VA schools haven't recovered from school closures
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
|
"The standards of learning data also showed that schools that returned to in-person instruction sooner fared considerably better than schools that remained virtual or hybrid longer."
"State education officials compared passing rates for the 2018-2019 school year with the most recent school year and found that students have yet to catch up to their pre-pandemic performance. The differences were particularly stark in mathematics. Two-thirds of students passed math exams last school year, compared to 82 percent before the pandemic. Racial and economic disparities also widened, with White and Asian students making more progress toward their pre-pandemic levels than Black and Hispanic students. Passage rates remained more than 20 points behind pre-pandemic levels in math for Black, Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students, and among students learning English." https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/08/18/virginia-school-test-scores-pandemic/ |
Anonymous
|
I think the fact that so many upper-middle and upper class families fled to private schools will reverberate for years. For some school districts, it bought them some time in terms of not needing more seats, but on the other hand, the test scores dropped and teachers are leaving the profession. The lower test scores will not make public school attractive to those with means who were on the fence about attending.
Thanks, COVID! |
Anonymous
Actually, could the drop be entirely explained away by the fact that 20% of the highest performing students all left for private? |
Anonymous
| Let it go. They’re opening now. |
Anonymous
+1- I mean what are your going to do invent a time machine to go back and reopen schools earlier? No. So we suck it up and keep going. If there is another pandemic in 100 years, maybe we will have new technology so we can put a chip in kids heads and they all magically pass the SOL. Until then, we keep going. I’m sure as h#!! Not going to vote to do away with abortion because I can’t go back in time and get my kids (who are pass advanced anyway) to do better on the SOL. |
Anonymous
|
All except for Falls Church City Schools, they are the exception. From WTOP article:
Unlike other districts, Falls Church City Public Schools saw numbers close to pre-pandemic levels, with the school system exceeding those levels in reading. 
|
Anonymous
With all due respect, FCCPS as a district is smaller than one APS or FCPS high school and also has less minority students and low SES students than most as well. Schools with similar demographics did similarly well. The students most impacted by pandemic closing were the students who were the most at risk. |
Anonymous
x1 billion |
Anonymous
| The local school board doesn't control abortion rights. I'm definitely going to think twice about who I vote for in school board elections due to school closures. I can't go back in time but I can think twice about voting for people who didn't make fact- based decisions and didn't pressure Duran to open schools when he said it was too complicated. |
Anonymous
You might want to get your facts straight. Duran wasn't even the superintendent during 2019-2020 school year during school closures. |
Anonymous
But he was superintendent for the 2020-2021 school year |
Anonymous
So a brand new superintendent dealing with the most disruptive educational situation in the last hundred years should be blamed because kids didn't get pass advanced on their SOLs? My kid -- average intelligence, with IEP, hating school, probably never turned his camera on -- got the best scores he ever got on SOLs in the last two years. He should have flamed out but didn't. I'm sorry the pandemic inconvenienced you and messed up Larlo's chances to go to Harvard (or whatever the effect is you think is at issue). It's over. If your kid was struggling you should have reached out or helped them yourself. Yeah, I got a lot sick of working full time and then having to be teach at night, but people were dying all over the place and the science behind it was always developing. The teachers always answered my emails or my son's requests. Arlington made every effort to reach kids who may not have had internet or parental support at home, but sometimes life is just going to suck. And I bet you didn't have to deal with the challenges of managing the reopening of large institutions during a time when mitigations were unknown/always changing, or the proper supplies were unavailable or on backorder. I did. I'm sorry Duran didn't have the same magic wand that you apparently had. |
Anonymous
Duran is blamed for the 2020-2021 school year. He was certainly in role at that point. |
Anonymous
The teachers certainly didn't answer my questions, nor do anything to meet my child's educational needs. The teachers complained it was too hard to teach virtually so the principal permitted them to combine classes and teach less. We had 45 seven andd eight yos students on a Teams call with one teacher. Zero small groups. Zero graded assignments. Zero feedback on any assignment all year. Teachers didn't even bother filling out report cards for Q4, where at least the prior quarters they marked progressing in every category with zero comments. Sometimes teachers didn't even show up for class and there'd be a Teams call with no supervision. It was abysmal. At one point I emailed a teacher asking for book suggestions for my kid and she told me that she couldn't given personalized recommendations because it would be inequitable because some parents don't have access to email. I sent plenty of emails about the situation to both Duran and the school board and the only email I ever got wad auto-generated stating that they were receiving too many emails and had stopped even reading them. |
Anonymous
Last I checked I don't get to vote for Duran or any superintendent. I vote for the school board. And how I vote for school board will be more influenced by their decisions regarding past school closures (as evidence of their ability to make tradeoffs and balance pressure from special interests) and not their stance on abortion. In terms of my kids, they were fine because I paid a recently retired Arlington teacher $50K to teach my kids during the 20-21 school year. |