redefinED
  • Home
  • ABOUT US
  • Content
    • Analysis
    • Commentary and Opinion
    • News
    • News Features
    • Voices for Education Choice
    • factcheckED
  • Topics
    • Achievement Gap
    • Charter Schools
    • Customization
    • Education Equity
    • Education Politics
    • Education Research
    • Education Savings Accounts
    • Education Spending
    • Faith-based Education
    • Florida Schools Roundup
    • Homeschooling
    • Microschools
    • Parent Empowerment
    • Private Schools
    • Special Education
    • Testing and Accountability
    • Virtual Education
    • Vouchers
  • Multimedia
    • Video
    • Podcasts
  • Guest Bloggers
    • Ashley Berner
    • Jonathan Butcher
    • Jack Coons
    • Dan Lips
    • Chris Stewart
    • Patrick J. Wolf
  • Education Facts
    • Research and Reports
    • Gardiner Scholarship Basic Program Facts
    • Hope Scholarship Program Facts
    • Reading Scholarship Program Facts
    • FES Basic Facts
  • Search
redefinED
 
  • Home
  • ABOUT US
  • Content
    • Analysis
    • Commentary and Opinion
    • News
    • News Features
    • Voices for Education Choice
    • factcheckED
  • Topics
    • Achievement Gap
    • Charter Schools
    • Customization
    • Education Equity
    • Education Politics
    • Education Research
    • Education Savings Accounts
    • Education Spending
    • Faith-based Education
    • Florida Schools Roundup
    • Homeschooling
    • Microschools
    • Parent Empowerment
    • Private Schools
    • Special Education
    • Testing and Accountability
    • Virtual Education
    • Vouchers
  • Multimedia
    • Video
    • Podcasts
  • Guest Bloggers
    • Ashley Berner
    • Jonathan Butcher
    • Jack Coons
    • Dan Lips
    • Chris Stewart
    • Patrick J. Wolf
  • Education Facts
    • Research and Reports
    • Gardiner Scholarship Basic Program Facts
    • Hope Scholarship Program Facts
    • Reading Scholarship Program Facts
    • FES Basic Facts
  • Search

Virtual Education

CustomizationEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceFeaturedNewsParental ChoiceSchool ChoiceVirtual Education

New Florida Virtual School board member brings special education experience to role

Lisa Buie February 11, 2021
Lisa Buie

Editor’s note: Last year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed a new slate of trustees to the board of the Florida Virtual School. Vice chairperson Linda Reiter is one of those appointees and the first in redefinED’s occasional series of profiles of leaders and advocates in the education choice movement.  

Linda Reiter has spent more than three decades teaching thousands of students. Though the names, faces and teaching methods change, her motivation has remained the same.

“Anything I do in education is in honor of my sister,” said Reiter, who at 67 continues to work with hearing-impaired students at Miami-Dade charter schools after retiring as one of the school district’s first itinerant teachers.

When Reiter was invited last year to become a member of the Florida Virtual School’s board of trustees, she considered it yet another way to pay tribute to her late sister, Shira, who was born deaf and who found the best educational fit because of school choice.

Reiter’s parents wanted Shira to be able to fully function in a hearing world. In their view, that meant learning to communicate orally. They sent her to a school that did not allow sign language. After the school’s methods proved too harsh, they tried a district school in their hometown of Philadelphia. That lasted six months. Finally, they sent her the Model Secondary School at Gallaudet University, the world’s only university in which all programs and services are specifically designed to accommodate deaf and hard of hearing students.

“She came home in three weeks a full signer, because everybody in that school was a signer,” recalled Reiter, who took a sign language class when she was 16 so she could communicate with her sister. In teaching and mentoring Shira, she found the passion that ultimately became her life’s work.

It is mainly because of her sister’s experience that Reiter supports customized education, including the virtual education provided by the Florida Virtual School, a statewide public school district offering more than 190 courses for students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

“I’m hoping my expertise in special education is a good mix for this board,” Reiter said.

Not that FLVS has ever been lacking in its ability to serve hearing-impaired students.

“They’ve got a lot in place; they have worked with the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine for many years,” she said. “They make accommodations for every student. They have two interpreters on their staff, exceptional student education managers and teachers.”

