The science on remote schooling is now clear. Here’s who it hurt most.

[Anonymous]

YAWN!! My kids continued to do great in virtual school. I was very happy that they were safe. Our kids socialized outdoors, we masked, we had a pod, our kids had a lot of support. But then, our kids are also taught by us each day, so we are already very involved with their education.

Those who are not good students continued to do poorly. Those who were high achieving continued to do well. Yes, we know URM, SN, FARMs are going to perform poorly, but are they performing very well when the schools are not virtual? No.

Achievement gap was there before the pandemic, during the pandemic and has remained after the pandemic.

Maybe they should have kept the schools opened for the poor performingstudents, maybe they should have had a hybrid model for high performing students. In any case, we did not depend on the school to educate our children even before the pandemic so it was not a loss for us.

Also, since teachers don't want to educate low performing kids, who would have agreed to teach just this group of kids in person during pandemic?

[Anonymous]

School closings were bad. But opening them would have killed a lot of people - in particular, teachers and the family members of teachers. As a teacher, it disgusts me still that there were people who thought it was more important to open schools than to keep us and our families alive.

My child also suffered from closed schools. But the issue for me is not that schools closed, but that FCPS did such an inexcusably poor job of providing virtual instruction. It didn't have to be as useless as it was.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It was clear the unions put the leverage that covid closures gave them over the well-being and education of students.

If you haven’t realized yet that teacher unions are for teachers and not for parents and students, this should be super clear now. Apple Ballots and candidates who teacher unions throw money at aren’t necessarily pro working family or good for education.

Think your yourself as a voter and put your child’s education first. The unions had a lot of power in this area while schools were closed and used it to push for their own interests well beyond covid safety.

It will take years for students to recover from the learning loss. There were ways to safely mitigate covid risks and reopen long before the schools were opened. The evidence is clear how destructive the lockdowns were.

Teacher unions are teachers. They do what's best for students, and what teachers want is to further the profession. There isn't some mob boss doing this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:School closings were bad. But opening them would have killed a lot of people - in particular, teachers and the family members of teachers. As a teacher, it disgusts me still that there were people who thought it was more important to open schools than to keep us and our families alive.

My child also suffered from closed schools. But the issue for me is not that schools closed, but that FCPS did such an inexcusably poor job of providing virtual instruction. It didn't have to be as useless as it was.

Also the family members of the students. Lots of kids lost parents.

[Anonymous]

The main point is that remote learning has to be a choice. Some kids perform better with it, every home school study pre pandemic demonstrates that. Some kids need in person school or hybrid. It’s not rocket science.

Many of my classmates where highly disruptive and apathetic to education. I would have loved to ghost them from my education environment. They are legally entitled to an education but I have no obligation to have to sit in a classroom with them and provide unpaid tutoring or caring with is what the smart and well behaved kids are covertly expected to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
The main point is that remote learning has to be a choice. Some kids perform better with it, every home school study pre pandemic demonstrates that. Some kids need in person school or hybrid. It’s not rocket science.

Many of my classmates where highly disruptive and apathetic to education. I would have loved to ghost them from my education environment. They are legally entitled to an education but I have no obligation to have to sit in a classroom with them and provide unpaid tutoring or caring with is what the smart and well behaved kids are covertly expected to do.

Unfortunately, when you are in a pandemic it's hard to give people a choice when we've clearly seen that our society cannot function for the greater good. You will always have virtual or in-person students who will not do the work/participate, and this has nothing to do with virtual. Our entire education system is a failure right now and needs reform and the previous reform clearly isn't working. At some point, parents need to step up and help their kids succeed. At some point, schools need to look at what they are doing and really that the new teaching methods are not working and change so students can be more successful. We need far more interventions at the elementary school level when kids are struggling with reading, writing, and basic math. We need to go back to basics that are no longer taught. Kids need books and textbooks. Kids need to be taught math facts, grammar, and spelling and spend more time on reading/reading comprehension. My kids are lucky if they read two books a year in school, which is completely unacceptable. The lack of homework to reinforce concepts, especially in math is absurd.

Covid/pandemic is now over. Time to stop blaming the virtual and look at the real issues and fix them, which will take school systems, teachers, and parents all working together.

Education is not a choice. You take what you are offered and make the best of it. The best that could be done and made the most sense was virtual. It would have been more successful if parents ensured the kids attended/did the work and didn't demand a dumbed-down schedule, no homework, etc. Some of this is on the parents.

[Anonymous]

I am just happy that I saw all this BS for what it was and was giving my child a sense of normalcy as much as I could. Traveling, seeing friends, etc
His scores were good, great even. Though I only heavily supervised math, and let all the other subjects go to an extent.
I was lucky it was 5th grade, not first or 11th.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The main point is that remote learning has to be a choice. Some kids perform better with it, every home school study pre pandemic demonstrates that. Some kids need in person school or hybrid. It’s not rocket science.

Many of my classmates where highly disruptive and apathetic to education. I would have loved to ghost them from my education environment. They are legally entitled to an education but I have no obligation to have to sit in a classroom with them and provide unpaid tutoring or caring with is what the smart and well behaved kids are covertly expected to do.

Unfortunately, when you are in a pandemic it's hard to give people a choice when we've clearly seen that our society cannot function for the greater good. You will always have virtual or in-person students who will not do the work/participate, and this has nothing to do with virtual. Our entire education system is a failure right now and needs reform and the previous reform clearly isn't working. At some point, parents need to step up and help their kids succeed. At some point, schools need to look at what they are doing and really that the new teaching methods are not working and change so students can be more successful. We need far more interventions at the elementary school level when kids are struggling with reading, writing, and basic math. We need to go back to basics that are no longer taught. Kids need books and textbooks. Kids need to be taught math facts, grammar, and spelling and spend more time on reading/reading comprehension. My kids are lucky if they read two books a year in school, which is completely unacceptable. The lack of homework to reinforce concepts, especially in math is absurd.

