Should schools just have a "do over" year?

[pryncess527]

I think parents should have the option to hold individual children back, but not a blanket do over for all.

 

[DisneyRobin]

No. The kids need to be working or they will go crazy just sitting at home.

 

[Disneylover99]

Clearly the demographic of the Dis can't really see this issue clearly.

I understand the issues. I teach Kindergarten. We work our butts off to bring the struggling students up to speed. It’s not always possible for many reasons. Yes, those students may need additional support in September.

Your sister’s opinion is also highly influenced by her own class. And if most of them are low, I understand why she would want a do over. But at this point, most of your school year is done. It doesn’t make sense to hold everyone back an entire year.

 

[SaintsManiac]

Maybe I can put it another way.

There's no reason to add perspective, least not in the way it's being discussed.

If you miss going to a concert because it was cancelled do you say to yourself..well let's remember those who died in 9/11 this isn't that bad...Mulan was cancelled and I was supposed to get together with some local DISers. Should we just say "well you know remember the Iraqi War?"

The two (being disappointed with all that has happened with the school year, experiences one would have had if they would have been able to be with their friends and classmates,etc) and the Vietnam War aren't related. It's just a way to make someone feel like they really don't have a reason to be upset because some other event happened somewhere in history that is worse and so on. We could do that to so many events none of us would have reason to vent and you can replace Vietnam war with whatever you want to. It's like a game of onupmanship..let me come up with something that's worse. Putting things into perspective is great. This is just one of those times where it's not warranted to do that IMO in the way being done. Everyone is obviously free to disagree with that

It's not about teaching history. Not at all.

How about just letting the students be upset, sad, whatever and support them through this instead of making it a game of "what's worse" to them so they can be made to feel bad for something that is totally acceptable to feel. Maybe words of encouragment which can be done with adding perspective instead of "here's what's worst than what you're dealing with".

I don't think the poster had ill intentions this is more of just explaining how it's commonly read especially in the format used and on FB.

Forced perspective is exhausting. I do it to myself all the time. Sometimes it's ok to just say something sucks and have your cry over it without trying to force yourself to say "IT COULD BE WORSE. IT COULD BE (insert horrible thing that happened)."

 

[tvguy]

Any resolution is going to require people to be flexible and cooperative. Not knowing yet how long the schools will be closed, too soon to tell. They could just resume school and continue into the traditional summer break, and continue until they are caught up. Everything could be back on track by the scheduled start of the fall semester.

 

[SaintsManiac]

I went through our calendar to see how many actual days of learning we have left. It's laughable.

Yesterday was supposed to be conference day--no school
Today was the field trip --no classroom time
Spring break 4/6-4/13
LEAP test review (which they've already started in math)
LEAP testing

So it would have been maybe 25 classroom days of instruction remaining. If they did it over I would pull my kid out and homeschool for 5th grade. The idea of repeating 4th grade makes me want to weep. It's been a bumpy year.

 

[dreamin_disney]

Nope!
Do virtual learning for the remaining school year or pass the kids. The kids are stressing out over all this too and many are confused. Imagine some see their parents worried about their jobs, losing jobs or being laid off.

My college dd was stressing out about her classes, grades,the not knowing , wondering how virtual learning would be, wondering if some professors would still make her class go on campus etc. Then she started to worry about me being off work till May, worrying if I woukd get paid, worrying about how I would pay two months of her housing, worrying about the changes around her changing day to day. She has no problem staying home, she doesn’t even want me going to the grocery store.

 

[ljcrochet]

My girls school was just going to start the 4th quarter so as most people said repeating the whole year would be a big mistake. My girls just found out that their AICE exams are all cancelled. One of my daughter's teacher texted that she now needs to figure out the online lessons since it was all test prep. Not sure what will happen, and how this will effect aice diplomas.

This week is spring break so online instruction will start on Monday.

 

[DisLiss]

I don't think so.. Our district is not year round school and we go back to school late in the year. I don't know of any district who goes later than we do (although I know some who go the same day). So, despite starting later and despite having lost several days to snow days already, our kids are a few weeks through their 3rd quarter (just as OP mentioned for theirs) Meaning many other kids are already in or about to start their 4th quarter. I don't see making them redo 3 quarters because they missed one. And that would create such a headache for the poor seniors who are already going through enough. Plus, many schools are still in session to some degree, just from home. Why negate that work for those kids, parents, & teachers?

I do think this means that there will need to be some tweaks made to the curriculum of early next year---especially in schools that are not doing any sort of work from home, and/or in ones like mine or OPs where the kids hadn't made it as far into the school year.

I think it wouldn't be a terrible idea to give people the option of having a student here or there repeat the year if all involved felt that was the best situation for that child, but I don't think it needs to be done across the board.

 

[monsterkitty]

I teach in a poor suburban district with over 90% of the kids free and reduced lunch. We went 1:1 this year with Chromebooks for grades 2-12 in classrooms but kids were not allowed to take the Chromebook home. That is until upper admin actually looked at the big picture of what was coming. We quickly did contracts so kids could take the Chromebooks home. In the course of 3 days at my middle school, about 85% of the kids brought their contracts back and were able to take them home when we closed school on March 13. Another 10% filtered in the following Monday and Tuesday to get the Chromebook. The remainder of kids already have some sort of device they could use at home.