Since July, 611 students with hearing impairments have taken classes through FLVS, she said.

However, accommodating other special needs can be challenging for online education providers. While FLVS accepts students on individualized education plans and 504 service plans, it tells families whose students are taking classes through its part-time flex program to access services it can’t provide through their school districts.

Reiter said she thinks FLVS, which expanded its capacity during the pandemic, will continue to be a popular option even after the threat of COVID has passed, just like other innovative forms of education such as learning pods and hybrids, which sprang up as grass-roots pandemic solutions.

“Everything changed from the way it was last year, and it’s not going to go back to the way it was” she said. “Parents have never seen this before en masse, and some of them like it very much. This is the future.”

One high school senior Reiter works with loves virtual learning and wants to finish his high school career that way, while another can’t wait to get back to brick-and-mortar school. Both should be allowed to do what works best for them, Reiter said, just like her sister was able to do so many years ago.

“That’s the problem with big district decisions. They don’t always work, and you’re stuck in a little box you can’t get out of,” Reiter said.

She thinks her sister would agree.

February 11, 2021 0 comment
1 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Commentary and OpinionCoronavirus / COVID-19Education and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceFeaturedParental ChoiceSchool ChoiceUnionismVirtual Education

Teachers unions are keeping kids out of the classroom; school choice can ensure they learn anyway

Special to redefinED January 27, 2021
Special to redefinED

Editor’s note: This commentary from Jude Schwallbach, research associate and project coordinator at The Heritage Foundation, originally appeared in The Daily Signal.

National School Choice Week has taken on renewed importance this year, as too many families are approaching the one-year mark of crisis online learning provided by their public school district.

Last March, the coronavirus pandemic shuttered schools nationwide, forcing teachers, parents, and students to transition to virtual classrooms and grapple with the various effects of lockdowns. Ten months later, parents report that 53% of K-12 students are still learning in their virtual classrooms.

Public schools have remained largely closed to in-person instruction.

Recent research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicated that in-person learning is rarely a source of large outbreak. Even though in-person learning is one of the safest activities for children, proposals to reopen district schools for face-to-face learning have met with staunch opposition from teachers’ unions.

Inexplicably, teachers unions have also rejected measures which would require teachers to be more available to students throughout the day via live video.

The Center on Reinventing Public Education’s director, Robin Lake, told the New York Times that the teachers unions’ vacillating responses feel “like we are treating kids as pawns in this game.”

Adding to parents’ frustrations, teachers unions have also taken the opportunity to push for a whole host of concessions that have nothing to do with health safety.

For instance, the American Federation of Teachers has a long list of demands, including: additional food programs, guidance counselors, smaller classes, tutors to assist teachers, and “culturally responsive practices.”

Similarly, The United Teachers of Los Angeles has demanded a moratorium on charter schools, higher taxes for the wealthy, and “Medicare for All.”

The blatant, non-pandemic-related demands of many teachers unions have illustrated what Stanford University professor Terry Moe noted a decade ago: “This is a school system organized for the benefit of the people who work in it, not for the kids they are expected to teach.”

The inflexibility of teachers unions has increasingly become a source of escalating tension with local officials. For example, Chicago Public Schools, the third largest school district in the nation, locked teachers out of their virtual classrooms after they refused to return to in-person instruction with classrooms at less than 20% capacity. 

Such unbending posture has provoked the ire of parents and left many children frustrated, both academically and socially. As Tim Carne wrote in the Washington Examiner, “The very people who have most loudly declared the importance of public schools now are deliberately destroying public schools.”

Many parents are tired of being strong-armed by teachers unions and have pursued alternative education options for their children.

For instance, the learning pod phenomenon, wherein parents work together to pool resources and hire their own tutors and materials is popular. This allows students to return to in-person lessons, even if school districts refuse to reopen.

Last September, a national poll by the pro-school choice nonprofit EdChoice indicated that 18% of surveyed parents were looking to join one. At the same time, 70% of surveyed teachers reported interest in teaching in a pod.

A recent report by education scholars Michael B. Henderson, Paul Peterson, and Martin West found that approximately 3 million students—nearly 6% of K-12 students—currently participate in a learning pod.

