Virtual Learning - Why Not MCPS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Man, I know that there are some pandemic-era parents whose kids had a hard time and are kind of scarre from those days, but can y'all try to step back and be rational rather than react emotionally from a "I hated the COVID year" place? The rest of us are tired of our kids losing multiple days of education every year due to snow days and would like our kids to actually get some learning in rather than those useless last few days of school. We get it, not all kids learn well online, but you guys act like it's the end of the world .. pretty clearly some kind of trauma response, and again, I get it, but fake a breath and try to move through it.

You must be an online learner as you've failed to read this thread where it has been pointed out that:

1) Virtual learning didn't just fail during the pandemic. It also failed during summer school, which is why MCPS is dramatically scaling back on virtual summer school options this year
2) It tried to do an asynchronous learning day in the 2023-2024 school year. It went so poorly the state said MCPS cannot pivot to virtual instruction again with a robust, pressure tested, approved plan and structure to do so.

Insisting MCPS should do something, despite multiple failed attempts at doing so, just because you want them to is definitely a trauma response on your part. Or maybe it's just ignorance. I don't know. But you need to look in the mirror before you start psychoanalyzing anyone else.

Oh come on, you can't point to the asynchronous day two years ago as evidence virtual learning doesn't work. It was pretty clear it was supposed to work the same as the half-days in June, going through the motions of trying to count it as a day when it wasn't really going to be one. In our ES they just printed out a few worksheets and called it a day. Not at all comparable to teachers actually teaching regular lessons live over a computer.

Agree. And virtual learning did not fail all or most students in the summer. It failed the ones who had already failed courses and couldn’t be bothered to log on to do their credit recovery to get to graduation. Are we supposed to eliminate an entire option because our least engaged students, who are often chronic absentees for a variety of reasons, might not log on during a snow day?

Your privilege is showing. Your vacation is not more important than kids' education.

Oh you're on this thread too, attacking people's vacations. Jealous you can't take one?

Next time wait until after the school calendar is fully over when you schedule your vacation. We all knew the one extra day built-in wouldn't be enough and they'd have to use make-up days. The problem you're finding yourself in is all on you and your poor decisions.

And I'm not the only one making these comments.

The days in June are a waste of time, based on last year's experience. Most kids weren't there, and they spent the half days doing nothing but watching movies. The time would have been better spent being outdoors, at a pool, at camp, literally anywhere than a school building after school was supposed to end.

I would much rather my kids have school now virtually online when the teacher can attempt to follow the curriculum. Older kids past grade 3 are on their Chromebooks as part of the curriculum all the time. They’re used to it.

Last year my kids attended all 3 makeup half days in June and all they did was watch videos and do puzzles. It was like a teacher sponsored play date with zero instruction. That’s ridiculous.

I made the same mistake of sending my kid to the makeup days. Not doing it again this year. I'd rather his summer start than sitting in a classroom watching TV.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why not virtual learning? Because the vast majority of MoCo parents don't want it.
Simple as that.
End of thread.

Oh man. I think you’d be surprised if you actually gave people the choice between a virtual learning day or two to check a box and an extra week of school into late June to also check a box.

Show us the data that parents don’t want virtual learning during the school year when the kids are still trying to learn the curriculum and prefer to have half days added in June to watch videos with their teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So much debate about something that is already settled in the law. They can’t do virtual learning because they never submitted a plan to the state, because they didn’t think it would work. It’s over.

Other Maryland school districts did. Anne Arundel, Baltimore in Maryland are doing virtual today.

Alexandria is doing virtual learning now too. DCPS did virtual yesterday and is in person today.

It’s just MCPS with its billion dollar budget that could take a field trip to Baltimore and Anne Arundel and learn how to submit a virtual learning plan and include more than 1 snow day in its calendar from its peers.

