Reply to Declining enrollment at APS

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]For kids who think public school is horrible this year. I promise (from a teacher perspective at least) private school is also horrible. I have a number of friends that teach at private school and they are miserable this year (2 of them are leaving teaching all together at the end of the year). It is not like private school kids magically know how to behave better than public school kids. And it is not like private school teachers get amazing support from Admin just because they are private. This year has been a lot.

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But doesn't this relate to whether schools were open or closed last year? We switched to Catholic which was open close to normal last year, and my kids are having a great school year this year. I'm so glad we didn't send them back into APS, which I think is going to take many, many, many years to recover from having been closed for so long last year. Arlington did so much harm to kids in the way it handled COVID, and we are going to be seeing that for a very long time. And APS still won't admit that it made a huge mistake in how it handled things, worst in the region, I believe, and our region overall was among the worst in the nation.[/quote]

The APS response to a deadly global pandemic was reasonable and similar to many other school districts. Kids went back in person after adults had vaccine.

:roll: 
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Have you read or seen any of the studies coming out about how kids fared in the districts that stayed closed longest vs. those who opened again sooner? Many schools in other parts of the US were similar last year to what Catholic schools here did locally, which was to open with as much spacing as possible and to require masks. Those kids, overall, did better in every aspect -- academically, socially, emotionally -- vs. the kids in APS. APS' test scores last year plummeted across the board, and it's seen a marked increase in discipline and emotional issues. Local pediatricians have been discussing the mental health crisis here as well, which is very real, and very concerning.

APS' response was only reasonable to those with an inside the beltway mentality who did not know or understand that most of the rest of America managed to open up and do much better. Our approach maybe made sense in August when everyone was worried open schools were going to be a disaster. But by October, it was clear that most of the country that opened was doing just fine. And when APS did "open" it was only a limited basis, and far later than most other places. So no, our response was neither reasonable nor similar to how things were done elsewhere.[/quote]

I have a kid in private and a kid in public. The kid in private was in person all last year.

Both schools are full of kids who are struggling. It's not because APS stayed virtual.  :roll:

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I mean, there is actual research people. Here's a summary from the NYT:

"The researchers broke the students into different groups based on how much time they had spent attending in-person school during 2020-21 — the academic year with the most variation in whether schools were open. On average, students who attended in-person school for nearly all of 2020-21 lost about 20 percent worth of a typical school year’s math learning during the study’s two-year window.

Some of those losses stemmed from the time the students had spent learning remotely during the spring of 2020, when school buildings were almost universally closed. And some of the losses stemmed from the difficulties of in-person schooling during the pandemic, as families coped with disruption and illness.

But students who stayed home for most of 2020-21 fared much worse. On average, they lost the equivalent of about 50 percent of a typical school year’s math learning during the study’s two-year window."

So yes, there are many kids struggling this year. But kids in districts that stayed closed longer (like APS) are struggling more.[/quote]

APS went back in person around the same time as MANY other schools.

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Do you not know any other parents outside the DMV? Schools in the mountain west and south were open basically all of last year, and those kids did MUCH better. And BS to the person who said correlation not causation. Online learning is no substitute for in-person instruction. That's overwhelmingly clear. And our kids suffered as a result. [/quote]

Yes, and I know kids who went back later than our kids.

Sorry, you can't attribute all bad outcomes from the pandemic to online learning. 
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I'm not trying to! But again, 20% loss on average last year, but 50% loss for those whose schools were closed the longest. So it sucked everywhere, but it sucked SO MUCH WORSE in the places that were closed the longest. And that's us, people. [/quote]

But there are likely other factors at play for those places that had the greatest “learning loss”.

Higher density areas, more illness/death, lower income, more job loss, more transient, more kids at risk, etc.

Aside from the covid deniers, most schools brought kids back around the same time - after vaccines & winter surge. A few weeks earlier or later wouldn’t likely affect outcomes that much.

Correlation, not causation. 
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You closed schoolers are still justify your awful position and the horrible results of it.  It's really pathetic at this point.
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They are. The best part is that, unlike their wild estimates of Long COVID, there's an actual control group cited in both the NYT article and the Harvard study - other districts that were not remote as much.  Shocker that both found minimal learning loss and unenrollment (Florida's public school enrollment increased) in those places not virtual.

So if there were other factors in play other than remote instruction, then that would show up in those areas that did not have remote instruction. But they're not showing up whatsoever.  The controlling factor was...closed schools.[/quote]

I'm sorry you struggle with data/statistics. Comparing disparate school districts doesn't "control" for anything.

Maybe instead of throwing temper tantrums you can take a statistics class.

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So ... your argument is that virtual school is as effective at teaching children as in-person school? Is that really what you are saying? Please cite any empirical data to back that up. The overwhelming preponderance of all the data (and not just in the US, lots of global studies at this point as well) is that children learned MUCH LESS virtually vs. typical gains. Low SES students and minority students did even worse. This is what the data show. I've taken a lot of statistics courses, actually. Have you? You are really arguing against scientific evidence? This is where we are in Arlington now? Honestly, I expect that from the Fox news crowd, not the APS crowd.[/quote]

I'm saying that you can't attribute all discrepancies solely on in-person v. distance learning. Your "evidence" doesn't back that up. There are so many other factors that can impact learning. Especially for kids from low-income families.

Significant discrepancies may be [i]correlated[/i] with distance learning, not caused. Yes, kids learned less. Because they were sick? Because they had instability in the home?

There were so many other stressors during the pandemic - you'd need to control for those to have more meaningful data.

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But the beauty of this research is that it does control for all that. Communities all across the US handled the educational response to COVID differently. And we can look at how kids at different SES levels did. I tried to post the NYT graphs way up thread, but the point is that all these gaps exist, but also all these gaps were worse in places where there was less in-person school. That variable is a huge one. I've never said it's the only thing, but if you look at the data, it clearly mattered. A lot. And we need to start with acknowledging that. And then we have to recognize that APS' approach was on the very tail end of the distribution for in-person learning last year. We never had school Mondays. Many of our kids never came back at all. Those who did largely came back only 2 days a week. So our kids had very limited learning, and that is ONE FACTOR that has made a big impact, IN ADDITION TO all the other factors.

I don't get the reluctance to admit that. I agree the finger pointing is not helpful. But also let's not ignore the elephant in the room. We have to address this. Our kids need us to make a super human effort to try to remediate that. No matter why it happened, it did happen, and it had a very negative effect.[/quote]

Comparing disparate school districts wouldn’t control for that.  :roll:

APS handled a deadly global pandemic in a reasonable manner, despite what the parents throwing tantrums claim. Very similar to MANY other school districts.

Regardless, APS has already acknowledged kids have gaps from the pandemic. And they are addressing those gaps. Sure, we should keep pushing to remediate the kids with gaps, but stop pushing false narratives. It’s not productive. 
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