Can We Have Equality of Education Without Schools Being Open?
Keith M. Kilty, COWC Member and Volunteer
The national crisis created by the covid-19 pandemic has affected virtually every aspect of our lives since the stay at home order was initiated in Ohio on March 23. That includes education, especially K-12, when public schools throughout the state were ordered on an extended spring break at the end of the school day on March 16, a week before the complete shutdown. That extended spring break eventually became a complete shutdown of school buildings for the rest of the academic year and the beginning of online K-12 education.
Not only was instruction affected, but many children lost access to school lunches and breakfasts. As businesses and stores closed, the loss of those meals became more shocking as food banks were overwhelmed. For many families, being able to provide adequate food for their children has become difficult, especially with the loss of the meals their children got at school. Some communities were able to start delivering lunches for children to their homes or to places where parents could pick them up, but what was a disturbing awareness for many of the more affluent was to see just how close to the margins far too many working families are – not only in Ohio but throughout this immensely wealthy country.
Actually being able to deliver schooling to students online has proven to be a challenge for most schools. While no one would have expected school districts to be adequately prepared to shift from in-class to online education because of a pandemic, what has been delivered has been far from sufficient, especially at the elementary level. With the possibility of schools not re-opening this fall, developing a quality education online may prove to be difficult if not impossible for any extended period of time.
Not all families have computers or tablets for their children to use or reliable internet connections, especially in large urban school districts. Even where devices and connections are not a problem, students may struggle with the material they need to learn with limited access to teachers. Many parents may not be able to provide adequate assistance, especially for children in low-income families and children who are immigrants or whose parents are immigrants. How many parents, regardless of educational or economic or immigrant status, can help their children with current elementary or middle-school math? Or have sufficient time, due to their own work schedules and exhaustion, to be as good as trained teacher aides? Who monitors whether students even sign in?
I have two grandchildren who are in elementary school, one here in Ohio and one in Kentucky. The amount of instructional work they were given during the shutdown was no more than one to two hours a day. The school day for elementary students is not as structured as middle or high school, where students can be kept active in the classroom for hours on end. The attention spans of elementary students are limited, and they need a variety of activities interspersed throughout their daily schedule, including recesses and opportunities to interact. That may not be as necessary for middle or high school students, where they go from one classroom to another, but even there students have breaks for study or for lunch. How many homes are equipped with a library like most elementary schools or can structure the day like a school?
Just being in a classroom is not all there is to education. Teachers help students in many ways, from guiding and mentoring to assistance in learning new materials to challenging them to develop their talents. These needs are going to be much more problematic to meet in an online setting. For families that can afford it, tutoring and guidance services may be available online, where there can be direct contact through FaceTime or Zoom, or even in-person as stay at home orders are increasingly relaxed. But those services are expensive and beyond the means of many.
If online instruction at the K-12 level continues to be common during this pandemic, which may well go on for another year or two, there are going to be many students who will not receive the level education that they need in order to complete high school successfully, much less go on to college. We have already seen reports that many students in large urban school districts did not participate in online high school classes. Add to that the number of children who will receive inadequate instruction at the elementary level over the next one to two years, and we may well see a lost generation of young people. That is most likely for children who are most vulnerable due to economic, racial/ethnic, and immigration status. In fact, evidence reported by New York Times writer Dana Goldstein, shows that some students may already be anywhere from three to seven months behind grade level (Columbus Dispatch, June 7, 2020, p. A 16).
As a college professor for 32 years, I can attest to the need for individual contact between students and teachers. Colleges and universities have been developing distance learning – now online – for a long time, but even at that level, there are limits to educating outside the classroom. I know how much time I spent working with students who had weak academic backgrounds but who responded to mentoring and completed a university degree, often to the surprise of those who knew them. People need to learn how to validate themselves, and teachers can be instrumental in that process. Obviously, we have to deal with public health, but at the same time we have to ensure not just an adequate but a quality education at the K-12 level. We live in a society where education will continue to be critical for future occupational opportunities. We cannot afford to throw away a generation of young people whose families cannot afford to buy the resources they need.