Notably, pod participants are more likely to be “from families in the bottom quartile of the income distribution.” The authors wrote, “Parent reports suggest that 9% of all students from low-income families and 5% of all students from high-income families are participating in pods.”

Families have embraced private school options, too. A survey last November of 160 schools in 15 states and Washington, D.C., showed that half of the surveyed private schools experienced higher enrollment this academic year than they had the previous year pre-pandemic.

Moreover, more than 75% of surveyed private schools were open for in-person instruction. The remaining schools offered hybrid education, which is a combination of in-person and virtual learning.

Children could have greater access to private education if more states made education dollars student-centered. For instance, parent controlled education savings accounts allow parents to spend their funds on approved education costs, like private tutoring, books, or tuition. These accounts already exist in five states.

National School Choice Week is an important reminder that “public education” means education available to the public, regardless of the type of school it takes place in. It is the perfect time to remember that parents, not teachers unions, are best positioned to determine the education needs of children.  

School choice options like education savings accounts can bring education consistency to families across the country during a most uncertain time. National School Choice Week is an important reminder of that.

January 27, 2021 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Charter SchoolsCoronavirus / COVID-19Education ChoiceFeaturedNewsSchool ChoiceVirtual Education

redefinED’s best of 2020: Switch, now, to online learning? This charter school org was ready

Ron Matus December 31, 2020
Ron Matus

Natalie Keime, ESOL coordinator and sixth-grade intensive reading teacher at Somerset Oaks Academy in Homestead, delivers a virtual lesson to her students from her home.

Editor’s note: During the holiday season, redefinED is reprising the “best of the best” from our 2020 archives. This post originally published March 26.

About a decade ago, Fernando Zulueta was making a presentation to school district officials in Florida about why his charter school support company, Academica, needed to expand into online learning. For one thing, he told them, charter schools serviced by Academica must better serve students who need flexibility because of their talents (say, an elite gymnast) or their challenges (say, homebound because of illness). For another, he said, you never know when a natural disaster – maybe even a pandemic – might necessitate a transition into virtual instruction.

Fast forward to coronavirus 2020.

Academica, now one of the biggest charter support organizations in America, was among the first education outfits in America to shift online as thousands of brick-and-mortar schools were shuttered. The company began planning for potential closures weeks in advance. And when the closure orders were given in Florida, it trained thousands of teachers, distributed thousands of laptops, and acclimated tens of thousands of students to a new normal – in a matter of days.

“I’m not a doomsday prepper,” Zulueta said. “But when you do the work we do, you have the responsibility to be prepared … and to evaluate risks and contingencies in the future.”

On March 13, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered all public schools in Florida to extend spring break a week so students would not return to school. At the time, the vast majority of Florida districts were about to start their spring break, while a handful of others were ending theirs.

Most of the Academica-supported charter schools in Florida were still a week from break. But by March 16, about 40,000 of their 65,000 students logged into class from home. By week’s end, most of the rest had, too. Within days, Academica’s Florida schools were reporting, based on student logins, nearly normal attendance rates.

“I had a little bit of mixed reaction” when the call came to transition, said Miriam Barrios, a third-grade teacher at Mater Academy of International Studies, an Academica-supported school in Miami. Ninety-nine percent of Mater’s students are students of color; 97 percent are low-income. “A lot of these families don’t have computers. So, it was a little scary.”

“But overall things have gone so well, much better than I expected,” Barrios said.

“It ended up feeling a lot like being in school,” said Claudia Fernandez-Castillo, a parent in Miami whose daughters, ages 11 and 12, attend another Academica-supported school, Pinecrest Cove Academy. “They made the kids feel very comfortable with this massive change in their little lives.”

Academica services 165 charter schools in eight states, including 133 in Florida. Somerset, Mater, Doral and Pinecrest are its main networks. According to the most rigorous and respected research on charter school outcomes, students in all four networks are making modest to large gains over like students in district schools.

It remains to be seen how well schools in any sector respond to what is an unprecedented crisis, and what the impacts will be on academic performance.

School districts are mobilizing quickly. In Florida, most of them still have a few days to prep before the bulk of students return to “school” March 30. To date, there’s been little coverage of how Florida’s 600-plus charter schools are coping (though there’s been a glimpse here and there for charters elsewhere.) Ditto for Florida’s 2,700 private schools. Some are proving nimble and capable. But given the big resource disparities, it’s an open question whether others with large numbers of low-income students have the technology and support they need to turn on a dime.

