Remote education has been a failure. Children are failing, cutting class, and never getting to see their friends.
In Illinois, specifically, students in District 427 are three times more likely to fail this year than in years past. Already, teachers have reported 850 failing grades, said Superintendent Steve Wilder.
Even “the good kids” are struggling. Christina Springer, who has four students in Illinois’s District 203, wrote a letter to the school board explaining that her once active and engaged students are just barely getting by. “Students need to see their teachers and each other because the social isolation is doing so much damage,” she wrote.
In St. Paul, Minnesota, a high school student is just as likely to fail a class as he is to pass it. In Virginia’s Fairfax County, 1 out of 10 students failed at least two classes. In total, it is estimated that students who did not receive in-person, full-time education this year will lose up to seven months of learning. It could take years to make up for this loss.
Yet, many school districts remain closed. Maybe principals and school chiefs figure the damage is done, and so they’ve decided to play the waiting game instead and deal with the consequences later.
But many students can’t afford to wait — which is why many parents are pulling their children out of public school districts and placing them in private schools or homeschooling pods. New York City’s public schools, for example, have lost more than 31,000 students this fall. And in Los Angeles, the decline in enrollment for younger students is three times as large as in recent years. Even California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose coronavirus restrictions have made it nearly impossible for schools to reopen completely, sent his four children to a private school that was open for hybrid learning.
Meanwhile, students whose parents don’t have the resources for a private school or the time it takes to homeschool will continue to fall behind. And the cost will be great.
