<This op-ed first appeared in the Washington Examiner on May 19, 2020>
COVID-19 has thrust parents across the country into the unexpected role of primary hands-on educators. While we all know that the private model of schooling differs from that of public schools, this outbreak has put those differences in stark relief, nowhere more so than in the country’s original coronavirus epicenter: Seattle.
Schools nationwide have struggled to adapt to distance-learning methods. There was generally little notice to prepare for their governors’ lockdown proclamations. However, most private schools, unencumbered by layers of bureaucracy and leaders weighing political calculations, have been able to swiftly and nimbly roll out remote-schooling strategies, and they continue to adapt rapidly. Many public schools stumbled out of the blocks and still struggle to offer a meaningful education to their students. Students served by Seattle Public Schools initially received no education at all, and even today, many parents complain that their kids receive essentially zero schooling from the district.
Excuses for the poor performance of the city’s public schools range from an insufficient supply of laptops to a focus on equity rather than education. Equity was the consideration that resulted in students receiving no school at all for weeks. A spokesperson explained that Seattle couldn’t offer online learning because not every student has a computer or internet access. Seven days after Washington State’s Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction issued a March 23 bulletin instructing schools that “education must continue,” Seattle Public Schools, at last, began offering some sort of remote learning.
The district’s attempt to issue laptops to students has been nothing short of farcical when compared with others. In late April, it had distributed 1,000 laptops to its 52,000 students. A core issue appears to be the defeatist attitude of Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Denise Juneau, who, when asked about offering online learning by Time magazine, answered, “There’s just no way a district this large can do that.” In the meantime, just about every one of the roughly 500,000 children in the Los Angeles Unified School District now has both internet access and a laptop. Its leaders had similar challenges to Seattle’s, but issued a press release calling the herculean effort they were making a “moon shot.”
When Seattle schooling restarted on March 30, equity remained an imperative, and limited instruction and grading is taking place. For instance, instead of covering new content in the district’s advanced learning program, teachers are recapping material that was mastered before schools closed. Seattle Public Schools has also announced that all high school students will receive As or incomplete grades.
Imagine if equity was paramount on the battlefield. Medics would be forced to say, “Well, I can only help some of you, so I won’t help any.” We don’t apply equity considerations there for a reason, and it shouldn’t apply to education in a pandemic. Under normal circumstances, the same leaders currently espousing this principle are professing serious concern for achievement gaps. However, their very actions during this crisis are creating a vast gulf between private and public school student learning.
We moved our daughter to a private school in first grade because, although her local Seattle Public School is rated one of the best, we only experienced mediocrity. Local private schools barely skipped a beat between the shutdown and distance learning commencing. Conveniently, the day after the governor’s Thursday proclamation, our school was already scheduled to be closed for teacher training. The school turned it into a day to prepare for remote instruction, and in the wee hours of Monday morning, we collected materials for our daughter and her kindergartner brother. School recommenced that day, and no scheduled days were lost.
Belying the notion that a comprehensive education cannot continue absent the internet and laptops, most of our school’s learning is delivered through workbooks and textbooks. There were no Zoom calls in the first weeks, and even today, they are brief and limited in number. Six weeks after the closure, the school created a drive-through schedule in the parking lot for us to drop off bags of completed assignments for grading, and to give us new bags of workbooks and materials to see us through the rest of the year. Teachers wore masks and gloves as bags were passed through windows.
Other private schools are being equally creative in going above and beyond to deliver a quality education during these difficult times. Private high schools continue to take attendance, are still awarding grades, and some even require that students attend Zoom calls in uniform. Notably, public charter schools in Seattle, free from the Seattle Public Schools bureaucracy, recommenced classes within a week of the closure announcement and will still issue end-of-year grades.
Public school districts across the nation have abandoned grading, including in San Francisco and New York. Eva Moskowitz, the CEO of the Success Academy charter-school network, correctly commented: “These decisions are made in the name of equity, but the outcomes for children will be far from fair. True equity honors the integrity of learning. … Now is not the time to throw out standards and give up on kids.” Moreover, in the absence of grades, it makes it impossible for parents and principals to measure student progress and the performance of their teachers.
Even before this crisis hit, Seattle had large achievement gaps across its schools as well as major racial gaps. Black students in Seattle test 3.7 grade levels behind their white peers, a number that has been growing for years. During this pandemic, the private-public learning gap has been immense. Like the black-white achievement gap, it’s only set to grow, given the expectation that traditional learning won’t resume in the fall.
Commenting on a finding in the Lancet that “education is one of the strongest predictors of the health and the wealth of a country’s future workers,” Conor Friedersdorf wrote in the Atlantic that, “A given [school] closure could add months to the lives of some and subtract from the lives of others.” Not surprisingly, some of the most discussed posts in Seattle neighborhood groups right now are from parents considering sending their kids to a private school, just as our city’s mayor did. Unfortunately, not all of them have the means to do so, which is why Seattle should provide more school choice options, especially for low-income families, and Washington should lift its cap on charter schools.
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