Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Vanessa. I am a seventh grade language arts
Speaker 1: teacher at a middle school just outside of Seattle. We
Speaker 1: have over eight hundred students. About eighty percent of our
Speaker 1: students are on free year reduced lunch, which in the
Speaker 1: education field is how we indicate low income status. Also,
Speaker 1: about seventy percent of students are English language learners. The
Speaker 1: first reported case for US was in late January, but
Speaker 1: we really didn't start feeling the impact of the virus
Speaker 1: until the first death was reported on February I think
Speaker 1: twenty ninth. That was in the northern part of our county.
Speaker 1: Seattle Public Schools announced that they'd be closing for two
Speaker 1: weeks around that time, and we assumed we'd be following suit.
Speaker 1: What actually happened, though, was that school closed officially for
Speaker 1: six weeks on March sixteenth, per the governor's order. We
Speaker 1: got the official announcement about an hour before school let
Speaker 1: out on the twelfth. That was really horrible. We worry
Speaker 1: about our kids during breaks, especially when you work in
Speaker 1: a lower income neighborhood, because poverty leads to a lot
Speaker 1: of things that impacts the way our kids come to
Speaker 1: school and the things they face at home. First, we
Speaker 1: were told by the state not to do distance learning
Speaker 1: with new material unless we can make it completely equitable.
Speaker 1: Because of the way our community is, it was really
Speaker 1: impossible to make that equitable at the time, and so
Speaker 1: before we could really start doing anything, we had to
Speaker 1: make sure kids had their chromebooks. We had to make
Speaker 1: sure they worked, We had to get chromebooks to the
Speaker 1: elementary students, and we had to figure out how to
Speaker 1: get our low income family's internet because that's, you know,
Speaker 1: part of distance learning, and a lot of our kids
Speaker 1: didn't have it. Now that school's been closed to the
Speaker 1: end of the year, the state has changed its guidance
Speaker 1: and were required to teach new material an issue pass
Speaker 1: or incomplete grades instead of the A through F, but
Speaker 1: they're still required to do the material. I think everyone's feeling,
Speaker 1: but maybe our kids more so, is that our students
Speaker 1: are struggling. Beyond just the academics. The district was working
Speaker 1: to get meals provided and figure out the tech situation.
Speaker 1: As a teacher, I was contacting families, making sure they
Speaker 1: had enough to eat, enough money to get by, if
Speaker 1: they had computers or internet, if they needed help with
Speaker 1: any of these things, I'd refer them to community organizations
Speaker 1: to help with food, rent, utilities. We have a no
Speaker 1: eviction role place in now, but of course people are
Speaker 1: worried about back rent when that ends. Some of our
Speaker 1: families have undocumented family members and don't qualify for some
Speaker 1: of the aid, so we're working again with community partners
Speaker 1: to get those families what they need when they need it.
Speaker 1: Figuring out the best format to deliver instruction has been really,
Speaker 1: really difficult, because it's so important to make those personal
Speaker 1: connections and keep those relationships going to keep kids motivated
Speaker 1: to learn, and it's hard to do that through a
Speaker 1: computer screen or through email. Honestly, some days I answer
Speaker 1: more questions about mental health than I do assignments. Our
Speaker 1: families are also terribly impacted. Many are out of work
Speaker 1: or working essential, low paying jobs. They're worried about rent
Speaker 1: and food and utilities. They're really worried about kids falling
Speaker 1: behind in school. Luckily, we are a very connected community
Speaker 1: and we help each other out, and we've got some
Speaker 1: fantastic community organizations that are really really working with us
Speaker 1: as schools and Moving Mountains to help our families and
Speaker 1: help our students through this time. I feel lucky to
Speaker 1: have landed in such a fantastic, close, loving community during
Speaker 1: this time.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I think you can hear my parents in
Speaker 2: the background.
Speaker 1: It's fine.
