Online learning could broaden performance gap, experts say
Problems compounded by special needs, lack of access to latest tech
Some students will emerge from this year’s extended period of online learning lagging far behind their peers, experts and teachers warn as they try to mitigate the situation.
Evidence suggests that while remote learning works well for some, it can broaden the socalled “performance gap” for others and affect students for years to come, experts said.
That’s compounded for many children with learning disabilities and those without access to up-to-date technology and plentiful parent support, said Todd Cunningham, a professor with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.
“Those who have access to this stuff, they get more practice, their skills get better, they’re able to get more learning opportunities,” Cunningham said. “Those who don’t have those same opportunities, though they keep developing, aren’t developing nearly at the same rate. So we see the gap getting wider and wider and wider.”
Experts suggest that could result in some students — predominantly those whose parents aren’t home during school hours because they can’t work remotely, and those who live in poverty or in communities without strong internet access — opting not to continue their learning, be it by dropping out of high school or choosing not to pursue post-secondary education.
As it stands, hundreds of thousands of students across southern Ontario are learning from home, and have been since school returned following winter break.
“Though all students are being impacted right now for this extended period, there are definitely going to be populations that typically already are disenfranchised, that are going to probably be more disenfranchised during this time,” Cunningham said.
“We need to put extra attention in supporting them as we return.”
Sarah Barrett, a professor of education at York University, said that to do that, teachers can employ strategies similar to those used when students return from summer vacation.
“Over the summer, students tend to lose a little bit of what they learned the year before, and so usually the first couple of weeks, there’s a bit of a review and catch up,” she said. “This review is going to be a little bit more intense (when in-person learning resumes).”
Teachers will have to work to get kids motivated about learning again — but that’s not going to be the hard part, Barrett said.
“The question is, what do you then do about the system? Because the system has things like standardized tests. It has things you’re expected to finish learning at a certain level,” she said. “Is that realistic anymore?”
School boards and the Ministry of Education should adapt and become more flexible about those benchmarks, Barrett said, because it’s not fair to penalize kids for falling behind academically in a time of crisis.