Reply to To teachers and parents: Have the kids gotten better?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]School closures were the most anti-equity thing to happen in the last 50 years at least. The rich kids were largely fine, while the poor kids were largely not. You can do equity initiatives continuously for the next 10 years and still not be able to completely reverse what happened in the last 2.[/quote]

At least in my neck of the woods, these was painted as "the poor (and where I am this means Black) families don't want to send their kids to in-person school".  So it's this lovely thing where the people most hurt by the policy had the most support for the policy.[/quote]

Was this because of Covid concern or because their kids weren’t being treated well in school or because virtual learning was so much easier logistically?[/quote]

Covid concern.  The narrative was "Black families are experiencing more illness and death from covid and therefore perceive more risk from sending kids to in-person school."  My personal belief is that communicators failed miserably in showing that in-person school did not contribute to a higher likelihood of exposure than what those kids were experiencing alternatively.[/quote]

Not just Black families but the families of low income workers who were not able to work from home. First, many of those workers who kept their jobs were at a higher risk for exposure to COVID and less likely to have health care  that allowed them to go to the Doctor or hospital until they were really sick or sick leave that allowed them to not go to work when they were not feeling well. So there were higher rates of hospitalization and death among low income workers.

Second, many low income workers who have kids were not able to afford child care coverage for their kids who were not in school. So the older kids were expected to keep and eye on and help their younger siblings. You can guess how this influenced those kids ability to attend and complete virtual school. You can also guess how this influenced those kids ability to learn how to socialize and behave in a classroom.

Third, many low income families took advantage of the virtual learning so that their older kids were able to get jobs that helped the family pays its bills. It wasn't just lower income families, I read families of MC and UMC whose kids got jobs because they could. Many of the kids who found jobs did not return to in person school because they wanted to keep their jobs and staying in DL let them do that.

Fourth, even when schools returned to in-person (first 2 days then 4 days in FCPS) low income families who had younger kids at home and who could not find child care coverage, kept their older kids at home to watch their siblings while the parents worked. So while MC and UMC kids were able to return to class, if they wanted to, lower income kids were less likely to return because they were needed at home to watch siblings.

Overall, the pandemic took an exiting educational gap that was already widening and created a gulf. Lower income families bore the brunt of the pandemic in terms of health issues, hospitalizations, and deaths. The kids of these families were less likely to have the resources needed to have a solid chance of making distance learning work (reliable internet, good computers, parents who might be able to help with distance learning) I would fully expect that schools with a higher percentage of low income families are really struggling this year and will continue to struggle for a while.

[b]The MC and UMC kids who are struggling probably is more attributable to parents who decided it wasn't worth the effort and just let their kids do whatever at home for the year. We saw plenty of posts stating that was happening and now those parents are complaining about their kids being behind. A bunch of those families posted that they were not making their kids go back to in-person when their kids really needed to be in-person. And I saw families who looked for ways to help their kids and make the best of the situation with varying degrees of success. [/b]
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Much of your post is not about fear of COVID, but about the logistics of taking care of remote education versus kids returning to school, especially under a hybrid arrangement. Lower-income people did experience the pandemic in a different way, facing much more serious illness and death than those who worked from home. Still, the factors you mentioned, which created a greater risk of COVID, from crowded living conditions to multigenerational households, also made it more convenient to continue remote learning, rather than returning to school. These arrangements created situations where older siblings sacrificed their education to help younger ones. People present this trope that those most impacted by COVID from a health perspective wanted schools closed to protect their families. That may be partly accurate, but it's not the whole truth. I can tell you that the lower-income families of color who played on my kids' soccer teams had no problem training indoors, carpooling with each other, or traveling, whereas I took my kids out of indoor activities due to COVID caution. People assess risk based on what is most important to them and what their needs are, and that is to be expected.

The PP's bolded statement is obnoxious. In fact, the first statements show how families experienced the pandemic differently. While working at home lowered COVID risk, doing so in demanding and stressful occupations while supervising children's learning without other support stressed many families, parents, and children, to the brink. There is a reason why most families don't home school their kids.

Most of us did the best we could under the circumstances. Some of us did better than others. I'll also point out that while no community, ethnic group, or income level is a monolith, the pandemic has shown how harmful isolation can be for kids and that harm can't be easily addressed with money. Plenty of people from middle and higher income levels sacrificed almost all social interaction, family gatherings, travel, and visits with grandparents because they thought that doing so was in the best interest of the community and would lead to schools reopening for in-person learning. They thought they were doing the right thing, but the isolation and continuous messaging that their concerns didn't matter left these parents depleted and less able to foster a positive environment for their kids' learning. There's no shame in that, but it is shameful to suggest that kids who are struggling now come from households where their parents were checked out.[/quote]

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