Only half of our kids have access to WiFi or internet access according to their parents. Our district purchased hot spot devices and placed them around the district so that every student could have access to their lessons.

School starts at different times in different parts of the country, which means many districts are much closer to the finish line. You can't make decisions for the entire country based on your own situation.

We start the first week of August and go through Memorial day in my district. We have no A/C and in August and September the temperature in my room with no windows can get to over 100. Same with soring time. Kids know that if it's going to be 80 outside it's going to be over 90 in my room. I can't imagine adjusting the calendar like a few have suggested. More learning is going on at home right now then there is in a hot classroom.

 

[Colleen27]

Well, obviously it's not a popular opinion.

I got the topic question from my sister, who is a kindergarten teacher. They start in late August and were supposed to go through mid June and she said she wishes she could just have a do over next year with her class, because they still have almost half a year to go and she worries about how much some of them are struggling and she doesn't feel confident that her 34 students can be ready for 1st grade next year with distance learning, since many of her students come from disadvantaged families. It's not easy to deliver reading and math interventions to struggling students virtually.

So, I was thinking mostly along those lines. There are MANY students who don't have access to the tech needed for online learning, don't have supportive or educated or available parents to guide their learning, etc. Sure, the "good students" can get by with online classwork, but a large majority of students nationwide are not proficient in math or language arts, based solely on standardized test scores. Those are the students who really do deserve a do over. Clearly the demographic of the Dis can't really see this issue clearly.

That's absolutely true. But there are also many students who do. What sense does it make to hold all of them back, regardless of which group they fall into, rather than going on a case-by-case basis?

I do get it. We live in a small town at the heart of a rural school district. We have students who cannot get broadband internet access at home at any price. We're also a Title I district, and we have quite a few families who can't afford home internet at all or who only have it because of Comcast's low-cost plan for families who receive government assistance (a plan they've expanded, from my understanding, in response to the crisis). A lot of kids use the libraries as their only internet access for homework, so with them closed, they're going to be disconnected. And our state hasn't decided how to handle making up (or not) the missed time yet because they don't want to implement a policy that penalizes poverty, but at the same time, they want the least disruption possible for the students. I count myself very, very lucky to be outside that fray as a private school parent - we're not subject to state oversight on educational time, though we choose to follow state curriculum standards, and our accrediting body accepts distance learning as a substitute for in person instruction under exceptional circumstances.

Even our school has a few students who are making arrangements to use someone else's internet access - I think the most creative one I've heard about so far is a family who set up a "classroom" in the grandparents' garage, so they can use the wifi while remaining no contact with the grandparents - and I know the public schools are in a much worse place for making distance learning happen. But we are 3/4 of the way through the school year here; the 3rd quarter ended the same day the governor issued the order closing the schools. And ordinarily, standardized testing takes up 3 of the remaining 10 weeks of school. Add in class trips/field trips, school picnics, field day, end-of-year celebrations, clean-out day, etc. and they're realistically missing 5 or 6 weeks of instructional time in total. It seems unnecessary and excessive to repeat a 40 week school year because of those 5 or 6 missed weeks.

 

[scoutie]

I'll share what my district is doing (I teach middle school). Teachers are required to have two "live" hours a day to be available for teaching, answering questions, etc. Each subject is required to push out a lesson each day that takes 30 minutes to complete. I'm teaching my usual lessons with modifications (allowing more time to do them, shortening them, using more videos, etc.)

 

[DisneyBabies]

What do you think? Should schools nationwide just call it at this point and reconvene in the fall and have everyone just repeat the grade they are currently in?

I kind of feel like they should. If our schools don't go back, the kids will have missed an entire semester almost. Our last semester only ended 3 weeks ago.

No matter how hard they try, home based learning will never capture the full breadth of what kids would have learned in a classroom environment. Already, it's pretty clear to me (kids in middle and high school) this is not going to work well long term.

The logistics involved make it impossible for families with multiple kids to dedicate the amount of time each kid would need to receive an equal education, and that's not even accounting for parents who need to work from home during all this!

I'm all for a do over. Everyone will be one year older. Kids start school too young nowadays anyway.

No.

My 7 year old worked hard to get her gifted qualification. She's already ahead of her grade level, so why on earth should she repeat a grade?

My middle schooler has been taking two high school courses and an online course in addition to her 8th grade course load. Making her repeat courses that she has already completed 3 quarters of?

My high schooler has had high A's across all of his courses and at this moment is ranked 26th out of 637 students with a GPA of 5.79. Repeat 10th grade?

No.

If your school district starts late and ends late and you feel your student should repeat a year, you should certainly do so. Our district is offering this to parents who feel their child should repeat and any whose grades up to this point would have them repeating will do so.

But to mandate that every student should repeat a year is nonsense.

