What we’re facing

Let’s be clear about the debate

The paper says the Arkansas Education Association polled its members, and the survey (which received responses from around 6,000 members) found that four out of five “were concerned for their own health and that of their families, their students and their students’ families.”

Only four out of five? Goodness, but in the middle of a pandemic, we’d imagine that number would have been more like 99 out of 100, or more. All of us should be concerned, and aware, when we go through the drive-through pharmacy. Or pump gas.

Or buy groceries. Or check the mailbox in front of the house.

If this state, this country, this world, are going through a new normal — and we are — then “concerned” should be normal.

Some teachers and some teacher unions have announced that they’ll not attend school in person this year. Not until it’s completely safe, which might not be until a reliable vaccine is available. We suppose such a decision should be made individually, because individual teachers know best their situations.

But if teachers in whole school districts decide to sit out this semester, the rest of us should be clear about the decision. This is what we — and our kids — face:

The talented Mr. Dave Perozek of the newsroom published a story in Sunday’s paper. It was the anchor story on 1A, and it should have been. For those of us who watched students and teachers complete their studies online this past spring, his reporting was no surprise: There are costs to pay for virtual instruction.

And we don’t just mean that Junior sometimes doesn’t do his classwork, although that certainly happens. There’s not a math question that Google can’t answer, and even “show the work.”

The second paragraph of Dave Perozek’s story is what folks in the business call the nut graph: “Educators and researchers expect that most students lost ground academically in the spring when schools closed to in-person instruction, exacerbating the learning loss that occurs during a typical summer. And, with no assessment testing for Arkansas students this spring, teachers don’t know where the students stand starting a new school year.”

Other details of the story:

• Poorer kids, disabled kids, kids who use English as a second language, and kids without good Wi-Fi are especially hurt by the loss of in-person schooling.

• Without in-person teaching, some of Arkansas’ leaders fear a widening achievement gap — a gap they’ve been trying to close for a generation.

• A national survey by the American Institutes of Research showed that when schools went from in-person to virtual learning in the spring, “the amount of time students spent on instructional activities generally plummeted.” But few of us needed the research outfit to tell us that. Arkansas requires six hours of learning every day in school. At the lower level of elementary school, the kids were getting closer to two hours after schools shut down.

• When Johnny Key, secretary of education for the state of Arkansas, made the decision in March to go all-virtual — undoubtedly the right decision at the time — he told parents not to focus so much on new material, but concentrate on reviewing the lessons already taught to that point. Notice: He told parents this. Because many parents were doing the one-on-one instruction. And some of us haven’t divided a fraction in ages. How many semesters can the kids be expected to “review” material before they’ve lost a whole year of education?

• Another research outfit, at the University of Colorado, says that the nation’s full-time virtual and even blended schools aren’t doing well. One professor here in Arkansas called the results of such schools “atrocious.”

• Oh yes, sometimes kids can’t get access to virtual schooling because they don’t have Internet connections at home. The paper said 30% to 40% of the kids in Little Rock’s district aren’t connected.

So this is what we’re dealing with. Covid-19 is the concern of the decade. Nothing has disrupted life as much as this highly contagious bug. Something like 600 people in Arkansas have died from it.

And who knows if schools will be forced to close again in a month, or even a week? And all the above dealt with. Somehow.

But let’s all understand how this affects the kids, should the schools shut again. The achievement gap would grow. Poor kids would be hurt the most. Parents would become math tutors. The kids wouldn’t take standardized tests to see where they stand. Some wouldn’t even be able to get online. For those who have Internet service, they’d spend a fraction of the time doing schoolwork than they’d do in a classroom.

Decisions will be made in the coming weeks, at the state level, at the union level, at the school level, at the family level. Let’s keep all this in mind. A lot depends on it.

For young people, perhaps everything depends on it.