For Academica, online learning is familiar territory. The organization supports three virtual charters in Florida. It offers online courses for students in its other Florida schools. For a decade, it’s also had an international arm, Academica Virtual Education, that serves thousands of students in Europe who need dual enrollment classes to earn specialized diplomas.

Given the events in China, Zulueta said his team began considering, in January, the possibility of school closures in America. The urgency ramped up in February, when the spread of coronavirus in Italy began affecting Academica students in that country.

In mid-February, Academica-serviced schools in the U.S. sent questionnaires to parents, asking if they needed devices and/or connections for distance learning. They ordered what they needed to fill the gaps. When Gov. DeSantis made what was effectively a closure announcement March 13, Zulueta said, “we were already ready to rock and roll.”

The day after the announcement, Academica used online sessions to do basic training in online instruction for 150 administrators. Over that weekend, it trained 3,000 teachers. Meanwhile, schools distributed several thousand laptops to families, in some cases through drive-through pick-ups. Zulueta said the need ranged from 4 percent at some Academica client schools to 20 percent at others.

Schools also immediately let parents know what was coming Monday.

Zulueta, who has three daughters in Academica-serviced schools, witnessed the new normal at his kitchen table.

“They got up. They logged in. And they went right to class,” he said. His daughters and their classmates wore their usual uniforms. The schools did their best to stick to established bell schedules. “We wanted to keep it as close to what they did at school as possible.”

Like students at Academica-serviced schools throughout Florida, television production students at Doral Academy Preparatory High School have quickly adapted to a virtual learning environment.

Academica uses an online learning platform it created itself. It’s integrated with a number of other tools, including Zoom, the video conferencing software with the “Hollywood Squares” look.

Fernandez-Castillo, the mom at Pinecrest Cove Academy, said she watched over the weekend as friends who are Academica teachers practiced the new online platform with each other. Barrios, the Mater teacher, said she contacted her students’ parents after her training on Friday to tell them she would be testing the platform at 8 that night if they and their children wanted to join. Eight to 10 families did. But she still had some anxiety about Monday morning.

“I thought it was going to be a freak show,” Barrios said. “The computers are going to crash, the kids are not going to log in … “

That’s not what happened. Monday morning was “a little jagged,” she said, because some students experienced technical difficulties and couldn’t log in right on schedule at 8:30. But by 8:50, 90 percent of her students were in. “It was amazing,” she said.

Barrios and other teachers used Monday to get their students familiar with the new set up. Any glitches, like problems with Internet access, were minor, she said. Over the next few days, she and her students quickly cleared little hurdles, like students learning to keep their mics on mute until it was their time to speak, and how to use chat functions to indicate they had a question.

Barrios doesn’t think there’s a long-term substitute for the dynamics of an in-person classroom, where students, in her view, can more easily “bounce ideas off one another.” But as a next best thing, she said what her school is doing is far better than nothing, and not bad at all.

Fernandez-Castillo agreed, and pointed to other upsides. “Everybody’s thrilled with the way this has been done,” she said, referring to other parents. “I think it glued the (school) community together even more.”

December 31, 2020 0 comment
2 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Commentary and OpinionCoronavirus / COVID-19CustomizationEducation ChoiceFeaturedParental ChoicePodcastSchool ChoiceVirtual Education

revisitED: SUFS president Doug Tuthill follows up with Pasco County Principal of the Year JoAnne Glenn

redefinED staff December 31, 2020
redefinED staff

On this episode, Tuthill touches base with one of the nation’s top online learning leaders. Glenn earned one of three “Digital Principal of the Year” nods from the National Association of Secondary School Principals. A founder of Pasco eSchool, which offers full- and part-time K-12 digital instruction, Glenn has led the expansion of mastery-based learning over the past 12 years and has been instrumental in creating a model for digital learning.  

https://www.redefinedonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/JoanneGlennUPDATE_EDIT.mp3

The two discuss Glenn’s experience during the summer and fall of 2020 as enrollment for Pasco’s digital school increased 500% to serve nearly 3,200 full-time students. While she doesn’t anticipate many students shifting to full-time online instruction post-pandemic, she does think families will continue to look for online options to create more flexible schedules.