There are school districts with much smarter automatic policies where after X number of days of inclement weather and exhausting all available snow days they go online for virtual learning. MCPS chooses to not submit a virtual learning plan and to pretend 1 snow day is sufficient for inclement weather when there are so many people who scream bloody murder about trying to open schools if there’s a hint of ice on the ground.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So much debate about something that is already settled in the law. They can’t do virtual learning because they never submitted a plan to the state, because they didn’t think it would work. It’s over.

Other Maryland school districts did. Anne Arundel, Baltimore in Maryland are doing virtual today.

Alexandria is doing virtual learning now too. DCPS did virtual yesterday and is in person today.

It’s just MCPS with its billion dollar budget that could take a field trip to Baltimore and Anne Arundel and learn how to submit a virtual learning plan and include more than 1 snow day in its calendar from its peers.

There are school districts with much smarter automatic policies where after X number of days of inclement weather and exhausting all available snow days they go online for virtual learning. MCPS chooses to not submit a virtual learning plan and to pretend 1 snow day is sufficient for inclement weather when there are so many people who scream bloody murder about trying to open schools if there’s a hint of ice on the ground.

Yes, we need automatic policies. Automatically use the next scheduled make-up day that is more than 2 weeks away. There's no reason to only use the days in June.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Man, I know that there are some pandemic-era parents whose kids had a hard time and are kind of scarre from those days, but can y'all try to step back and be rational rather than react emotionally from a "I hated the COVID year" place? The rest of us are tired of our kids losing multiple days of education every year due to snow days and would like our kids to actually get some learning in rather than those useless last few days of school. We get it, not all kids learn well online, but you guys act like it's the end of the world .. pretty clearly some kind of trauma response, and again, I get it, but fake a breath and try to move through it.

You must be an online learner as you've failed to read this thread where it has been pointed out that:

1) Virtual learning didn't just fail during the pandemic. It also failed during summer school, which is why MCPS is dramatically scaling back on virtual summer school options this year
2) It tried to do an asynchronous learning day in the 2023-2024 school year. It went so poorly the state said MCPS cannot pivot to virtual instruction again with a robust, pressure tested, approved plan and structure to do so.

Insisting MCPS should do something, despite multiple failed attempts at doing so, just because you want them to is definitely a trauma response on your part. Or maybe it's just ignorance. I don't know. But you need to look in the mirror before you start psychoanalyzing anyone else.

Oh come on, you can't point to the asynchronous day two years ago as evidence virtual learning doesn't work. It was pretty clear it was supposed to work the same as the half-days in June, going through the motions of trying to count it as a day when it wasn't really going to be one. In our ES they just printed out a few worksheets and called it a day. Not at all comparable to teachers actually teaching regular lessons live over a computer.

Agree. And virtual learning did not fail all or most students in the summer. It failed the ones who had already failed courses and couldn’t be bothered to log on to do their credit recovery to get to graduation. Are we supposed to eliminate an entire option because our least engaged students, who are often chronic absentees for a variety of reasons, might not log on during a snow day?

Your privilege is showing. Your vacation is not more important than kids' education.

So you want us to go until the end of June because you think the kids who won’t log on to virtual will definitely show up in late June for meaningful education? My kids learned plenty during virtual. They did not learn anything during those silly June days tacked on last year, where grades were already turned in and teachers literally told kids not to come. I totally value education and I don’t have a vacation planned. I’m literally coming at this thinking more can be taught now than later.

You keep comparing some idealized notion of virtual learning against the worst possible implementation of make-up days. Add full days, and use the ones earlier in the calendar.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So much debate about something that is already settled in the law. They can’t do virtual learning because they never submitted a plan to the state, because they didn’t think it would work. It’s over.

Other Maryland school districts did. Anne Arundel, Baltimore in Maryland are doing virtual today.

Alexandria is doing virtual learning now too. DCPS did virtual yesterday and is in person today.

It’s just MCPS with its billion dollar budget that could take a field trip to Baltimore and Anne Arundel and learn how to submit a virtual learning plan and include more than 1 snow day in its calendar from its peers.

