A lost generation of school kids because of COVID-19? Not so fast, education experts say
You could almost hear the collective sigh of relief from the parents of Washington school children Thursday.
The state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction released guidance for what the return of school in the fall likely will look like as Washington continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Unexpectedly, the news state Superintendent Chris Reykdal delivered was decidedly more optimistic than what many anticipated, particularly since Reykdal had previously warned that the upcoming school year was unlikely to resemble anything close to school as we’ve traditionally known it.
“We’re coming back — where it’s safe to do so with all protocols in place,” Reykdal said during a Thursday press conference.
For many parents throughout the state, the proclamation was greeted with cheers and hallelujahs. While unknowns remain, there’s little question the news helped ease the minds of many.
There’s a good reason for that, and it goes beyond mere parental exhaustion. The abrupt transition to “distance learning” — which is basically education jargon for, “We’ve got two weeks to figure out a new way to teach kids” — has not always been smooth.
In Tacoma and other districts, a pronounced technology gap — among other factors — has hampered teachers’ ability to reach their students. Meanwhile, the pandemic has exacerbated many of the pronounced inequities that already existed in our community and our schools.
Collectively, it’s enough to make a person contemplate how much damage has been inflicted, and what the lasting toll of COVID-19 will be on kids who have already missed three months of in-person instruction.
Have Washington children been dealt a hand that it will take years to recover from? Will they struggle disproportionately in college or as they enter adulthood? Has social and emotional learning been irreparably stunted?
While assessing all of this will take years, in the opinion of education experts who spoke to The News Tribune this week, the reality is more complex.
In most cases, they said, the students impacted by COVID-19 school closures will be just fine.
Where we need to focus our attention, they argued, are on those likely to fall through the cracks.
“We’re not losing a generation here. That’s kind of a doomsday generalization,” said Meredith Honig, a professor of education policy, organization and leadership at the University of Washington in Seattle.
“It’s also kind of disrespectful of kids and all the learning going on right now,” Honig added.
Speaking Thursday, not long after OSPI issued its guidance for next fall, Honig challenged the idea that missing out on class time equates to missing out on learning.
“There’s this idea that kids aren’t learning when they’re not in school. They’re learning all the time. What kids are missing out on is learning in schools,” Honig said.
As an example, Honig noted the potential for students to learn “a lot of lessons right now” through an ability to take part in the discourse and demonstrations inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement.
“I think that’s exciting,” Honig said.
Tariq Akmal, the chair of Washington State University’s Department of Teaching and Learning in Pullman, also identified the current social changes as one area where kids are likely learning, perhaps even more than they would in the traditional classroom.
Additionally, Akmal said, the increased freedom that comes with the closure of traditional classrooms — like the ability to go outside more or spend more time interacting with family — might ultimately be a benefit for many students.
Some, Akmal suggested, likely will emerge more resilient because of their experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, while for others the transition to distance learning might represent an improvement, particularly if they’ve struggled in the more traditional social framework of school.
“There are multiple ways to frame this and think about learning,” Akmal said. “When traditional education is lost or upset, what else is being learned at this moment?”
Of course, none of this is to say there’s no reason for concern or continued attention to the impacts of the COVID-19 school closure.
As always, the framing and context is the key, the experts said. Those fretting the most, some suggested, likely have little to worry about — because they’re already being well served by the public school system, and the same will hold true once school resumes.
The attention should be paid to the students and families who historically have not been well-served in public schools, they argued.
Akmal noted that kids who rely heavily on services provided by school — like those with disabilities or individualized education programs (IEPs) — have a more difficult time in traditional school and likely have been poorly served through distance learning. The same holds true for students whose home life already was a challenge, or who have had that environment disrupted due to the coronavirus.
“Social services, support networks, support services, social and emotional learning — those are potentially lost,” Akmal said. “The online learning, or distance learning, has worked very well for some people. It probably is not working well for others. … COVID-19 magnified the inequities of our society. It lays them bare for all to see.”
Paul Sutton, an assistant professor of education at Pacific Lutheran University, struck similar themes. In addition to children with disabilities or special needs, Sutton said, we need to pay particular attention to how students already living in poverty or English language learners are faring.
“Let’s be concerned about the right things,” Sutton said. “Let’s be concerned about those in our community who are suffering. Let’s be concerned about the children who are experiencing food insecurity, and the homeless. Let’s worry about the families and our neighbors who need it.”
In recognizing the disparities, there’s also an opportunity for improvement, Honig argued.
The inequities definitely exist, she said — it’s just that nearly all of them existed long before the coronavirus forced districts to close.
Importantly, Honig was deliberate to warn against the dangers of broad generalizations.
It’s important to take race and class into consideration when examining pandemic-related disparities, she said, but “talking about kids as behind or damaged, especially students of color and those in low-income circumstances” can also be “inaccurate and risk over-generalizing and perpetuating a deficit view that doesn’t get us anywhere good.”
“There are kids who under pre-COVID-19 circumstances have not had access to a free and appropriate or even approaching good public education, and so this crisis isn’t new. It’s a crisis that we live in in our school system, where certain kids are systematically excluded from learning opportunities,” Honig said.
“If this time right now daylights that, we’re going to be better off.”
This story was originally published June 12, 2020 at 12:00 AM.
