Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

The "kids are not going to die from Covid so send 'em back to school" crowd never seems to mention if kids can spread Covid to the adults around them.

 

You're falling victim to the tyranny of the seen. Just because Covid-19 cases aren't happening doesn't mean other losses aren't mounting.

 

I think teachers are fully aware of what we're going to be losing by not opening up and we're going to have our work cut out for us when we return to the classrooms. We'll do our damnedest to provide an education as best we can with the tools we have, but it's going to be hard.

We weigh that against the risk to kids and teachers if we shove a bunch of kids into a room with teachers. Which is going to be worse: Having to put in overtime to make up for the loss of in-person education or having to do start-stops because kids are getting sick? And it isn't like we aren't seeing the consequences. An Arizona school had three teachers in a team-teaching environment get sick and one die while teaching summer school. Summer camps have had outbreaks.

 

Their parents, grandparents and teachers will be dead, but Heil Fatfuck.

 

But is it lost if they take the year off but resume in the class they should have been in this year? Is a 8-year-old second-grader going to do worse in 10 years than a 7-year-old second-grader, all things being equal?

Edit: Adding that I'm simply asking a question based on a place of absolutely no knowledge on the topic. Childhood education is not something I've had to concern myself with since I was the child being educated.

 

The brain is developing all through childhood - broad development is what it's all about. A year off is going to make a difference.

 

An anecdote: My younger daughter is 19. She missed most of the latter half of first grade, almost all of second grade and the first few months of third grade while undergoing chemo. She carries a college GPA in the high 3s now. She’s still not a very good test-taker and is probably a year and half behind socially, but academically she’s just fine and didn’t really require much in the way of special accommodation. During her best weeks, she went to school two days a week, was off the day of and day after treatment, and had an in-home tutor on the other day. When she didn’t feel up to going to school — or during high cold/flu season — we had the tutor come to the house twice a week.

Non-traditional education can be done, but it requires a commitment. My then-wife did not work outside the home and I worked some non-standard hours, so we were able to make it work. Not everyone is so lucky.

 

Frankly I didn't concern myself with it when I was the child being educated. But I have no idea as to your other questions ... some of the educators 'round here might.

 

We see the summer regression in academic skills—particularly reading—which is partially why some districts are opting to start school earlier in August and just taking more breaks during the school year. This may not be as simple as let's just repeat the same grade because skills will have regressed too much to simply think we can treat it like a fourth grader coming in 8 weeks after finishing the third grade. Kids are going to be lacking skills and teachers are going to be playing catch up for years.

Of course that's why we're not talking about cancelling school. We're talking about moving online. Hopefully we can do more than the triage we did in the Spring and do more substantive teaching and learning. This is a shitshow no matter which way you cut it. I fully get why we should strive to bring kids back. I've just been entrenched in the camp that the risk to health of children, teachers and families outweighs the difficulty of starting school fully online.

 

We know what will happen. Schools will open, about 2 weeks later, if that, we will start hearing about cases and schools will close.
Why not set up the online stuff as thoroughly as possible. Do some extra things to make it a good experience and re-evaluate at Christmas time.
Areas that do not have any cases, open up. That might be a nice "experiment" (not the word I want) and we can see how they do.
We can see it coming...open then close, lots of wasted effort to end up in the same position.

 

Not to mention the effect on our collective psyche of opening up and then having to close again.

 

Israel is the coughing canary in the coal mine.

Israeli Data Show School Openings Were a Disaster That Wiped Out Lockdown Gains