Covid/pandemic is now over. Time to stop blaming the virtual and look at the real issues and fix them, which will take school systems, teachers, and parents all working together.

Education is not a choice. You take what you are offered and make the best of it. The best that could be done and made the most sense was virtual. It would have been more successful if parents ensured the kids attended/did the work and didn't demand a dumbed-down schedule, no homework, etc. Some of this is on the parents.

Parents were WORKING FULL-TIME. It was not a reasonable solution to close schools when parents rely on having a safe place for them to be educated and supervised during work hours. Functioning society was built on school partially being childcare. Teachers contemptuous attitude that parents shouldn't have had kids if they couldn't find backup childcare with the rug suddenly pulled out from underneath them, does not engender a lot of goodwill.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sorry, there's data and there's qualitative data. Hard data points to the amount of death that was avoided. Grow up, dust yourselves off, parent your kids, and be f-ing glad you all are alive. Many people aren't. Many teachers died. Family members died from exposure. People DIED.


I would love it if the self righteous crap can just now end along with this global pandemic. It was a global pandemic, and it won't be the last. Learn to adapt.

With regard to you losing your friends in the summer of 2020, it isn't hard to figure out why. You are clueless and mean.

Show me the data that shows that deaths were avoided. People were not getting covid from exposure in schools. It was from family gatherings and bars, where masks were typically not used.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It was clear the unions put the leverage that covid closures gave them over the well-being and education of students.

If you haven’t realized yet that teacher unions are for teachers and not for parents and students, this should be super clear now. Apple Ballots and candidates who teacher unions throw money at aren’t necessarily pro working family or good for education.

Think your yourself as a voter and put your child’s education first. The unions had a lot of power in this area while schools were closed and used it to push for their own interests well beyond covid safety.

It will take years for students to recover from the learning loss. There were ways to safely mitigate covid risks and reopen long before the schools were opened. The evidence is clear how destructive the lockdowns were.

Teacher unions are teachers. They do what's best for students, and what teachers want is to further the profession. There isn't some mob boss doing this.

Teachers unions are what is ruining public education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:YAWN!! My kids continued to do great in virtual school. I was very happy that they were safe. Our kids socialized outdoors, we masked, we had a pod, our kids had a lot of support. But then, our kids are also taught by us each day, so we are already very involved with their education.

Those who are not good students continued to do poorly. Those who were high achieving continued to do well. Yes, we know URM, SN, FARMs are going to perform poorly, but are they performing very well when the schools are not virtual? No.

Achievement gap was there before the pandemic, during the pandemic and has remained after the pandemic.

Maybe they should have kept the schools opened for the poor performingstudents, maybe they should have had a hybrid model for high performing students. In any case, we did not depend on the school to educate our children even before the pandemic so it was not a loss for us.

Also, since teachers don't want to educate low performing kids, who would have agreed to teach just this group of kids in person during pandemic?

How lovely you weren't inconvenienced. Remember, there are those people who were going to work throughout the pandemic to keep society functioning (doctors, nurses, grocery store workers, etc.) who also had kids. What was to become of them? You are clueless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“His team is working to see what other factors might account for the rest of the differences, such as local coronavirus rates or economic conditions. He speculated that parents’ financial woes, illness and social isolation all played a part.

“To reduce the educational impacts of the pandemic to whether or not learning happened remote or in person is to miss all the other ways the pandemic has disrupted kids and parents and teachers’ lives,” he said. “There is a relationship but it’s not the only thing.””

Oh, would you look at that! OP lacks reading comprehension.

This is OP. Of course I read that. Did you? See the bolded.

[Anonymous]

OP, you didn’t lose friends because you were shouting about virtual school.

[Anonymous]

I just don’t understand the point of this. I mean it is very very obvious that virtual school sucked and would lead to worse outcomes. It isn’t like that wasn’t expected. The issue is we dealt with an emergency and now we are picking up the aftermath.

It’s like when a tornado strikes and a town is leveled and people have to find immediate shelter and clothes and in some case mourn and heal.

After that stage there is so much work. On tv you never see the tearing down of the rest of the structures and the painfully slow process of rebuilding. You never see the altered lives and how some move away or move in with family. We are with schools in this painful part of assessing and rebuilding. The fact that you are whining and pointing fingers at teachers and schools isn’t going to make the original emergency and pain go away. It won’t make how anyone handled it go away. It will show your child how you deal with adversity by blaming and shaming.
Everyone is sorry this all happened. Yiu show your character by how you move on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It was clear the unions put the leverage that covid closures gave them over the well-being and education of students.

If you haven’t realized yet that teacher unions are for teachers and not for parents and students, this should be super clear now. Apple Ballots and candidates who teacher unions throw money at aren’t necessarily pro working family or good for education.

Think your yourself as a voter and put your child’s education first. The unions had a lot of power in this area while schools were closed and used it to push for their own interests well beyond covid safety.

It will take years for students to recover from the learning loss. There were ways to safely mitigate covid risks and reopen long before the schools were opened. The evidence is clear how destructive the lockdowns were.

Teacher unions are teachers. They do what's best for students, and what teachers want is to further the profession. There isn't some mob boss doing this.

Teachers unions are what is ruining public education.

Look at the states where there are no unions. Those teachers are paid nothing. They can’t find enough people to do the job. Unions attract the best teachers due to the higher pay and better benefits.