Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ll be honest, I’m really pissed schools were closed for so long. It was done because unions refused to let their teachers return to school. Before anyone says I’m a Trumpie, I am not. I’m a lifelong Democrat! But that’s what happened and we can’t pretend otherwise. It made me change my opinion about teacher unions, for sure. I’m sorry for all the millions of kids who are behind in the US and no one cares. Affluent parents will just say “kids are resilient” - remember that line?

Affluent parents put their kids in private schools that stayed open.

or formed pods and hired tutors.

Like Melanie Maren, school board member. Kept schools closed and hired a pod for her kid and drove all around for travel soccer.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ll be honest, I’m really pissed schools were closed for so long. It was done because unions refused to let their teachers return to school. Before anyone says I’m a Trumpie, I am not. I’m a lifelong Democrat! But that’s what happened and we can’t pretend otherwise. It made me change my opinion about teacher unions, for sure. I’m sorry for all the millions of kids who are behind in the US and no one cares. Affluent parents will just say “kids are resilient” - remember that line?

Affluent parents put their kids in private schools that stayed open.

or formed pods and hired tutors.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What the democrats did closing schools was terrible and I'm basically an independent now because of it.

Yup. My husband jokes the school debacle turned me -- the liberalist liberal who ever libbed -- Republican. That's not exactly true. But it's not exactly false either.

This fascinates me, because I would argue that anyone who identifies as liberal would have identified the systemic issues that the pandemic revealed. If you take the TAL episode, Neah suffered in part because her mother did not have access to affordable childcare. What is the Republican plan to support working single moms, or to ensure that the have affordable high quality childcare?

The other story also reveals systemic issues. What is the Republican platform to protect renters? How would they have helped a child who needed to be out of school to support grandparents?

Not the PP. Eh, there was a very obvious solution to the problems, and that solution was to reopen schools and keep them open. Which is what the Republicans (and much of Europe) were doing. You don't have to solve the bigger issues of lack of affordable child care (also closed during the early pandemic) if you just open the schools.

Indeed there are bigger issues, but aside from stop-gap measures, neither Rs nor Ds attempted to solve them in the early pandemic.

At this stage, I certainly don't think Ds give a crap about education, and I don't think they care about widening gaps in achievement by SES; they've shown as much for 2 years. I don't necessarily think R's care either, mostly. It hurts more that the Ds don't care, though; I never had expectations for the Rs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What the democrats did closing schools was terrible and I'm basically an independent now because of it.

Yup. My husband jokes the school debacle turned me -- the liberalist liberal who ever libbed -- Republican. That's not exactly true. But it's not exactly false either.

This fascinates me, because I would argue that anyone who identifies as liberal would have identified the systemic issues that the pandemic revealed. If you take the TAL episode, Neah suffered in part because her mother did not have access to affordable childcare. What is the Republican plan to support working single moms, or to ensure that the have affordable high quality childcare?

The other story also reveals systemic issues. What is the Republican platform to protect renters? How would they have helped a child who needed to be out of school to support grandparents?

Anonymous wrote:Tired of this being politicized. If you are going on about liberal or not…blah blah blah. People had different reactions, different risk assessments. Leave politics out of it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What the democrats did closing schools was terrible and I'm basically an independent now because of it.

Yup. My husband jokes the school debacle turned me -- the liberalist liberal who ever libbed -- Republican. That's not exactly true. But it's not exactly false either.

This fascinates me, because I would argue that anyone who identifies as liberal would have identified the systemic issues that the pandemic revealed. If you take the TAL episode, Neah suffered in part because her mother did not have access to affordable childcare. What is the Republican plan to support working single moms, or to ensure that the have affordable high quality childcare?

The other story also reveals systemic issues. What is the Republican platform to protect renters? How would they have helped a child who needed to be out of school to support grandparents?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What the democrats did closing schools was terrible and I'm basically an independent now because of it.

Yup. My husband jokes the school debacle turned me -- the liberalist liberal who ever libbed -- Republican. That's not exactly true. But it's not exactly false either.

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know if you are a regular listener of this podcast but they aren’t typically looking for “the norm” they are looking for “the exception”. Yes, in exceptional circumstances there were really adverse outcomes. On the other hand, there were no school shootings, which I would say are also “exceptional” circumstances.

I think there will eventually be real data about the year of remote school, and I assume it will, as many of our school outcomes, track along socioeconomic lines. I don’t think we will get that data from This American Life.

Anonymous wrote:You guys know that this this TAL episode was originally designed to be one mostly-pro-virtual-school story and one anti-whatever-tf-happened-during-covid school story, right? But they put a little coda on it because they found out the kid from the first story wasn't actually doing her work the second time she went virtual.

Contrary to the two stories in here, not everybody's virtual experience was bad. I'm the mom above with a middle school girl, and she still talks about the year right after covid first happened, where schools here were still virtual, as a time when she really found her voice and confidence in herself. She caught back up in math, but found inner strength. For her it was a net gain.

Sorry if your kids did not have that experience, but it's not all doom and gloom.

Anonymous wrote:I was surprised about the lack of thought on the part of the administration at the 2nd girl's school to her missed learning and socializing. They knew she had disappeared, they knew she had not been attending school for the past 1.5+ years, they knew she was back and eagerly awaited her. Yet... they completely failed to anticipate any of these speed bumps (or not even speed bumps, but massive road barriers!). Instead of spending that 1-on-1 time with her figuring out getting her caught up, she spent it talking about high school applications! That just seemed so off and so tone deaf. I get the perspective that if they held her back, it would be demoralizing and maybe make her less likely to get through high school, although to me it could go both ways. But it seems like this is exactly the learning loss the whole education industry has been talking about during Covid and they did nothing for her. I hope they wake up and get her in some pull outs to get caught up in math, writing, reading. If administrators aren't getting organized about this, the ins and outs of the learning loss, then the kids really will be screwed long term. Plus, isn't this what the millions in Covid relief $ to schools is precisely for??

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ll be honest, I’m really pissed schools were closed for so long. It was done because unions refused to let their teachers return to school. Before anyone says I’m a Trumpie, I am not. I’m a lifelong Democrat! But that’s what happened and we can’t pretend otherwise. It made me change my opinion about teacher unions, for sure. I’m sorry for all the millions of kids who are behind in the US and no one cares. Affluent parents will just say “kids are resilient” - remember that line?

Affluent parents put their kids in private schools that stayed open.