State’s AIM is off

Online learning should remain a tool

In panning for gold, prospectors don’t toss a stream’s sediment aside without first straining out the shimmery stuff that could prove valuable.

OK, that’s a strained way of saying you don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water, but that phrase has been around for centuries and editor types usually don’t care much for relying on cliches. They’re cliches because they’re overused, so why add fuel to the fire? Oops, we did it again.

The whole baby/bath water concept has bubbled up as a result of the weather, namely snow. We’ve had a bit of it in Northwest Arkansas and other parts of the state. And it’s always lovely, until it’s not. What can make it not so lovely is the havoc it wreaks on school schedules.

One effect from the passage of Gov. Sarah Sanders’ LEARNS Act last year is the practical demise of AMI days. Public school parents and students will recognize that as “Alternative Method of Instruction.” That references the use of online resources for teaching, whether it’s video conferencing, online testing or communicating homework assignments through the internet.

AMI was all the rage in the midst of the pandemic. It allowed a form of education to continue even with students not physically in the classrooms. But it’s abundantly clear that AMI was never a great substitute for in-person instruction. Kids just didn’t learn as much or as well through AMI, but it was viewed as a necessity, at least as an option, while the pandemic raged.

But post-pandemic, it’s become popular in some political circles for public officials to emphatically oppose AMI. That may be inspired by their honest view that AMI was a wasted effort. It may be they can score some political points among folks who thought AMI was part of an overreaction to covid-19. Or both aspects may inspire their opposition to AMI.

But now, with districts piling up snow days and weeks of winter still ahead, some educators and others ponder whether some education on snow days would be better than no education on snow days.

For its part, the LEARNS Act didn’t ban AMI days. It did, however, forbid them from being counted toward the state-required minimum of a 178-day school year. Attorney General Tim Griffin has advised that a school district counting AMI days toward the 178-day tally would likely be disqualified for state funding toward meeting the new LEARNS Act minimum teacher salary of $50,000. No school district is likely to risk state funding for a few AMI days.

We don’t mind a few true snow days, maybe one or two. Let the kids enjoy themselves. But couldn’t AMI be used in measured ways if a school district’s leaders feel it’s beneficial to education? Could a day of AMI count as a half-day toward 178 if educators feel their students are better served with some learning rather than no learning while the snow makes getting to school too dangerous to risk?

Should each district get to make that decision, within reasonable limitations set by the state?

Here’s why tacking school days onto the end of a year isn’t a great outcome: School calendars matter a great deal when it comes to preparing kids for standardized testing designed to measure students’ acquisition of knowledge. As a result, school districts pace their curricula to build toward springtime standardized tests, much like a college basketball team shapes its schedule so it has a chance to reach its highest level of competitive play in January and February leading up to the NCAA Tournament.

Sorry, Razorback fans. Didn’t mean to bring up a sore point.

Back to school schedules: Missing school days as a result of inclement weather interrupts the pace of preparation for the testing. Days added to the end of the school year don’t help with that.

Since Griffin’s opinion on AMI’s indirect demise, state education officials seem to have been looking for an out. This week State Education Secretary Jacob Oliva advised that school districts can meet state requirements — and some may already be meeting them — because the law requiring 178 days also equates that to 1,068 instructional hours (or six hours a day). It’s not so much the number of days as it is the total amount of time students receive instruction.

“There are many districts across the state that are exceeding the 1,068 hours,” Oliva said. “They are going back and looking at their instructional times. Their student days may go 6½ hours or it may go seven hours if they are building in remediation. If they exceed the 1,068 hours, then they have met the requirement.”

That’s good news, but online learning is a tool that could be used more effectively in a pinch and should not be treated as wasted effort. Snow on the ground should not always mean learning comes to a halt. State policy should set parameters, but it should also give school districts leeway as to whether temporary online learning can serve as one tool in their educational arsenals.