EDITORIAL: All told, the school year was something amazing
Jun. 14—Now that school is over for most kids, it's finally time to take a good look at the way things went over the past nine months and give out some grades.
Not to the students. Their final scores for math and reading and science and history are in. Their tests have been tallied.
No, the grades now are for the schools.
The Pennsylvania School Boards Association polled parents in April, asking how they believed the districts' responses to the coronavirus pandemic had gone. The answer? A lot of parents put the schools on the honor roll, with 69% getting an A or B.
A total of 72% rated their school's method as effective, whether it was remote, in-person or a mixture of the two. Narrow that to just the in-person learning and the numbers jumped from a ho-hum C to an unmitigated A.
It is possible that parents are grading on a curve. Is that a real A or an "under the circumstances" A? There is really no way of knowing. But in the end, does it even matter?
The 2020-21 school year was the kind of slow-moving, coast-to-coast emergency that might never happen again. For many schools, the rules changed regularly as community spread prompted different state demands or as positive cases popped up within the schools themselves. One day's in-person instruction could turn on a dime to digital meetings, with teachers trying to pivot to projects that would work at a distance.
It is frankly astonishing that teachers could make lesson plans under those circumstances. It is unbelievable that administrators could pull together the maintenance, cleaning, food service and transportation needs consistently. That it was all done while fielding what must have been the nonstop questions and confusion of parents trying to navigate makes it all the more remarkable.
Was it done perfectly? Of course not, but that would be an irrational demand. If that was the measurement in question, it would have to start not with districts but with the state government, which contributed as much confusion and poor communication to the process as it did recommendations and guidance.
Will 2020-21 grades come with an asterisk, like a baseball season with a player strike? They should — not because of any failure on the part of educators or students, but as a reminder that what was possible in other years was just not an option.
Science lessons that could happen in a controlled lab couldn't be done online, for example. By the same token, some kids might have performed better because of the one-on-one nature of doing math at the kitchen table with a dedicated teacher's aide — a.k.a. Mom or Dad — making sure things stayed focused in a way that a teacher juggling 25 kids in person couldn't do.
That points to why this year's grades aren't the only thing that needs to be considered. Just as important will be how schools follow up for 2021-22 and beyond. What worked and what didn't, what was missed and what was substituted will have to be acknowledged and addressed going forward.
But that doesn't take away from the simple success of surviving the impossible demands of this school year. Gold stars all around.
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