“We still have ongoing needs in areas that we’re continuing to collaborate around, but overall, I think we’re moving in the right direction.”

EPISODE DETAILS:

·       The massive increase in online student enrollment and the challenges of forecasting enrollment and staffing

·       Helping teachers develop within new learning modalities

·       Long-term changes Glenn anticipates as the result of the pandemic

·       Intentional development of digital content and the hope that districts become savvier consumers of it

To listen to Tuthill’s earlier podcast with Glenn, click HERE.

December 31, 2020 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Commentary and OpinionCoronavirus / COVID-19CustomizationEducation ChoiceFeaturedParental ChoicePodcastSchool ChoiceVirtual Education

revisitED: SUFS president Doug Tuthill follows up with public education pioneer Julie Young

redefinED staff December 29, 2020
redefinED staff

On this episode, Tuthill touches back with the vice president of education outreach and student services at Arizona State University, who also serves as managing director of Arizona State University’s Prep Academy and ASU Prep Digital.

https://www.redefinedonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/JulieYoungUPDATE_EDIT.mp3

Young, who has been celebrated as an education disruptor for nearly three decades, was founding CEO and president of Florida Virtual School, the world’s first statewide virtual school and one of the nation’s largest K-12 online educator providers.

The two discuss Young’s experience during the last few months of the COVID-19 pandemic that upended public education and accelerated massive education change. Young talks about the 700% increase in full-time students at ASU Prep Digital, which now serves more than 300,000 worldwide. Both Tuthill and Young believe new models of hybrid education will remain a part of public education post-pandemic.

“People swimming with (the changes in public education) are beginning to realize there are new and different ways of learning, that one size does not fit all.”

EPISODE DETAILS:

·       What Young has learned during the pandemic, what has worked, and improvement opportunities for the future

·       The creation of the Arizona Virtual Teacher Institute and Arizona’s support in empowering teachers’ evolution and skill development

·       How public school districts can ride the wave of emerging learning modes such as pods and micro-schools

·       Content development changes and new strategies that have emerged during the last school year

To listen to Tuthill’s earlier podcast with Young, click HERE.

December 29, 2020 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Coronavirus / COVID-19CustomizationEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceFeaturedNewsParental ChoicePublic School ChoiceSchool ChoiceVirtual Education

Can preschoolers learn virtually? In a Denver pilot program, some kids ‘can’t wait to log in’

Special to redefinED December 18, 2020
Special to redefinED

Moumin Elgizoli, 4, paints with his class as part of a virtual preschool pilot program, a partnership formed in response to parent demand between Denver Public Schools and the taxpayer-supported Denver Preschool Program.

Editor’s note: This post by Chandra Thomas Whitfield published earlier this month on Chalkbeat.

Sara Mohamed and her husband had intended to enroll their 4-year-old son in in-person preschool at Holm Elementary, a nearby Denver public school, but as COVID-19 infection rates soared through the fall in Colorado, they had second thoughts.

They placed their two older children into virtual learning but struggled to find a district program for their preschooler.

“All summer he’d been excited about going to school in the fall; he was so ready to go,” said Mohamed, of Denver. “He was so disappointed when we eventually told him that he would not be able to go to school in person.”

The family’s saving grace came when a call to Mile High Early Learning, a network of nine subsidized Montessori-inspired learning centers in Denver, confirmed they had space in its virtual preschool pilot program.

The program stems from a partnership between Denver Public Schools and the taxpayer-supported Denver Preschool Program, in response to parent demand. Unlike some other Colorado school districts, Denver Public Schools originally did not offer a virtual preschool option. Administrators there believe strongly that in-person learning is better for the youngest students.

It wasn’t quite the “big boy school” experience Mohamed and her family had envisioned for their energetic little Moumin, but they quickly concluded that any help getting him kindergarten ready was worth a try. Mohamed says weeks into the program her son is flourishing, and they’re grateful to have him enrolled.

“He’s so happy, he loves it,” said Mohammed, who supports new Arabic-speaking families and teaches English classes virtually for Holm Elementary. “It’s only 30 minutes a day, but it’s still made a big difference for him. He can’t wait to log in at 3:30 p.m.”

