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Forbes
What Will It Take For Schools To Reopen?
Frederick Hess
The closure of schools due to COVID-19 has created a frenzy of activity
as school systems scramble to feed students, give them work packets,
get them online, and provide virtual resources. This is all necessary
and appropriate, as school leaders struggle to deal with the immediate
crisis.
It’s good that leaders have been focused on feeding kids, getting them online, and providing ... [+]
But we shouldn’t kid ourselves. While virtual schooling can play an
important role in the education of many students, today’s efforts are a
poor substitute for in-person schooling. School leaders will be the
first to tell you this. There are a bunch of reasons why this is the
case, including:
Most school systems lack the infrastructure, materials, or expertise to
teach virtually. Indeed, the Center for Reinventing Public Education’s
tracking of 82 school systems reported this week that “most districts
are still not providing any instruction.”
Millions of children don’t have access to technology at home. For
example, Clark County, Nevada, the nation’s fifth-largest district,
estimates that 72,000 of its 320,000 students still lack connectivity,
even after the district purchased 46,000 devices.
Vast numbers of teachers feel ill-equipped for the challenge. ClassTag
noted this week that 57% of teachers say they don’t feel prepared to
“facilitate remote learning” and just one in five said school leaders
were providing guidance on how to proceed.
Children have a limited appetite for hours of computer-driven
instruction. In an unsurprising finding, Kaplan has reported that 71%
of parents worry that kids working remotely are “distracted from their
schoolwork by social media apps and video games.”
And no matter how good the online instruction, there are myriad other
concerns: Working parents feel squeezed, out-of-work parents have to
worry about educating their kids while figuring out how to pay rent,
millions of kids are stuck in unsafe home environments, and teens are
showing a reluctance to abide by social distancing guidelines, which
seem endless. And, of course, it’s tough for communities and local
economies to regain anything like a normal rhythm until kids are
physically attending school.
For all of these reasons, it’s imperative for schools to reopen as soon
as is safely possible. Over the weekend, a team led by my AEI
colleague, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott
Gottlieb, released the much-discussed “National Coronavirus Response:
Roadmap to Reopening.” The report is worth reading in full, but the
gist is that we need to maintain community isolation and social
distancing until cases peak and we see sustained declines in new cases
for 14 days.
At that point, Gottlieb and his colleagues suggest that it will be time
to start gradually reopening schools and businesses, subject to various
safeguards and provisions (relating to testing, hospital capacity, and
such). In some places, this could mean a return to school in May. In
other places, it will mean fall.
What school reopening looks like will depend in part on available testing and technology.
If schools could procure digital thermometers and implement ubiquitous
testing— especially if they’re cheap and quick—they might be able to
proceed with something like normal operations. In Singapore, for
instance, a reliance on thermometers at school entrances and the use of
classroom cameras to trace exposed students has allowed schools to stay
open throughout the pandemic, with those who have been diagnosed with
coronavirus quarantined and treated appropriately. Of course, such a
response is only feasible when the outbreak is contained and testing is
plentiful.
In many cases, schools will need to operate while still practicing some
forms of social distancing. It goes without saying that schools are not
designed for social distancing.
What might social distancing in schools involve? It may well require
reducing the number of students in a school on a given day, either by
having students attend on alternate days or by adopting a half-day
model in which half the students attend in the morning and half in the
afternoon. It would likely require closing gyms and having students eat
lunch at their desks.
It would probably entail measures to do away with the crowded hallways
that are such a routine part of middle and high school life. Schools
could have middle and high school students stay in a single classroom
for the day, much as they did in elementary school, with teachers
rotating in and out.
Transportation would be a big issue. A 50% reduction in students could
allow school buses to adopt a one-student-per-seat rule, which could
broadly conform with softened social distancing protocols. But
enforcing that norm would be a huge challenge for drivers. And none of
that addresses the millions of children who rely upon urban
mass-transit each day.
The challenges are daunting. Two shifts of students each day would
place an unimaginable strain on school transport, and might well prove
unworkable. There would be questions relating to contracts and job
descriptions. Districts already struggling with ugly revenue
projections and outlays related to virtual learning could face new
costs. And, of course, schools would need to ensure that teachers and
school staff feel safe. For instance, schools would have to account for
the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of teachers, school
administrators, bus drivers, janitors, and other staff across the land
who are over age 55 or may have compromised immune systems.
But we need to recognize that attending school in some attenuated
fashion, even just two or three days a week, would be hugely beneficial
for students and families. It would reconnect children and given them
safer, healthier outlets for interaction. It would anchor instruction,
making online learning more useful. It would restore some normalcy,
allow parents to start getting back to work, and help alleviate the
pressures building in too many households.
Figuring this out will be extraordinarily difficult. But these are
questions that state and system leaders need to be grappling with. It’s
good that leaders have been focused on feeding kids, getting them
online, and providing take-home packets. But we also need to be
thinking hard about what comes next.
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