After coronavirus school closings, will states need to hold kids back, institute summer school?
PHOENIX – Keiko Dilbeck, principal of Kino Junior High in Mesa, Arizona, feels sick to her stomach every time her students leave for a break.
She worries about their lives at home and how much they could lose academically. And she knows they worry, too — about whether they'll have enough food, about whether a parent will be around to take care of them. Some even worry if they'll have a place to sleep.
Dilbeck's school, which serves a majority of low-income students, is closed until March 27 – at least – under Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey's orders. She's anxious about how all of her students will fare through such a long period away.
"I have 1,100 kids, and I want to be in contact with every single one of them, and I can't," she said. "It's a very hopeless feeling."
Most of the country's children are out of school as districts, charters and private schools shutter in response to coronavirus concerns. And they could be home for a long time: Kansas on Tuesday became the first state to close schools for the rest of the academic year.
The pandemic may close schools down until summer break in other states, too. That means some children could go without formal schooling for as long as six months.
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Some educators and parents already are worrying about how to make up for lost time. Among the options: holding summer school or using part of the 2020-21 academic year to make up for this year. Schools could even allow parents to keep their child in the same grade next year, as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on Tuesday.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers union, downplayed the concern about lost time.
"Let’s remember that we’ve actually gone from August to September through the middle of March and have had most of this school year before people start panicking that we’ve lost an entire year," she said.
Many schools have begun experimenting with various modes of online learning so kids can continue their work while at home. But teachers, principals and researchers fear closures could widen the achievement gap between students who have access to resources like laptops and high-speed internet and those who don't.
And it's unclear whether a digital classroom can take the place of a real one.
"This is an unprecedented situation," said Douglas Harris, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a public policy think tank. "Even if every teacher could teach every student online, it still wouldn't be as good as doing it in person."
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What students stand to lose
Low-income students will likely suffer the most during extended school closures.
Wealthier students and low-income students generally improve academically during the school year, said Bruce Fuller, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley.
But during the summer, low-income students typically slow their educational momentum while wealthier ones, with access to educational summer camps and other activities, tend to learn on the same curve as during the school year.
"That widening of the summer gap will just keep growing if kids are out for another two months prior to the summer," Fuller said.
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Educators at Dilbeck's school in Arizona have spent the entire year trying to grow students' reading skills. The work has paid off: Eighth-graders are improving in leaps and bounds, she said.
Now she wonders if they'll lose some of those skills.
"I'm thinking about all of that work, and a lot of my kids don't have books at home," she said. "Some of my kids, they don't have computers. Maybe they have a phone, but you can't do everything through a phone."
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The more immediate priority for schools is devising ways to engage students from afar during school closures, Weingarten said.
“If teachers are allowed to be creative,” she said, “they’ll come up with a lot of really great ideas.”
But for a lot of districts, remote learning is a new idea and isn't being practiced evenly across the country.
Arizona school districts are just beginning to plan a switch to online classes. In closing schools for the year, Kansas' Education Department promised "Continuous Learning plans for all students."
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Cincinnati Public Schools is conducting remote learning via paper packets rather than online programs, as about 10% of students in the district lack home internet access, according to U.S. Census estimates.
For Valerie Steinhaus, a math teacher at Woodward Career Technical High School in Cincinnati, that means teaching new math concepts is largely on hold.
“Our students already don’t have a lot of math confidence,” she said.
Without direct teaching, they can become discouraged by new material.
Sarah Woodward, who teaches biotechnology at Woodward, is also concerned, particularly for her students with learning disabilities.
Woodward expects to lose up to eight weeks of instruction time, which she may have to pack into next school year to ensure her students are still on track.
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“Do we demand the kids still master the same amount of content?” Woodward said. “Do we add additional time to the (next) school year? Start two or three weeks early to try to recoup some of that time?”
Will students have to go to summer school?
Summer school or viewing 2020-21 as a bridge year could make up for lost instruction time.
Widening summer school likely would require additional pay for teachers.
“If there is a need for summer school, then summer school is going to have to be paid for," said Weingarten, the union president.
Harris, of the Brookings Institution, recommends summer school to make up for the lost time. He estimates six weeks of make-up summer school across the country would cost $8.1 billion.
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He suggested the money would need to come as stimulus from the federal government, given the coronavirus' expected impact on the economy. And the sooner officials plan for summer school, he said, the better.
"Teachers can plan for it. Families can plan for it," he said. "I think it would give us a bit more comfort."
In Ohio, the state or local school boards may push to extend the school year into the summer, said Van Keating, a staff attorney with the Ohio School Boards Association.
Repeating some portion of missed in-person class time next school year would be an extraordinary step with major hurdles, Keating added.
It would cause space issues as a new cohort of kindergartners enter school systems, Keating said, and headaches for seniors who may have college or work plans.
Educators in their regions say summer school isn't a solution.
In upstate New York, Chris Dandino is the director of the Greater Rochester After-School Alliance, which coordinates summer and out-of-school programming throughout the community. She said it is unrealistic to expect summer programs to make up for the lessons that students miss this spring.
“Some programs have certified teachers, but many are basically youth workers and they don’t have the training around what kids will be losing in terms of core state curriculum,” she said. “We can, though, provide enriching literacy and STEM experiences and project-based learning.”
Additionally, the time students are missing in classrooms is only part of the deficit they are incurring, she said. For children who go from school to an after-school program, the current emergency is a “double-whammy.”
“They could be doing something in history class, then in out-of-school time putting on a play that takes that history deeper, or visiting somewhere that makes that learning authentic,” Dandino said.
Uncertainty about how much school children will miss makes it difficult for Dandino's organization to plan ahead.
“One of our key focuses this summer will be how to supplement what isn’t happening and what won’t happen," she said. "But what that is, we don’t know.”
Contributing: Jim Little, Pensacola News Journal
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY NETWORK: Coronavirus school closings: Will online school lead to summer school?
