Remote learning still has rough spots

As the school year comes to an unconventional close, schools and families have started to adjust to distance learning, but most say it’s no substitute for the classroom.

It has been nearly two months since the new coronavirus forced schools to shut their doors and move completely online. Computer screens replaced the proms, endof-year trips and long-awaited walks across the graduation stage. And since the start of distance learning, teachers and students alike had to learn as they went.

Distance learning made the fairly simple process of going to class something much more complicated for some students. Keeping track of it all — the different platforms, classes and assignment deadlines — can be overwhelming. Some parents worry their students aren’t keeping up with their academics. A recent distance-learning survey from Broward schools found students are struggling with the new environment.

“They miss their friends, they miss their school,” Superintendent Robert Runcie said Thursday. “There’s no replacement for the relations, the connections that our students have and the activities and opportunities they have when they come to school.”

Broward schools recently conducted a survey to identify how to improve the remote-learning experience. The survey responses came from about a third of the district’s students (28,974), 26% of parents (26,389) and about half of instructional staff (10,053).

About two-thirds of students said they “never or infrequently receive help from an adult at home,” while a third said they haven’t spoken to an adult at their school in the past week. About 44% of students said they were confused about their assignments and 52% struggled with being motivated to do the work. And about a third of parents said they worry their children are falling behind.

In response, Runcie said teachers will be required to use videoconferencing for summer school. It’s still unclear what will happen this fall, although Runcie said the district is looking at a possible hybrid model that includes both instruction in school and through remote learning. Runcie said the district will use the results to find ways to improve the distance learning experience, and he plans to share that with other districts.

Despite the challenges, school officials and parents have found that distance learning has given students flexibility to work at their own pace. It’s something that they may not have had in the traditional classroom.

Broward County Public Schools’s data shows attendance went from just over 89% and dropped to over 85% by Friday. The data shows a drop in attendance on Fridays and a spike upward on Monday each week since midApril, but this does not necessarily mean students are not logging in each Friday, said Daniel Gohl, Broward public schools’ chief academic officer.

Work is being assigned early in the week and students either finish it quickly and engage less or turn the work in over the weekend or at the start of the next week, Gohl said.

“One student per class may not be engaging at the end of the week in the same way that they had earlier in the week,” Gohl said. The start of the week, when teachers begin

giving assignments, is “when we are seeing higher levels of engagement.”

Miami-Dade County Public Schools is seeing attendance rates that are comparable to when students were physically attending school. Jackie Calzadilla, a MiamiDade County Public Schools spokeswoman, said attendance rates were averaging

91% as of Tuesday. The rate ranges from 91 to 93%.

Attendance in Palm Beach County has dropped by about 10 percentage points from the end of April, according to the school district’s attendance data, but this number does not include alternate methods of distance learning, like TV lessons, said School District of Palm Beach County spokeswoman Julie Trieste.

Attendance has ranged from over 84% on April 1 to

about 73% Friday. By Tuesday, 73% of students were accessing the online portal, according to the data.

One parent has two children who attend Broward County schools, an eighthgrader at Glades Middle School and a junior at Perry High School. Amy, a stay-athome mom from Miramar who asked that her last name not be used, said her kids spend about 4½ hours doing their schoolwork on a typical day.

Amy said there is not a specific time that her children have to be signed in by each day, as long as they log in. Her daughter has one class over Zoom while other teachers only upload the assignments to be completed; it is largely left up to her students to decide for themselves how much time they will spend on their work.

On more than one occasion, her daughter’s teacher called to check on a missing assignment.

“Usually, they get their stuff done because they don’t want me to get a phone call,” Amy said.

Overall, she is impressed with how her kids’ teachers have handled the transition to distance learning. Rather than returning to school, Amy is hopeful that distance learning will continue into fall.

The Center on Reinventing Public Education, a research center based in Washington, created a database to track how school districts nationwide responded to the coronavirus pandemic. Broward, MiamiDade and Palm Beach County public school districts are three counties out of 25 nationwide that track online attendance.

Sean Gill, one researcher at the center, said the three South Florida school districts were ahead of the curve in that they were among the fastest in their transition to distance learning.