Pandemic disrupts learning at US schools

As millions of students are out of classrooms across the US due to the coronavirus, parents are scrambling to manage their children’s education, while experts are concerned about a worsening “homework gap”.

“There is a lot of disruption with the current closure of campuses, teaching of online classes, college personnel working remotely, possible delays of college admission decisions, and cancelling and rescheduling of test dates,” said Elizabeth Venturini, founder of College Career Results, a college admissions consulting company in California.

“Shelter in place” parents, especially those of high school seniors, aren’t prepared to manage their teens’ study plans and admissions-testing and keep up with their own jobs while now working at home, she said.

Since California first issued a statewide order for people to stay at home last week, the measure has been adopted across the country.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced 48 states to mandate the closing of schools statewide, except Iowa and Maine, where closures are determined at the district or school level, according to the publication Education Week.

Nebraska and Missouri have closed all their schools without a state order to do so.

The closures have affected at least 124,000 public and private schools and at least 55 million students, according to Education Week.

Globally, more than 1.4 billion students are affected by governments closing educational institutions in to contain the global pandemic, according to UNESCO monitoring.

Some states ordered schools to shut down for a month; other states said the schools won’t reopen until further notice. Kansas, New Mexico, Vermont and Virginia are the only states that have announced their schools will stay closed for the rest of the academic year.

In California, which has the country’s largest public school enrollment at 6.3 million, the schools aren’t likely to open before summer break, said Governor Gavin Newsom.

Sharon Yep, a mother of three in the San Francisco Bay Area, said she has been prepared for the possibility that school will remain closed for the rest of the academic year.

As a full-time mother, Yep said it hasn’t been as stressful as expected. Her three children in high school, secondary school and elementary school, respectively, are taking online classes.

“All my children now have online instruction from each subject teacher,” she said. “They seem to enjoy online teaching. Only my oldest daughter sometimes complains about more homework than before.”

Venturini reminds parents that now is the time to get teens up to speed with life skills while practicing “social distancing” from the outside world.

“Moms and dads get so caught up in making sure their teens are getting perfect grades and test scores. This can be a great time to teach some basic life skills,” she said.

The parents can show their teens how to cook, teach them how to sew and do the laundry, and instruct them on basic etiquette, she said.

Venturini also advises collegebound teens to stay on track with their academics and extracurricular activities.

“Teens can still do extracurriculars that don’t require going outside of the home,” she said. “They can write articles, take an online class, or search for scholarship opportunities.”

They can go online with friends and still do club and organization activities; for example, students in art clubs can virtually visit museums, and science students can do projects or research papers, said Venturini.

While many teachers are moving their classes online, not all students can take advantage because of the lack of technology at home.

Yep said her children’s schools are lending computers to those who don’t have one at home. She applied and got one for her youngest son.

Many school districts around the country are struggling to figure out how they are going to educate students who don’t have internet access or computers.

The Los Angeles Unified district, the largest in California, has more than 600,000 students and estimates that 25 percent of them don’t have internet access at home.

The district and San Diego Unified, the second-biggest district in the state, on March 23 asked the state Legislature to consider emergency state funding for school districts to help with distance learning and other challenges.

They asked for a minimum of $500 per student, saying that they were facing severe fiscal challenges because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Education experts are concerned that the pandemic may worsen the “homework gap” — the difficulty that students have completing homework when they lack internet access at home, compared with those who have access.

A 2018 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 17 percent of teens said they were often or sometimes unable to complete homework assignments because they didn’t have reliable access to a computer or internet connection.

Without a workable contingency plan to get all students connected, already-disadvantaged youth will fall even further behind over the next several weeks, Angela Siefer, executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, told CityLab.

“The inequities in all our education systems are going to be even worse,” she said. “The kids whose families do have internet connections are going to have at least some learning continuing during this period, and the kids who don’t won’t.”

Philadelphia has announced that its school district won’t offer remote learning, citing inequity as the main reason. The majority of the district’s 200,000 public school students come from lowincome families.