Mile High Early Learning and the Denver Preschool Program said the pilot appears to be working well for enrolled families.

Mile High Early Learning is among 47 providers that had enrolled in the pilot as of Dec. 3, according to Denver Preschool Program President and CEO Elsa Holguín. Some providers are offering remote learning while some are planning virtual programs in case they have to pivot later in the school year.

Mile High Early Learning students log in Monday through Thursday with program-issued iPads preloaded with learning apps, to join a teacher and more than a dozen classmates for 30 minutes. Families also receive books, paper, crayons, markers, and art supplies. The program asks parents to engage their students outside of class in drawing, painting, writing letters, and even homework.

Holguín says the pilot aims to support early childhood education providers. Since the onset of the pandemic, many said they felt like they were, “flying by the seat of their pants,” with limited guidance and direction.

“We decided that the best thing to do was not just to continue to help out our providers, but also to figure out how to start learning more about how to do [distance learning] at a quality level,” Holguín said.

Denver Preschool Program has underwritten sliding-scale tuition and teacher training and coaching, and provided funding to help sites remain afloat as they navigate the challenges of the pandemic.

Mohamed says she believes the program, especially the tuition support and supplies, is a lifesaver especially for working parents who are leery about risking in-person schooling but also want to ensure their children don’t miss out on critical learning opportunities.

“We were so worried that he might get behind,” she said. “We wanted to make sure that he was ready to go to school next year.”

Occasional technical glitches aside, Mohamed says their program experience has been virtually problem-free. They’ve noticed improvements in Moumin’s attention span. She said he’s grown more focused and engaged with each session he joins with his teacher and classmates.

Rebecca Kantor, a Denver Preschool board member who sits on the task force that is developing the distance learning curriculum, said the group sought to incorporate best practices in early childhood education.

“The two most important things that we know about young children’s learning is that they learn through direct experience and they learn within the context of stable trusting relationships,” said Kantor, dean of the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Colorado Denver. “So, we’re trying to recreate that using tech as a tool and we’re really getting very creative in figuring out a lot of different ways to do that.”

For example, she said, one suggested activity entails a student and parent painting together at home, while a teacher discusses with them on screen.

“One of the benefits of doing it that way is that the adult at home is also learning effective conversation skills from the teacher,” she said. “So, there’s a modeling going on that’s really good for the adults, too.”

Mile High Early Learning President and CEO Pamela Harris said along with providing a solid foundation in academics, administrators and teachers in the program have incorporated critical social and emotional learning opportunities.

“Even babies can develop true relationships using technology,” said Harris, who also co-chairs Colorado’s Early Childhood Professional Development Advisory Working Group. “I think it’s the interactivity that is key, having an adult person kind of on both sides, helping the child navigate.” The pilot also provides families resources on a YouTube channel and videos.

The pilot program, which is scheduled to run through the end of this school year, will begin enrolling some 3-year-old programs starting Jan. 4

“We still believe that we need to increase the quality of the distance learning experiences in Colorado,” Holguín said.

December 18, 2020 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Coronavirus / COVID-19CustomizationEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceFeaturedNewsParental ChoiceSchool ChoiceVirtual Education

Florida education commissioner assures school leaders, families that parental choice will remain top priority

Lisa Buie November 18, 2020
Lisa Buie

The state’s top education official today stopped short of announcing a decision regarding online learning programs for the second half of the 2020-21 academic year but stressed a commitment to education choice.

“The governor will take nothing less than full parental choice,” Richard Corcoran said during the Florida Board of Education meeting. “From the top down in this state, that will absolutely happen. There is no flexibility for anything but that.”

Corcoran said the department is continuing to work with all stakeholders and expects to make an announcement at the end of the month.

His remarks followed rumors that he would use the board meeting to announce a final decision on whether to end a July emergency order that allowed districts to offer online remote learning programs that tied students to their schools. The order promised full funding to districts based on student enrollment if they also provided in-person instruction five days per week to families who wanted it.

The order also temporarily waived a provision in the law that required K-12 students attending private schools on scholarships to receive instruction at brick-and-mortar schools as a condition of receiving state financial aid. The waiver drew sighs of relief from private school leaders who feared some families’ choice to pursue online learning would result in the loss of scholarships for their students.

