Blurts

This article from EdSurge makes an interesting point about COVID. The claim is that while COVID did not create the digital divide and the possible impact on learning, it did require that everyone recognize the problem. Far more learners than we have recognized do not have the resources necessary, to move their efforts at learning from the school classroom to their homes. Like systemic racism, the other great injustice now even more glaringly obvious, an existing problem is now there for all to address.

The challenges for the Fall are not yet obvious, but with or without students returning to their classrooms the digital divide will remain.

Before COVID-19, Pew Research found that 25 percent of black teens had been unable to do their homework because of barriers to internet access at home, and 21 percent had used public Wi-Fi to do homework for the same reasons. That’s compared to 17 percent and 12 percent, respectively, for all U.S. teens.

The House has passed the HEROEs Act in May in an attempt to deal with some of challenges and now we wait for the Senate to consider what would be a way to partially address the educational needs associated with COVID.

The EdSurge article offers several suggestions for administrators – 1) prepare to provide Internet for all, 2) survey parents/caregivers to gain an understanding of what all students face attempting to learn from home, and 3) use the summer months to involve students and prepare for the challenges of the Fall.

This week’s edition of 60 Minutes included a segment on the issues involved in a Fall reopening of campus-based college classes. College students don’t always make good decisions.

I have been trying to personalize the issue of racism. Like many, I assume, I don’t see that I am racist in the sense that a racist is a “bad person” who uses derogatory labels, avoids interaction, or overtly mistreats others. I understand the issue of my own life opportunities are not the opportunities that have been available to others. For the most part, I have had plenty of advantages.

I don’t tend to think about being white as part of my identity. I am of a race, but being what I am in this way does not occur to me. This seems to be an issue raised by some of other races. Is the fact that I don’t think about my race the issue? Is it more accurately described as I don’t have to, but others do?

I am aware that I am male and others are not. I am aware that I am old and others are not. I am aware that others are from a race other than my own, but I don’t tend to clearly see myself as part of a racial group. Weird.

What then? I have identified an example of my own bias that I will explain here. It is not a serious matter, but it does speak to what may be a broader issue. This broader has to do with a reluctance to accept racism per se. It seems likely I sanitize the problem to some extent by thinking in terms of correlated problems I find easier to understand and address. 

People who know me know that with my wife I write textbooks for future and practicing educators. These books are focused on the role of technology in education. Our book with the most revisions has always ended with a chapter on “responsible behavior” in the use of technology in education. Among the topics are copyright, cyber bullying, and differences in the involvement of males and females in computer science. Educator sensitivity to equity issues associated with technology are included. There are some significant issues and our present attempts to use technology during the pandemic have increased awareness of some inequities. Not all students have the devices and home internet access necessary to keep up with their classmates. Districts try to provide for these disadvantages, but lack of resources has resulted in limited success. Related differences might involve other circumstances in the home not easily remedied with loaned equipment.

What does this have to do with my personal willingness to shy away from the issue of racial inequity? I am aware of the statistics, but I have been reluctance to write about these differences. I write about how inequity is related to income differences and have been satisfied with this weak attempt to discuss this problem. Why? This may seem a rather strange example, but I do think it important to examine personal behavior at this time and this example was there. I think I avoid describing the racial inequities in the educational use of technology, but I didn’t know what I should say after identifying the issue. With SES differences I can argue that communities or the government through use of programs such as the e-rate should offer subsidies to lessen differences across schools differing in the income levels of the families served. Taking this position is logical and practical. How do you explain differences in the opportunity to use technology that is somehow related to the color of your skin? Maybe just identifying this failure of logic would be a place to start.

BTW – the insights I express here are my own, but as I puzzled over this post for a couple of days, I started reading a book recommended by a family member – White fragility. If you have read this book, you have probably noted how my thinking mimics many of the thoughts addressed by the author.

The Noun Project is a large collection of graphics offered for use by content creators for a reasonable price. As an educator, I have a $20 a year subscription to the service and some of the icons you see in my posts come from this service. The fee you pay supports the service and rewards the artists who contribute content for use.

Icons from the service are associated with multiple terms and a user of the service enters a search term to review icons that might serve to illustrate the noun requested. So, for instance, if an educator was generating content related to “income inequality”, they would identify this image as a potential match. If you pay for access to the service, the icons can be used without attribution. Images are available as SVG (scalable vector graphics) or PNG files.

The Wall Street Journal just ran a piece offering a very negative summary of the Spring remote learning attempts of K12 educators. [BTW – if you are interested in articles from the WSJ, I would recommend paying for Apple’s news plus. The service provides full access to a wide range of newspapers and magazines for $10 a month. The WSJ is included. Sorry, not the NYT. We all need to invest in more long-form content generated by reporters in addition to what we might consume from those who summarize.].

The problems began piling up almost immediately. There were students with no computers or internet access. Teachers had no experience with remote learning. And many parents weren’t available to help. In many places, lots of students simply didn’t show up online, and administrators had no good way to find out why not. Soon many districts weren’t requiring students to do any work at all, increasing the risk that millions of students would have big gaps in their learning.

The article also included estimates of the summer slide (the loss of knowledge over a typical summer) expanded by an additional several months due to the pandemic to reach 50% in elementary math.

It does seem there is a reasonable chance face to face education will emerge in the Fall, but at present it does not appear that the experience will be the same as a year ago. At best, it seems that the Fall experience will combine remote learning (some of which will be online) with face to face classes conducted with a portion of students. There are so many issues to be resolved in this arrangement. Parents will still be responsible for their children some of the time. Exactly how educators will handle full-time instruction with half of their classes and also offer remote experiences to the other half is unclear to me. I suppose that the experience might resemble a form of what has been described as the “flipped classroom” – student engage with content on their own and then use class time to discuss, receive focused assistance, and engage in other more interactive experiences. This would seem more reasonable for middle-school on, but even at the college rebel the expectation that students will come to class prepared to discuss often is idealistic. While some face to face time would reduce the need to rely on technology for remote learning, technology makes remote learning more efficient and the demands on an educator for face to face instruction, preparing technology-supported AND alternative resources not requiring technology seems based on an unrealistic of the workload that would be required. All of this will be happening within a setting even more underfunded than in the past.

What do I think it would take? I think additional faculty at the elementary level and an addition of technology resources for middle-school and beyond (hotspots and devices for families unable to provide) would make the most sense, but I have no idea how the resources would be generated. All educators should be compensated for a month or more of time during this summer to generate instructional resources to compensate for the additional commitment they will have to make to execute a “multi-group” approach in the fall.

Additional funds are going to have to come from somewhere. The issue here should primarily be about education, but the connection to the work force and providing supervision of children cannot be ignored. I wish there was more leadership from the Department of Education.