Schools in Europe closing again

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Europe can afford to go back to virtual because so many of their kids have been in-person. That means there is less urgency to get back because the mental health and learning loss are much lower than here. We should have been back from the start so we could build in breaks during surges.

I'm pushing back on claims of learning loss.

What data do you have to show that virtual schooling results in learning loss? Has it ever been tried before in the US to this extent?

In my house it's just common sense. Our DL is so bad that my child won't even log in anymore. It's basically just a teach yourself method, which only a few kids are able to do in elementary school. So I know he's not learning anything, because he's not even "attending" anymore.

1) What school district?

2) If DL is so bad, what makes you think his teacher will be any better at hybrid/concurrent? How will she distance teach half the class as well as teach half the class in person?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

At least I keep up with current events. I keep my eyes open.

That, and some data, would provide me with the data I requested.

Hi, education researcher here. There are not many final published reports out because it takes time to get the data and to get through the publication process. We are still in the middle of the pandemic and haven't completed a full year of DL. What we DO know about learning loss is mostly information from Hurricane Katrina. I encourage you to look through Google Scholar at data related to interrupted education resulting from Hurricane Katrina.

However, there are three specifically regarding COVID from non-profits that are respectable, and that we have been citing. They include:

Brookings: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2020/05/27/the-impact-of-covid-19-on-student-achievement-and-what-it-may-mean-for-educators/
NWEA: https://www.nwea.org/research/publication/the-covid-19-slide-what-summer-learning-loss-can-tell-us-about-the-potential-impact-of-school-closures-on-student-academic-achievement/
McKinsey (normally we would not use McKinsey, but this is good basic research): https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/covid-19-and-learning-loss-disparities-grow-and-students-need-help#:~:text=Students%20on%20average%20could%20lose,white%20students%20(Exhibit%206).

Learning loss is very real and well-documented.

A) it’s a pandemic. Chill.
B) learning loss much more preferred over lives lost
C) last scenario of this kind was 100 years ago. Again, chill. Your Larla will be fine.

I don't think my child will be fine. He is depressed the point of talking about suicide. Our DL is literally unbearable - hours of narrated slide shows and then hours of homework that is extremely tedious in nature. As for learning loss, he hasn't been taught even half the math concepts he was supposed to be taught at this point in the year, but he's still expected to test into the advanced math class next year or they won't let him take it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Europe can afford to go back to virtual because so many of their kids have been in-person. That means there is less urgency to get back because the mental health and learning loss are much lower than here. We should have been back from the start so we could build in breaks during surges.

I'm pushing back on claims of learning loss.

What data do you have to show that virtual schooling results in learning loss? Has it ever been tried before in the US to this extent?

In my house it's just common sense. Our DL is so bad that my child won't even log in anymore. It's basically just a teach yourself method, which only a few kids are able to do in elementary school. So I know he's not learning anything, because he's not even "attending" anymore.

1) What school district?

2) If DL is so bad, what makes you think his teacher will be any better at hybrid/concurrent? How will she distance teach half the class as well as teach half the class in person?

I'm not one of the open fcps people. All I've asked for all along is better instruction, but fcps has been deaf to that. In my opinion, it's the people demanding to open schools no matter what who caused the schools to focus only on reopening plans and not on making DL better.

I have doubts that concurrent will be any better, although I have a friend with a child in concurrent in another system and she says it's better. Not great, but better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Europe can afford to go back to virtual because so many of their kids have been in-person. That means there is less urgency to get back because the mental health and learning loss are much lower than here. We should have been back from the start so we could build in breaks during surges.

I'm pushing back on claims of learning loss.

What data do you have to show that virtual schooling results in learning loss? Has it ever been tried before in the US to this extent?

In my house it's just common sense. Our DL is so bad that my child won't even log in anymore. It's basically just a teach yourself method, which only a few kids are able to do in elementary school. So I know he's not learning anything, because he's not even "attending" anymore.

1) What school district?

2) If DL is so bad, what makes you think his teacher will be any better at hybrid/concurrent? How will she distance teach half the class as well as teach half the class in person?

I'm not one of the open fcps people. All I've asked for all along is better instruction, but fcps has been deaf to that. In my opinion, it's the people demanding to open schools no matter what who caused the schools to focus only on reopening plans and not on making DL better.

I have doubts that concurrent will be any better, although I have a friend with a child in concurrent in another system and she says it's better. Not great, but better.

DP. There's no making DL better. However your kid's teacher is doing it, that's as good as it's going to get.

So let's reopen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Europe can afford to go back to virtual because so many of their kids have been in-person. That means there is less urgency to get back because the mental health and learning loss are much lower than here. We should have been back from the start so we could build in breaks during surges.

