As schools shut down, students face wide disparities in online learning
At Abraham Lincoln High School in San Jose, where classes will shut down for at least three weeks amid fear of the coronavirus outbreak, the time off might feel a little like an unplanned vacation. Students will receive no assignments or grades during the closure, and the public school has no plans to offer online classes, the principal said Friday.
A few miles away at Presentation High School, a private all-girls school, the doors also will shut for the immediate future — but teachers are taking all of their classes online. Students will be expected to virtually attend video classes using school-provided ipads, keeping their same schedule and completing all their assignments and tests online.
Even dance classes will continue in videochat.
“They’ll be dancing in their bedrooms,” said Katherine Georgiev, the school’s principal.
As schools around the Bay Area rushed to shut down Thursday and Friday, forcing hundreds of thousands of students to stay home for weeks, the region is poised to experience a huge explosion in online learning.
But some districts are approaching the shutdown very differently than others, with a vast range in the programming that will be available for students — from full online classes to a daily check-in with teachers to almost nothing.
The disparity worries parents and teachers in some districts, who say their kids will be at a disadvantage when it comes to high-stakes standardized testing, advanced placement tests or even college admissions.
Especially for Bay Area families who lack a reliable internet connection, the shutdown could leave less privileged students in one of the most unequal metro areas in the country falling further behind.
“Our students who are going to lose three weeks are going to be compared nationally to the students from private schools that continue their learning,” said Hasmig Minassian, an ethnic studies teacher at Berkeley High School, which will provide optional online educational resources for students but not continue structured online classes. “That seems unfair.”
Many districts were scrambling to figure out online lesson plans or find laptops for students after officials approved last-minute decisions to shutter schools. Some administrators said they expected to be able to tell parents more specifics about their policies in the coming days.
For the schools offering online classes, the shutdown poses a huge test for the burgeoning online education industry.
“No one should have the delusion that this is going to be a full substitute for in-person schooling,” said Salman Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, a popular free online teaching platform based in Mountain View. “But this is the moment that online education has to step up to the plate.”
As of now, some schools are only prepared to provide the bare minimum of services during their closures, such as meal plans for low-income students.
The San Jose Unified School District, which was ordered to close by county health officials Friday, said in a letter to parents that no assignments or grades will be recorded during the shutdown and all student absences will be recorded as excused.
At Lincoln High, “there is not going to be any online instruction during the closure,” Principal Matthew Hewitson said. “Every school in the district is doing the same thing.” He referred questions about the policy to a district spokeswoman, who did not respond to requests for comment Friday afternoon.
Teresa Castellanos, president of the San Jose Unified school board, said the district was rushing to figure out whether it could offer some kind of online resources for students.
“At this point, we’re trying to figure out what we’re doing next,” she said. “We’ve never been in this situation before.”
Other school districts say they have some online education component planned.
Pleasanton Unified will be closed from Monday through April 13, but teachers will provide daily online instruction and feedback starting March 23 through Google Classroom, another educational video tool, the district said. Students will take home Chromebook laptops.
Dublin Unified has asked teachers to prepare a twoweek lesson plan, which will be a collection of assignments for students to work on at home and should be finalized by the end of this week. Teachers there are committed to maintaining education during the time off, but most won’t be offering classes over videoconferencing, said spokesman Chip Dehnert. The district is working to get computers or other devices for students who may not have access at home.
In one sign of the fluidity of many schools’ plans, some students at El Cerrito High in the West Contra Costa Unified School District were told Friday not to treat the shutdown as a vacation and that they were expected to sign in at 9:30 each morning so teachers could check attendance, said Takashi Nikaidoh, a parent at the school.
But later Friday afternoon, Superintendent Matthew Duffy wrote in an email to teachers that they should not take attendance or assign student work for grades during the closure, although “we will still have a remote presence to support online learning and a call in hotline to support any needed help.”
Some teachers are taking things into their own hands. Minassian, who is a teacher-leader for Berkeley High’s ninth grade, said she and some of her colleagues were planning to send a daily morning email to their students checking in, sending interesting podcasts or videos or giving suggestions of books to read.
“Because this is such a dynamic situation and it is rapidly changing, you just never know what direction you’re going to go in,” she said. “If I offer online learning today, I could get sick tomorrow.”
Other districts say they’re ready to make a full transition online. At Presentation, the roughly 800 students already use an online course management system to submit assignments and communicate with their teachers. Administrators have been planning for the possibility of canceling classes for several weeks, and the school will provide free data connections on school-provided ipads for students who don’t have internet at home.
All classes will be taught on the video conferencing platform Webex. To keep up the school’s sense of community, some students are setting up “digital lunches” with each other, hanging out on video chats instead of in the cafeteria.
“We’re trying to maintain as much normalcy as best we can,” Georgiev said. “It’s going to look a lot like here on campus, except it’s going to be virtual. … This is uncharted waters for our teachers, but everyone is really committed to continuing the continuity of learning.”
The variety of responses by different districts raises questions about equity and whether students in families that don’t have strong internet connections will be able to keep up with their peers.
For those students, “normally, I would have said go to the computer lab or library,” Khan said. “Districts might be able to keep some of that open and practice social distancing.
“This would be a time to share Wifi with your neighbors,” he added.
For teachers able to offer online learning over the unexpected break, Khan — who has been making video classes since he started tutoring his cousin online in 2003 — suggests going slowly at the beginning to let students get used to an unfamiliar format.
“Start simple, and once you are able to execute on that well, then layer on more difficult material,” he said. “If you try to do too much too fast, it will cause paralysis.”
Also important: taking regular breaks, as many students have trouble keeping up their attention spans online. That’s especially crucial now, as kids face elevated stress and anxiety over the coronavirus outbreak.
Parents who also find themselves working from home can sit down with their kids and work while they do online learning, he suggested.
“Change out of your pajamas, structure your day, and pretend you’re doing your job and school together,” he said.
Some parents and teachers said that even without online learning, the shutdown was an opportunity for parents to spend more time with their kids and help them learn.
“Take out a good, oldfashioned book and have them read it,” suggested Kerrie Chabot, the parent of a high school student in Dublin and a teacher at Fremont Unified. “We did it for hundreds of years without computers. … Yes, we have technology, but they’re on technology all day at school.”