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm no Talia Kintana. I'm sixteen and a junior
Speaker 2: in high school. Before this pandemic began, my life was
Speaker 2: busy but simple. Monday through Friday, I had school, followed
Speaker 2: by rehearsals for my musical, getting home late and doing
Speaker 2: my work, going to bed at some ungodly hour, then
Speaker 2: waking up early in the morning to do it all
Speaker 2: over again. It was fun. Stressful, yes, but fun. I
Speaker 2: was planning for my college applications, study for the SAT
Speaker 2: and making sure my grades were as high as I
Speaker 2: could get them. I first heard about Sar's KOV two
Speaker 2: at the end of January, when the situation in Wuhan,
Speaker 2: China started to be all over the news. Then my
Speaker 2: school and other schools in the area started talking about
Speaker 2: the possibility of closing for a week or two. That
Speaker 2: was worrying. I loved school and didn't know what an
Speaker 2: online version of that would be like. But at the
Speaker 2: start of March it became my reality. As the pandemic
Speaker 2: was officially a pandemic, my school got shut down, and
Speaker 2: case numbers in my city began to rise at a
Speaker 2: rapid pace. When my school was shut down, my anxiety
Speaker 2: was fueled. We've now moved to online classes, and I've
Speaker 2: been struggling.
Speaker 3: I'm usually a.
Speaker 2: Very engaged student, but online it's harder to do everything.
Speaker 2: I find myself less attentive. I can't ask for help.
Speaker 2: If I do, the whole class knows, and my anxiety
Speaker 2: won't let that happen. So I can only listen to
Speaker 2: so many lecturers and look at a computer for so
Speaker 2: long before my mind becomes mush. I just can't seem
Speaker 2: to drum up the passion for school I used to have.
Speaker 2: My days now go like this. I wake up early
Speaker 2: and get ready for school, move into my dad's office,
Speaker 2: and sit in the same chair for four hours. Then
Speaker 2: I have the rest of the day to do my
Speaker 2: homework or anything else. Even though I have time to
Speaker 2: do things like exploring new hobbies or exercising, I get
Speaker 2: these waves of anxiety and depression where all I can
Speaker 2: do is lay in bed and cry. I've always struggled
Speaker 2: with anxiety and occasionally depression, but I was doing better
Speaker 2: before all this. I worry about my mental health worstening.
Speaker 2: Nothing is certain. My school has yet to say if
Speaker 2: we can or can't return to school this year, but
Speaker 2: it doesn't look like we will. I don't even know
Speaker 2: if I'll go to school in the fall. When I
Speaker 2: think about college, I don't know what I see. I
Speaker 2: had a plan I'd visit colleges over spring break and
Speaker 2: then i'd get back and study, but needless to say,
Speaker 2: my trip got canceled. This pandemic has also made me
Speaker 2: question my plan to study out of state. Should I
Speaker 2: stay close to home? What if my family gets sick.
Speaker 2: I want to be there to take care of them.
Speaker 2: Beyond the educational part of school, I'm isolated. I talk
Speaker 2: to my friends as often as I can, but we're
Speaker 2: all working really hard and it's not like we have
Speaker 2: much to talk about. For my friends who are seniors,
Speaker 2: I may not see them again for years. Their graduation
Speaker 2: has been canceled, and their prom has also been For me,
Speaker 2: it's just junior prom. I'll have another one, but it's
Speaker 2: not for seniors. So I set up an online problem
Speaker 2: with my friends. It went well enough. It was only
Speaker 2: a bit of a mess, but that didn't stop me
Speaker 2: from at least trying to connect with my friends because
Speaker 2: I know that life won't be the same for a while.
Speaker 2: I don't know how I'm going to cope, but right
Speaker 2: now all I want is to get through this year.
Speaker 2: I'll stress about the other stuff. Then everyone I talk
Speaker 2: to about school has said the same thing. They just
Speaker 2: want to go back, but we know why we can't,
Speaker 2: and we're willing to give up a lot.
Speaker 4: I'm currently in my second year of teaching science at
Speaker 4: a high school in regional Victoria, Australia. Overall, like many
Speaker 4: regional areas, we struggle with keeping up with our metropolitan
Speaker 4: counterparts in literacy, numeracy, and curricular concerns. Even in my classes,
Speaker 4: there can be as much as a ten year gap
Speaker 4: in ability levels, which poses its own challenges. Enter COVID nineteen. Now,
Speaker 4: coronavirus was something that we were aware of since the
Speaker 4: beginning of our school year, which for us was late January. However,
Speaker 4: it felt distant and foreign, overshadowed by the domestic bushfire
Speaker 4: crises that were still raging on. Now, COVID nineteen continued
Speaker 4: to grow and it's influenced locally as gyms and shops closed,
Speaker 4: cafes were only allowing takeaway food, and coffees and all
Speaker 4: of the students' activities outside of school war shut down,
Speaker 4: but schools were kept open. Large gatherings were banned, sports events, assemblies,
Speaker 4: and school camps were canceled, but school continued business as usual.