I'm pushing back on claims of learning loss.

What data do you have to show that virtual schooling results in learning loss? Has it ever been tried before in the US to this extent?

And followup question: what data do you have to show that learning loss with hybrid/concurrent teaching is less than with all virtual?

Have there been any studies done or are people just making assumptions?

This might be seen as anecdotal but here goes: I teach HS. We are over a month behind our normal curriculum because we have less class time. Therefore my students are not going to learn as much but will still have that credit on their transcript. Also until we can assess students not at home, there is no way to tell if they are learning the same content. There is rampant cheating and open notes on every assessment. But we will not finish the curriculum in my upper level HS classes this year.

There is absolutely no reason that every test should not be open notes. We need to teach these kids how to be resourceful not how to simply memorize things. ESPECIALLY in HS and college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Europe can afford to go back to virtual because so many of their kids have been in-person. That means there is less urgency to get back because the mental health and learning loss are much lower than here. We should have been back from the start so we could build in breaks during surges.

I'm pushing back on claims of learning loss.

What data do you have to show that virtual schooling results in learning loss? Has it ever been tried before in the US to this extent?

And followup question: what data do you have to show that learning loss with hybrid/concurrent teaching is less than with all virtual?

Have there been any studies done or are people just making assumptions?

This might be seen as anecdotal but here goes: I teach HS. We are over a month behind our normal curriculum because we have less class time. Therefore my students are not going to learn as much but will still have that credit on their transcript. Also until we can assess students not at home, there is no way to tell if they are learning the same content. There is rampant cheating and open notes on every assessment. But we will not finish the curriculum in my upper level HS classes this year.

There is absolutely no reason that every test should not be open notes. We need to teach these kids how to be resourceful not how to simply memorize things. ESPECIALLY in HS and college.

I guess. You can put any math question in to google and get the answer so I guess kids never need to learn any higher math at all. They've got google now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Europe can afford to go back to virtual because so many of their kids have been in-person. That means there is less urgency to get back because the mental health and learning loss are much lower than here. We should have been back from the start so we could build in breaks during surges.

I'm pushing back on claims of learning loss.

What data do you have to show that virtual schooling results in learning loss? Has it ever been tried before in the US to this extent?

And followup question: what data do you have to show that learning loss with hybrid/concurrent teaching is less than with all virtual?

Have there been any studies done or are people just making assumptions?

This might be seen as anecdotal but here goes: I teach HS. We are over a month behind our normal curriculum because we have less class time. Therefore my students are not going to learn as much but will still have that credit on their transcript. Also until we can assess students not at home, there is no way to tell if they are learning the same content. There is rampant cheating and open notes on every assessment. But we will not finish the curriculum in my upper level HS classes this year.

There is absolutely no reason that every test should not be open notes. We need to teach these kids how to be resourceful not how to simply memorize things. ESPECIALLY in HS and college.

I guess. You can put any math question in to google and get the answer so I guess kids never need to learn any higher math at all. They've got google now.

That is not what I meant. There is a difference between memorizing the formula they need and having it handy and still working out the math.

Being able to know where to look and how to find information that you need is much more valuable than blindly memorizing it.

[Anonymous]

I think distance learning is terrible for many reasons but I am not clear on the learning loss/regression issue. I would also be interested in data. It seems like there should be some by now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where are the data showing that students who have been participating in full day distance learning since September have learning loss compared with children who have been attending in person instruction since September?

If students withdraw from school, that is a separate issue.

PP what would be the best methods to collect the data you're looking for? How do you define withdrawal from school?

[Anonymous]

France has decided against a third lock down for now.

They say cases are stabalizing and they have hopes that the vaccination plans can be carried out.

https://www.thelocal.fr/20210204/live-french-prime-minister-to-lay-out-latest-health-restrictions

Covid-19 case numbers in France remain high but stable at around 20,000 new cases a day, but pressure is increasing on the country's hospitals with 64 percent of intensive care capacity now taken up with Covid patients.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

At least I keep up with current events. I keep my eyes open.

That, and some data, would provide me with the data I requested.

Hi, education researcher here. There are not many final published reports out because it takes time to get the data and to get through the publication process. We are still in the middle of the pandemic and haven't completed a full year of DL. What we DO know about learning loss is mostly information from Hurricane Katrina. I encourage you to look through Google Scholar at data related to interrupted education resulting from Hurricane Katrina.