If they do so, they should talk to a broad set of students and parents. Include younger kids with working parents. Include lower socioeconomic demographic groups. Include students with special needs. Find out how much new material was taught, and how many students needed it retaught later.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Man, I know that there are some pandemic-era parents whose kids had a hard time and are kind of scarre from those days, but can y'all try to step back and be rational rather than react emotionally from a "I hated the COVID year" place? The rest of us are tired of our kids losing multiple days of education every year due to snow days and would like our kids to actually get some learning in rather than those useless last few days of school. We get it, not all kids learn well online, but you guys act like it's the end of the world .. pretty clearly some kind of trauma response, and again, I get it, but fake a breath and try to move through it.

You must be an online learner as you've failed to read this thread where it has been pointed out that:

1) Virtual learning didn't just fail during the pandemic. It also failed during summer school, which is why MCPS is dramatically scaling back on virtual summer school options this year
2) It tried to do an asynchronous learning day in the 2023-2024 school year. It went so poorly the state said MCPS cannot pivot to virtual instruction again with a robust, pressure tested, approved plan and structure to do so.

Insisting MCPS should do something, despite multiple failed attempts at doing so, just because you want them to is definitely a trauma response on your part. Or maybe it's just ignorance. I don't know. But you need to look in the mirror before you start psychoanalyzing anyone else.

Oh come on, you can't point to the asynchronous day two years ago as evidence virtual learning doesn't work. It was pretty clear it was supposed to work the same as the half-days in June, going through the motions of trying to count it as a day when it wasn't really going to be one. In our ES they just printed out a few worksheets and called it a day. Not at all comparable to teachers actually teaching regular lessons live over a computer.

Agree. And virtual learning did not fail all or most students in the summer. It failed the ones who had already failed courses and couldn’t be bothered to log on to do their credit recovery to get to graduation. Are we supposed to eliminate an entire option because our least engaged students, who are often chronic absentees for a variety of reasons, might not log on during a snow day?

Your privilege is showing. Your vacation is not more important than kids' education.

So you want us to go until the end of June because you think the kids who won’t log on to virtual will definitely show up in late June for meaningful education? My kids learned plenty during virtual. They did not learn anything during those silly June days tacked on last year, where grades were already turned in and teachers literally told kids not to come. I totally value education and I don’t have a vacation planned. I’m literally coming at this thinking more can be taught now than later.

You keep comparing some idealized notion of virtual learning against the worst possible implementation of make-up days. Add full days, and use the ones earlier in the calendar.

Yes you can live in la la land, but MCPS prefers to add half days in end June when all chance for meaningful instruction has gone. Look what they did last year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So much debate about something that is already settled in the law. They can’t do virtual learning because they never submitted a plan to the state, because they didn’t think it would work. It’s over.

Other Maryland school districts did. Anne Arundel, Baltimore in Maryland are doing virtual today.

Alexandria is doing virtual learning now too. DCPS did virtual yesterday and is in person today.

It’s just MCPS with its billion dollar budget that could take a field trip to Baltimore and Anne Arundel and learn how to submit a virtual learning plan and include more than 1 snow day in its calendar from its peers.

If they do so, they should talk to a broad set of students and parents. Include younger kids with working parents. Include lower socioeconomic demographic groups. Include students with special needs. Find out how much new material was taught, and how many students needed it retaught later.

Again, it's not apples-to-apples to compare virtual learning to a typical day at school.

It's apples-to-apples to compare virtual learning to a half day tacked on to the end of the school year in June when grades are in, teachers are checked out, and students just want to be at the pool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So much debate about something that is already settled in the law. They can’t do virtual learning because they never submitted a plan to the state, because they didn’t think it would work. It’s over.

Other Maryland school districts did. Anne Arundel, Baltimore in Maryland are doing virtual today.

Alexandria is doing virtual learning now too. DCPS did virtual yesterday and is in person today.

It’s just MCPS with its billion dollar budget that could take a field trip to Baltimore and Anne Arundel and learn how to submit a virtual learning plan and include more than 1 snow day in its calendar from its peers.

