Time for big thinking on what we’ve learned
No more snow days.
What is being learned from the gigantic disruption in education that has been underway since March?
No more snow days. It’s not the only answer to the question, but it’s something that everyone who lives in Wisconsin can understand.
The Milwaukee Urban League hosted an online question and answer session July 29 with several local education chiefs. One question they were asked was to name innovations due to the pandemic that they want to continue and past practices that they now see they don’t want to bring back.
Mark Mone, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said one thing that had been an advantage in the stay-at-home period is that people were more available for meetings and conversations.
“We’ve never had so many people being able to participate in some of our meetings,” he said. “Communication is pretty immediate and you get a lot of interaction.”
Keith Posley, superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools, agreed that being able to communicate virtually was a plus. But snow days were his main answer.
Posley said, “The one thing that’s just exciting to me, I ask myself over and over, why have we missed so many days due to snow days when we have this virtual platform that we could have been using and those kinds of things? This has truly opened our eyes around that particular piece.”
Vicki Martin, president of Milwaukee Area Technical College, said there were things the college hadn’t done before the pandemic hit, such as putting all course syllabuses online. Martin said, “Things we didn’t think we could do quickly we’ve been able to very quickly get done.” And, she agreed with Posley: No more snow days.
On Aug. 12, WTMJ-AM radio held a live forum about the state of K-12 and college education in Wisconsin. One of the participants, Corey Golla, superintendent of schools in Menomonee Falls, also mentioned (with a laugh) that snow days were on their way out. Permit me to offer two reactions:
It may well prove to be the case that if almost every student has online access, switching to a virtual school day when the weather turns too snowy might work. It might not be successful if the decision is made at the last minute, as has often the been the case with snow days. But maybe with a head start, it could be done. So farewell (probably) to snow days.
But I hope that bigger things will be learned from all that everyone is going through now.
We are living through a huge, unscheduled and farfrom-ideal experiment in education.
Looking back over years, online or distance or virtual education has not blossomed overall the way some envisioned. Shouldn’t 2020 be the year when we find out whether it works overall?
Let me stick here to kindergarten through 12thgrade education. (Colleges have a whole list of big questions of their own, enough to make your head spin when it comes to thinking about the future of universities, but K-12 is more my thing.)
While just about every teacher and student has used computers for years and while there are terrific things that can be done using technology, the fundamental dynamics of how kids learn and how teachers do their jobs haven’t changed that much.
And some of the biggest ideas in recent years — small group learning, project-based learning, giving kids more freedom to choose what to learn, more oneon-one coaching — aren’t ideas that are necessarily dependent on technology.
Are there problems distance learning can fix?
So what can be done well and how when it comes to distance learning? Some focused questions:
Could remote learning help with the huge problem of students who change schools frequently, generally to the detriment of their educational progress? Could technology allow them to stay with the same teachers and school, even as their lives are unstable?
Can one-on-one virtual tutoring for young kids who are struggling with reading be shown to be effective and can it become a way to reach a lot more kids without spending a lot more money? Or is in-person tutoring clearly better?
What about students with special ed needs or physical disabilities? Can more be learned about what is effective? Can concerns about them being the ones most likely to get less effective schooling in a virtual situation be addressed?
I read a piece written by a mother who said her child who had been bullied in school and who had anxiety problems had been doing much better at home. What can be learned from that?
Does the flexibility of virtual ed school day (I’ll spare you the term “asynchronous,” but it’s popular currently) offer opportunities or does it really just mean doing less? Or is it both of these things, depending on the students?
Will so many students learning at home and in so many ways weaken school administration? Or, as some suggest, lead to the demise of big school bureaucracies? (I doubt the latter, but who knows?)
Or is a big lesson that we’re learning simply this: We were doing the right thing overall all along, in that, for most kids, the best setting is in a classroom with a teacher who can work with them face to face? And if that is so, maybe that we should do more to show we value teachers and want to strengthen good in-person schooling?
So many big questions. Right now, everyone is understandably preoccupied with figuring out what to do with education in the short term, given the anxietyridden issues of how to balance health and learning.
But some smart, big thinking ought to lie in the near future about what we’re finding out about how to educate children. There is a blizzard of important issues rising. Canceling snow days isn’t enough of a response.
Alan J. Borsuk is senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette Law School. Reach him at alan.borsuk@marquette.edu.