However, there are three specifically regarding COVID from non-profits that are respectable, and that we have been citing. They include:

Brookings: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2020/05/27/the-impact-of-covid-19-on-student-achievement-and-what-it-may-mean-for-educators/
NWEA: https://www.nwea.org/research/publication/the-covid-19-slide-what-summer-learning-loss-can-tell-us-about-the-potential-impact-of-school-closures-on-student-academic-achievement/
McKinsey (normally we would not use McKinsey, but this is good basic research): https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/covid-19-and-learning-loss-disparities-grow-and-students-need-help#:~:text=Students%20on%20average%20could%20lose,white%20students%20(Exhibit%206).

Learning loss is very real and well-documented.

A) it’s a pandemic. Chill.
B) learning loss much more preferred over lives lost
C) last scenario of this kind was 100 years ago. Again, chill. Your Larla will be fine.

I don't think my child will be fine. He is depressed the point of talking about suicide. Our DL is literally unbearable - hours of narrated slide shows and then hours of homework that is extremely tedious in nature. As for learning loss, he hasn't been taught even half the math concepts he was supposed to be taught at this point in the year, but he's still expected to test into the advanced math class next year or they won't let him take it.

I'm sorry, but if your child is threatening to commit suicide, you should have him hospitalized. A school is not a psychiatric facility and teachers are not mental health providers.

[Anonymous]

Back to France:

Big back and forth between hospitals and politicians right now. Hospitals are saying we need the lockdown (including schools closures). Politicians are saying we don't. The thing is, France has been taking significant measures already -- no indoor dining, closed gyms, etc., and curfew after 6 PM so all bars and nightclubs closed. The only thing really open has been schools.

And still cases are steadily rising.

https://www.thelocal.fr/20210205/it-makes-no-sense-french-hospital-chiefs-fear-macrons-lockdown-gamble-will-backfire

Not imposing lockdown was decided by the president himself at the Health Defence Council meeting earlier this week. Macron was reported to be adamant that a lockdown could be avoided, if the current health rules were reinforced.

France has been on a nationwide 6pm-6am curfew since January 16th and working for home is the rule for everyone who can. Cafés, bars and restaurants have been banned from offering in-house services since autumn and can only do delivery or take away, while cinemas, museums and theatres remain completely closed along with gyms and ski lifts.

But even with all these measures, the country’s Covid-19 rates have been increasing steadily for weeks. France has gone from registering 18,000 cases weekly on average at the beginning of the new year to between 20,000 and 25,000 now. Hospitals have been under a sustained pressure since mid November, and never enjoyed a big drop in Covid patients as seen this summer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:BTW all these learning loss stories and "what about the children" are written to guilt women and I'm not having it.

You see this all the f'in time. Articles like "You must have a baby by 33 or your kid will have horns" "if you don't breast feed and work on your phone at the same time you won't be happy at 64". Yes absurd but so are these clickbait articles.

The articles posted are written by a public equity expert and a lawyer. The public equity expert is a guy who makes money setting up charters.

I'm not saying kids aren't losing out academically right now. I'm saying be wary of anything that trying to create a guilt, panic reaction in you.

Look at your kid. What does your kid need not what the studies say because none of these studies are long term, have the right sample of kids, etc. They are made by people who are selling consulting services to people who think there is money to be made in the pandemic or to justify their wfh job in a pandemic.

One of my kids needs art and play and being silly. The other kid need structure, focus, ability to hear no and be okay with it. Look at your kid.

These are not clickbait articles. These are respected institutions.

There is peer-reviewed work out there: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/0013189X20965918

If you can't tell the difference between this and buzzfeed, I don't know what to tell you.

[Anonymous]

Like...Brookings? What's your problem with Brookings?

And that article I just linked about discrepancies in learning loss is about COVID. These are big names in education research. The second author is Jim Soland!

If you think you know better than them, why don't you try publishing? The anti-intellectualism displayed here is appalling.

For those of you interested in actual knowledge and not discounting experts, here's the title and abstract.

Projecting the Potential Impact of COVID-19 School Closures on Academic Achievement
As the COVID-19 pandemic upended the 2019–2020 school year, education systems scrambled to meet the needs of students and families with little available data on how school closures may impact learning. In this study, we produced a series of projections of COVID-19-related learning loss based on (a) estimates from absenteeism literature and (b) analyses of summer learning patterns of 5 million students. Under our projections, returning students are expected to start fall 2020 with approximately 63 to 68% of the learning gains in reading and 37 to 50% of the learning gains in mathematics relative to a typical school year. However, we project that losing ground during the school closures was not universal, with the top third of students potentially making gains in reading.

[Anonymous]

Could we keep this thread to be about schools in Europe closing due to the new variants that are spreading?