If they do so, they should talk to a broad set of students and parents. Include younger kids with working parents. Include lower socioeconomic demographic groups. Include students with special needs. Find out how much new material was taught, and how many students needed it retaught later.

I know how much new material my MCPS kid was taught this week. Absolutely nothing. My kids were online during the pandemic and learned a lot. Would I have rather have had them in in person school? of course. But their teachers are professionals and they learned math, spelling and reading comprehension with their teachers.


And when your kids are in MS and HS, online learning is very easy to do. They use their Chromebooks a lot in the classes anyway.

MCPS was negligent to not have submitted a virtual learning plan to the state the way Anne Arundel and Baltimore did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So much debate about something that is already settled in the law. They can’t do virtual learning because they never submitted a plan to the state, because they didn’t think it would work. It’s over.

Other Maryland school districts did. Anne Arundel, Baltimore in Maryland are doing virtual today.

Alexandria is doing virtual learning now too. DCPS did virtual yesterday and is in person today.

It’s just MCPS with its billion dollar budget that could take a field trip to Baltimore and Anne Arundel and learn how to submit a virtual learning plan and include more than 1 snow day in its calendar from its peers.

If they do so, they should talk to a broad set of students and parents. Include younger kids with working parents. Include lower socioeconomic demographic groups. Include students with special needs. Find out how much new material was taught, and how many students needed it retaught later.

Again, it's not apples-to-apples to compare virtual learning to a typical day at school.

It's apples-to-apples to compare virtual learning to a half day tacked on to the end of the school year in June when grades are in, teachers are checked out, and students just want to be at the pool.

Then it’s not a virtual day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So much debate about something that is already settled in the law. They can’t do virtual learning because they never submitted a plan to the state, because they didn’t think it would work. It’s over.

Other Maryland school districts did. Anne Arundel, Baltimore in Maryland are doing virtual today.

Alexandria is doing virtual learning now too. DCPS did virtual yesterday and is in person today.

It’s just MCPS with its billion dollar budget that could take a field trip to Baltimore and Anne Arundel and learn how to submit a virtual learning plan and include more than 1 snow day in its calendar from its peers.

There are school districts with much smarter automatic policies where after X number of days of inclement weather and exhausting all available snow days they go online for virtual learning. MCPS chooses to not submit a virtual learning plan and to pretend 1 snow day is sufficient for inclement weather when there are so many people who scream bloody murder about trying to open schools if there’s a hint of ice on the ground.

Write Thomas Taylor a protest note. He won't care what you think, but maybe you will feel better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why not virtual learning? Because the vast majority of MoCo parents don't want it.
Simple as that.
End of thread.

Lazy parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A few reasons:

State doesn’t allow virtual days to count as part of the minimum 180 day requirement.

Only HS students have individual chromebooks. Most MS and ES schools have Chromebooks on carts and cannot be taken home. The software is not set up for it.

Something, something equity.

It does if school districts submit a virtual learning plan in advance, but MCPS opted not to submit one for this year.

I can’t understand why they didn’t. It just does not make any sense to me that when a viable back up plan is available why it would not be utilized.

Is this a decision the superintendent, board of Education, or teachers union make?

It's not that complicated. We all know virtual doesn't work well for many students and families. And teachers don't have lesson plans for it.

News flash - teachers just minimally adapt their stuff for virtual. Especially when it is just for a few days. Heck, ChatGPT will modify your plans for you in seconds. Teachers are not recreating everything from scratch. Ask me how I know

[Anonymous]

Last year I taught at a middle school and they had their 8th grade graduation ceremony a full week before the last day of school and our school allowed 8th graders to stop showing up at that point. I bought pizzas and had a pizza party for the 150 of them they decided to show up.

I'll probably do something similar this year with the makeup days.

[Anonymous]

Honestly, as a teacher, I'm not even grading anything I assign during virtual learning because half the kids won't show up and the other half have AI doing all their work for them anyway at home. Virtual learning in my class would 100% be a checkbox situation where everything I assigned was review of material we already covered.