.
Solutions
Depending on your setup, you may want to consider engaging a private tutor or tutors. I think math, science, and foreign language are the most at-risk subjects here. They're cumulative, based on a lot of interaction, and require high levels of accountability.We will be offering some limited in-person tutoring for Spanish, math, and the sciences this fall. You can contact us for more. There are a ton of resources available online, if you don't or can't afford a tutor.
If teachers are optimizing for "instructional minutes" by assigning a lot of busy work, complain. If a few parents do, teachers will cave.
If you don't have a tutor, sit down with your kid(s) and make sure they're actually learning their math, science, and foreign language. Even if you don't know it, you can use their textbook to hold them accountable by creating little quizzes. If they balk, offer performance based incentives.
Unorthodox Options
As much as I complain about the way we do secondary education, I don't usually recommend homeschooling. If, though, you had an older student, who was highly self-motivated, you could consider homeschooling through online courses and community college/online college courses.
Another good option is, and hear me out, a GED. A high school diploma means nothing more than a GED--neither mean much of anything. Depending on your state, your child can sit for a GED and just begin taking college classes.
The key is the student. If your student is highly motivated and able these options may work for you.
I don't typically suggest these options. Why? I think high school is as much about developing socially and emotionally as it is academics. That dimension is lost for the fall and possibly the entire year. It little profits an ambitious student to be restless and bored through a year of online courses and busywork.
Consider letting them take college courses and working on a skill of their choosing, anything from programming to a foreign language. In my view, you have nothing to lose from an admissions standpoint, and a whole lot to gain.
