As public schools emerge from the pandemic and teachers and children return to their schoolhouses for in-person teaching and learning, a huge question emerges for public educators. Are schools required to retain remote education as a new parent choice option? Get to the answer quickly. No!
This is “a bridge too far”, to paraphrase a military strategy of World War Two that looked good on paper but was not successful in action. Today, remote education as a continuing, school district-dependent delivery system parallel to in-person learning is entirely “a bridge too far”.
At first, I thought, “Why not?”. We are educators and we rise to every occasion. During the height of the pandemic, teachers learned to teach from home to children at home. They learned to teach from their classrooms to children at home. Most recently, they learned to to teach in the hybrid model of some children in-person in the classroom and other children on-screen learning at home. Teachers made the emergency strategy for remote education work. Teachers pushed the veritable envelope to new dimensions. But, there is an enormous difference between what we are called to do in an emergency and what we do as sustainable best practice. There is no reason to keep the envelope pushed to its extremities in the post-pandemic.
Why is this thus?
The public concept of remote education is viewed entirely from the child’s perspective. There is nothing wrong with a client-perspective, especially a child/student, but theirs is not the only perspective. As a learner, synchronous virtual instruction satisfies those who prefer to learn away from school or children whose exceptionalities make home learning less of a conflicting challenge. Accepted. From the teaching perspective, synchronous virtual education is a perfect recipe for teacher burn out and failure. Given the usual assignment of one teacher to a class schedule of children every day for a full school year, simultaneous teaching for children in the classroom and children on-screen is a severe conflicting challenge. It requires one teacher to teach and cause high learner achievement in two distinct classrooms simultaneously. This cannot be be accepted – it is not reasonably sustainable.
Remote education in the Time of COVID was education’s emergency program responding to our state constitution’s mandate that every eligible child will have access to public schooling. Education did not stop; it just changed delivery systems. As an emergency response, remote education was a detour on a road under construction. The detour got us to the destination we wanted to achieve only using different roads. Better yet, remote education was staying with your relatives when your home is under renovation. As soon as the renovation is complete, you are expected to move back home. Remote education, as we installed it, was an emergency delivery system and when the emergency is over so is that delivery system for the every day education of children.
Remote education is authorized by the Department of Public Instruction as an “alternative delivery system” to be used at the discretion of a local school board during the emergency of the COVID 19 pandemic to ensure the education of every child eligible for public education. There is no mandate that a school board must provide remote education as teaching and learning delivery system. This alternative is premised upon waivers granted by national and state governments to educational rules and practices that are not sustainable in an emergency. When the emergency ends, so do the waivers that permit the alternative delivery system
I understand that we live in a consumer economy. Some parents and children found learning at home and not attending school to be a new preference for how they wish to continue their experiences in 4K-12 education. They do not want to return to daily, in-school life. Parents as consumers of child education will make their demands known. Homeschooling, open enrollment, charter schools, and virtual education are responses to past educational consumerism. And, each contains an element of what a consumer seeks in remote education. Children can be taught at home. Parents can choose their educational provider. Parents can band together as their own schools. Teaching and learning can be conducted on-line. We will see if these legislatively-approved options appease new consumer wants.
Sadly, the pandemic will become endemic. Resurgent infections and variants will cause schools to use quarantining and perhaps campus closure in the future as diligent responses for child and adult health needs. Quarantining and closure will require the use of remote education strategies. There also will be residual use of remote education for emergency times when children can not attend school. A child who needs an extended absence due to illness or injury can connect with daily instruction remotely. The technologies we use today will satisfy that child’s emergency and continuing learning needs. We know how to use remote education in an emergency -in an emergency. Consumer want is not an emergency.
To every parent or child who responds to the writing with “…but I want remote education…”, I repeat my “No!”. Remote education necessitated by a school closed due to the emergencies of the pandemic is not the birth of another parent choice option.
Some may use open enrollment options to find a school district that provides remote education within its usual programming. Parents may demonstrate their wants in school board or school referenda elections. These are real and positive options in our political life. No problem. The state legislature may make remote education their latest concession to the politics of education. Again, no problem, if that is the mandate. And, with a new mandate, appropriate study will be made regarding how to staff remote education for the success of all children. Today, it is not the mandate and there has been no study of how remote education can serve all children with equal success. What we know of synchronous virtual teaching and learning is the residual of our emergency strategy only.
Public education will return to its solid normalcy of in-person teaching, coaching, directing, guiding, advising, and mentoring of children attending school in a non-emergency environment. And, as needed, we will rise to the next emergency. And, as educators, what we learned in this emergency will help us to be better educators in the future.