The order is set to expire Dec. 31, leaving school officials and families uncertain as to how a decision would affect their fate when instruction resumes in January. A decision not to extend the order would force students at public and private schools back to campus, though they could leave their district schools and enroll in asynchronous e-schools or Florida Virtual School if they want to continue online instruction.

Board member Michael Olenick said any decision should be consistent with school choice, adding that his fifth-grade grandson who attends an online program tied to his district school is thriving.

“He has daily interactions with his teachers and his classmates,” Olenick said. “If you take that away from that fifth-grader and force him to Florida Virtual School, he will lose that sense of community; he will lose that daily interaction.”

The Florida Association of District School Superintendents also encouraged Corcoran to extend the order through the rest of the school year.

“We agree with Commissioner Corcoran and the governor that face-to-face instruction is the best way to deliver instruction,” the group said in a statement. “However, there are some parents and students who do not want to return to school while we continue to deal with the challenges of COVID-19. Continuing the innovative learning model for the remainder of the 2020-21 school year with full funding will allow districts to provide direct instruction for all students, including our most vulnerable, in these trying times.”

Wakulla County Schools Superintendent Robert Pearce, acting as spokesman for the superintendents’ group, said the online programs developed during the pandemic will benefit students long after it ends.

“There were good things that came of that,” he said. “We have every intention of continuing our district learning platform.”

November 18, 2020 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Commentary and OpinionCoronavirus / COVID-19Education and Public PolicyFeaturedParental ChoiceUnionismVirtual Education

The only thing we have to fear is … complacency

Matthew Ladner November 16, 2020
Matthew Ladner

With the nation at the peak of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his first inaugural address in 1933. The 1,883-word, 20-minute speech is best known for Roosevelt’s famously pointed reference to “fear itself” in one of its first lines.

With benefit of hindsight, it’s now clear that the decision to close schools in the spring of 2020 was unwise, especially in the elementary grades.

We now know that young children are more likely to die from the flu than from COVID-19. At this point, not only have schools around the world managed to safely reopen using a variety of precautions, but many school systems never closed at all.

The dangers of COVID-19 in schools are real and potentially deadly but can be successfully mitigated. The costs of lockdowns, however, have only begun to be measured, and we have no plan to reverse them.

Students in kindergarten through third grade are especially vulnerable to long-term harm from COVID disruption. This is the developmental stage at which students learn to read, and the neurology of this process is similar to that of learning a foreign language: You either do it early or else struggle to do it more than poorly. Formative assessment data from the fall 2020 has begun to trickle in, and the news is predictably bad, with students who were already struggling suffering the most.

Then there are the mental health implications to consider. A recent study of young adults by Harvard Medical School researchers and others found an alarming increase in depression and anxiety in young adults:

For example, an analysis of an epidemiologic study from 2013 and 2014 found 3.4% of adults reported these (suicidal) thoughts. The rates seen in May were especially high among young adults, at 32.2% — that is, nearly ten-fold greater than estimates from the older study. (Results from a smaller survey in June of 18- through 24-year-olds were similar, reporting a rate of roughly 26%.) In subsequent study waves, this prevalence has increased modestly, reaching 36.9% in October.

“It is amazing that eight months into this pandemic that we are still prioritizing bars and restaurants and gyms and shutting down schools,” Kathleen Porter-Magee stated in a recent interview, noting the demonstrated ability of schools to reopen safely. More amazing still to see groups like the Florida Education Association’s ultimately unsuccessful legal effort to deny families in-person education as an option.

Public schools have always received approximately the same level of resources whether they actually teach students crucial academic knowledge or not. Powerful special interests want to keep things this way, and not coincidentally oppose parental choice policies allowing unhappy parents to seek satisfaction elsewhere.

The effort to keep schools closed follows the same trajectory: Teacher unions apparently feel entitled to your tax dollars whether they provide either education or custodial care. In some places, the unions not only want to mandate virtual instruction; they also have limited the amount of it.

So, parents, the good news is that the pandemic has been clarifying. The priorities of the system stand revealed. You should make your plans accordingly, because those priorities were in place before COVID-19 and will remain long after a vaccine arrives.

November 16, 2020 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 35
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • RSS

© 2021 redefinED. All Rights Reserved.


Back To Top