This is a few months old, but it's nonetheless instructive. It shows the percentage of school classes that were closed at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. It turns out that administrators were far more willing to cancel classes outright in poor neighborhoods than in rich neighborhoods:
As you might expect, you get the same results for kids from less educated families, as well as for Black vs. white kids. If you're poor, Black, and your parents don't have a college degree, the odds are pretty good that your class was canceled during the early days of the pandemic and eventually replaced with remote instruction.
Rich kids also transitioned to remote learning sooner, and, of course, computers were more available to rich kids than poor kids.
Everyone suffered learning losses during the pandemic, but this research shows part of the reason that poor kids suffered the most. It's because we ignored them more than rich kids.
UPDATE: Actually, this probably happened because poor parents, Black parents, and non-college educated parents actively preferred school closures during the pandemic. More here.
Is it not because poor schools are in cities? Which you’d expect to be hit harder (also to be more likely to close given cities are run by progressives by and large)
Not arguing the outcome, just the cause
I want to see how the numbers look if you split by whether the school district votes Republican or Democrat.
To be fair, I think most states ignored the needs of poor kids in the Before Times too. It's not like many poor school districts were well known for producing good educational outcomes in 2019, after all. They might have had their doors open for the requisite 180 days mandated by state law, but it was definitely common wisdom that lots of kids weren't actually learning much in them, which is why most parents did everything they could to get their kids out of them in the Before Times.
Kind of suspicious that lots of right-wing people - who didn't give a shit about educational outcomes amongst the poor in 2019 and before - are suddenly all about Won't Somebody Think Of The Poor Children now that they can use it as a cudgel against teachers' unions and as a selling point for vouchers for private schools and especially homeschooling. I seem to recall in several states, the rich and middle class were arguing in various lawsuits against state schemes to spend more money on education in poorer areas. Kind of funny that the same schools that states don't want to invest in during non-crisis times are the ones that are vital to remain open in crisis times.
“Rich kids” were/are more likely to be in private schools no?
"Rich kids also transitioned to remote learning sooner, and, of course, computers were more available to rich kids than poor kids." I contend that statement, while true, is likely misleading.
Access to a computer was likely one, of many, reasons why students from lower socio economic backgrounds struggled during Covid.
- allocation of time/personal discipline
- role models
- supportive parents
- pear groups etc
Stated differently, Kevin how do you explain students without computers who succeeded academically during Covid?
As an aside, I am deeply disappointed that most public school did not use the Covid relief funds for extra tutoring, enhanced summer school etc
Public schools do not have an unlimited pool of teachers for regular classes, let alone tutoring. Among other variables, probably schools in the lowest-income districts had the greatest shortage of teachers - some of who got sick themselves - and just could not staff classes fully.
skeptonomist - tutoring could have been one on one, via zoom with an English speaking professional anyplace in the world....
Its all so easy. ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD!
Why do you think this didnt happen?
because those professionals would not be in the union of course.
My kids are learning Spanish by Zoom from a teacher in Colombia. Has worked very well. In dint give a fuck about register he is in a union.
Ehh. It's not just a matter of "computers were more available". There's an entire IT infrastructure required to support remote learning. You need programs, subs, internet access*, and teachers need instruction on how to use, troubleshoot, and implement.
Rich districts have money to support every facet of remote learning. Poor districts may have some, but not all, but most importantly, many of them have inadequate access to the internet.
Yeah, in our kids' relatively well-off district, they were all sent home early in the pandemic with Chromebooks and (nearly) everyone around here has broadband. Online learning was still for shit, but they at least had the tools. And we were also working remotely during that time and could somewhat monitor what they were doing. That is very much not the case in a lot of poorer ubran and very rural districts where kids either 1. didn't have computers or broadband to connect with and 2. whose blue-collar parents actually had to go in to work. When daycares closed, a lot of lower-income middle and high-school aged kids ended up becoming caregivers to their younger siblings if not their grandparents as well so their parents could keep working. It's a little hard to do an algebra lesson while watching a two year-old.
100% correct.
It's not only the poor kids but folks who can afford computers or internet are at big risk of being under represented as they don't have access to on line banking, signing papers, reading news, etc. The poor should be be a wake up call for our society.
Infrastructure has a lot to do with this. A newer buildings equipped with decent air filtration and social distancing allowed our local district to implement hybrid classes. Parents who wanted to kept their kids home 100% and other kids split 50/50 between in-person and remote learning. This allowed the district to reduce class sizes and allow social distancing + better air filtration, which reduced spread considerably. In a poor district, the buildings are often very old and the free cash to implement a plan like the one I described would be hard to get.
In addition, teachers' unions were a BIG voice, especially in urban districts. If you were a teacher with a strong union, you could expect that you wouldn't be back in person without adequate protections. In poor districts, adequate protection took a lot longer to implement. In addition, teachers are mostly WOMEN. They have KIDS AT HOME. That was a big factor, too.
They’ll catch up. Lesson learned. It’s better to keep everything open. If you don’t want to go to work, quit.
Its easy to learn lessons if you dont bother learning and just go with your gut.
Its misleading to imply that any learning went into the 'its better to keep it open' conclusion.
My kids are in an urban district where everyone had iPads before the pandemic. The district had people driving around to deliver internet Hotspots to anyone who needed one.
But the physical access to the technology isn't all that matters. Teachers I talked to said about a third of kids almost never showed up to online learning.
Rich kids were more likely to have English-speaking parents who were working from home and able to take time to help with schoolwork throughout the day. They usually had dedicated spaces to do their schoolwork, and may even have had someone dedicated to help them (many rich parents created "pods" with either a parent or paid tutor who monitored school all day). Simply having the tech skills to troubleshoot was a major benefit. During the first week of my daughter's online math class you could hear crying children and half a dozen parents trying to troubleshoot issues on the fly as everyone attempted to navigate the multiple programs used in that one class.
Poor kids also had a lot more stressors at home. More people in smaller homes, parents risking illness at in-person jobs, or laid off from in-person jobs. More food insecurity.
Rich people just have more options and capacity to deal with disasters.
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