 

[Lumpy1106]

To OP question, no, but here has been our experience;
Kinder kid - Private catholic school - FANTASTIC! I really can't say enough nice things about the way they have handled this. Daily homework assignments, that my daughter completes, then immediately turns in when she finishes each assignment. The teacher then immediately responds with a video recording, usually words of encouragement, sometimes a correction or two, but always prompt and positive. 100 of of 10, REALLY AWESOME!!

Then there's the Freshman and Junior in public school;
Now, mind you, this is a large public school with over 70% of the kids getting free or subsidized lunches. Getting everyone on-line just isn't possible. The school has promised assignments starting today, a full 10 days after school was closed. They have come out in official statements stating that the work won't be graded though - WTH?!? I keep telling my kids that just means their grade can only go up and they need to do the work , but man, once that Genie is out of the lamp it's really hard to get HS kids to do much of anything.

This is going to be a challenge...

 

[lovemygoofy]

I teach in a poor suburban district with over 90% of the kids free and reduced lunch. We went 1:1 this year with Chromebooks for grades 2-12 in classrooms but kids were not allowed to take the Chromebook home. That is until upper admin actually looked at the big picture of what was coming. We quickly did contracts so kids could take the Chromebooks home. In the course of 3 days at my middle school, about 85% of the kids brought their contracts back and were able to take them home when we closed school on March 13. Another 10% filtered in the following Monday and Tuesday to get the Chromebook. The remainder of kids already have some sort of device they could use at home.

Only half of our kids have access to WiFi or internet access according to their parents. Our district purchased hot spot devices and placed them around the district so that every student could have access to their lessons.



We start the first week of August and go through Memorial day in my district. We have no A/C and in August and September the temperature in my room with no windows can get to over 100. Same with soring time. Kids know that if it's going to be 80 outside it's going to be over 90 in my room. I can't imagine adjusting the calendar like a few have suggested. More learning is going on at home right now then there is in a hot classroom.

I've read that many cable/internet companies are turning internet on for low income families right now for free or offering up hot spots for free. Also, don't know if this possible in your area but I was reading here in IN a school district was outfitting school buses as Wi-Fi hot spots and parking them around in areas that would be in need of internet. I thought that was crazy smart use of resources at this point.

 

[DisneyBabies]

Well, obviously it's not a popular opinion.

I got the topic question from my sister, who is a kindergarten teacher. They start in late August and were supposed to go through mid June and she said she wishes she could just have a do over next year with her class, because they still have almost half a year to go and she worries about how much some of them are struggling and she doesn't feel confident that her 34 students can be ready for 1st grade next year with distance learning, since many of her students come from disadvantaged families. It's not easy to deliver reading and math interventions to struggling students virtually.

So, I was thinking mostly along those lines. There are MANY students who don't have access to the tech needed for online learning, don't have supportive or educated or available parents to guide their learning, etc. Sure, the "good students" can get by with online classwork, but a large majority of students nationwide are not proficient in math or language arts, based solely on standardized test scores. Those are the students who really do deserve a do over. Clearly the demographic of the Dis can't really see this issue clearly.

The thing is, we do see the issue clearly.

We just aren't willing to dump all students into one group and force them all to repeat a year.

Your original post posited the question of doing just that.

I think most of us believe that a repeat should be on a case by case basis just as it would be for any other school year. And it's my understanding by reading these responses that some states and districts are better prepared to implement digital learning, so that should influence repeating grades as well.

I don't think there is one solution to this issue and that has been proven by all the annecdotes from other dissers.

 

[rotlex]

Absolutely not in answer to the original question. How would you handle seniors leaving high school with college plans and financing already setup? How would you handle inbound kindergartners and first graders? Offer additional assistance to those that require it at the start of next year is my thought.

It think what should be even more focused on is why we have all this technology and no real plan in place for a situation like this to simply continue learning from home. Our district has zero capability to do that, yet 90% of the kids\families we know have phones, iPads and computers that could easily be used for on line learning. Hell, I'm working from home until at least April 30th with no interruption to my companies business with literals 3 days notice.

Zero reason the school districts can't do the same in a good majority of the country.

 

[kaytieeldr]

The last week of school is traditionally not new material, if not sooner, but I'll be generous and assume they are basically done academically in the last week - 5 additional days of essentially non-teaching

That leaves 56 days of teaching left in the school

Did you account for the five built-in snow days that (I think) haven't been needed this year? If not, that brings the number down to 51 days. And some of those days were planned for test study and testing.

 

[rotlex]

Did you account for the five built-in snow days that (I think) haven't been needed this year? If not, that brings the number down to 51 days. And some of those days were planned for test study and testing.

Good points. My wife just reminded me we should also count the nearly 3 weeks we spend here in pa doing state standardized testing and not learning anything. Really not that much time missed if you start factoring in this stuff. Well, unless we go all the way to June, lol,

 

[siren0119]

Did you account for the five built-in snow days that (I think) haven't been needed this year? If not, that brings the number down to 51 days. And some of those days were planned for test study and testing.

I did - we only used one snow day this year so I was basing the count off of what our district's finish date would be - it'd vary by district based on snow days already used. But yeah, that also doesn't take into account planned studying/review days. any way you look at it, the schools were more than half done and repeating would be pretty senseless.