Speaker 4: The stance of the government was that students education should
Speaker 4: not be disrupted. Unfortunately, by this point, education was already
Speaker 4: being disrupted. Students were gradually staying at home as their
Speaker 4: parents felt uneasy about sending them out. We finished school
Speaker 4: abruptly four days early to allow teachers to prepare for
Speaker 4: the next term of remote learning. I, along with many
Speaker 4: other teachers, spent most of our extended break planning out
Speaker 4: online lessons, along with producing hard copy versions and resources
Speaker 4: for families without computer and internet access. We're now stepping
Speaker 4: into our second week of remote learning, and my role
Speaker 4: as a teacher has shifted dramatically. I'm still waiting to
Speaker 4: hear back from over fifty percent of my students. Our
Speaker 4: state government is in the process of rolling out laptops
Speaker 4: to students who need them and providing access to Wi Fi. However,
Speaker 4: this will take the next few weeks to make sure
Speaker 4: all families are readily equipped for remote learning and can
Speaker 4: get online I've done my best so far to make
Speaker 4: videos and couraging students to engage with online learning, and
Speaker 4: have set online classroom check ins for our platforms, but
Speaker 4: I'm still figuring out the best way to approach this.
Speaker 4: Remote learning does provide an opportunity for students to grow
Speaker 4: in their resilience and to figure out how they best learn,
Speaker 4: and I guess it gives teachers a chance to develop
Speaker 4: skills in diversifying content and making sure it's actually clear
Speaker 4: for us students. There are plenty of students who will
Speaker 4: really benefit from the independence that remote learning provides. Without
Speaker 4: the distraction of a classroom, students will be able to
Speaker 4: get through so much more. However, for some students who
Speaker 4: are already struggling with face to face lessons, they won't
Speaker 4: have the constant encouragement and support that teachers can provide.
Speaker 4: Online interactions are clunky and difficult, especially if you can
Speaker 4: even get online, so the gaps in our classrooms have
Speaker 4: the potential to grow enormously with some students getting lit behind,
Speaker 4: and that is a serious concern for so many teachers.
Speaker 4: We're putting in as much effort as we can to
Speaker 4: make these lessons valuable for students as they're stuck at home.
Speaker 4: But there's only so much that we can do. The
Speaker 4: COVID nineteen pandemic is sweeping through every aspect of society,
Speaker 4: exposing many vulnerabilities in its wake, and one of which
Speaker 4: is the concerning lack of scientific and health literacy among
Speaker 4: the general population. I guess if we're lucky, it'll make
Speaker 4: us reassess the way we approach education as a whole.
Speaker 4: If anything, this pandemic has given me a strong answer
Speaker 4: to the question I often get in class, why do
Speaker 4: we even need to know this?
Speaker 5: Thank you so so much to the providers of those
Speaker 5: first hand accounts. They were fantastic and we really really
Speaker 5: appreciate you taking the time to send in your stories.
Speaker 3: We love them so much. Thank you to every single
Speaker 3: person who has sent in a story. We absolutely love
Speaker 3: hearing from you. We wish that we could put every
Speaker 3: single firsthand in these episodes we do.
Speaker 5: Hi, I'm erin Welsh.
Speaker 3: And I'm erin omen Updike.
Speaker 5: And this is this podcast will kill you.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, Welcome to the tenth episode I'm Shocked,
Speaker 3: the tenth episode of our Anatomy of a Pandemic series. Yes,
Speaker 3: this week we are again outside of our wheelhouse, talking
Speaker 3: about education and the impact that the pandemic has had
Speaker 3: on how learning takes place, the inequalities that have been
Speaker 3: so starkly revealed through these massive school closures, and what
Speaker 3: the future may hold for the public school system in
Speaker 3: the US.
Speaker 5: And because this is such a massive topic already, we
Speaker 5: are mostly restricting our discussion to the impact that this
Speaker 5: pandemic is having on schools in the US. But I
Speaker 5: do think that a lot of the larger issues that
Speaker 5: we discuss in this interview can be pretty broadly relevant
Speaker 5: as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, But before we get to that interview, we
Speaker 3: do have a few pieces of business. First of all,
Speaker 3: we said already thank you to every one who has
Speaker 3: been sending in your first hand accounts. If you would
Speaker 3: like to share your story about what you've been going
Speaker 3: through during this pandemic, you can find the link on
Speaker 3: our website under COVID nineteen Firsthands to submit a Google
Speaker 3: form to send us your story. Also, on our website
Speaker 3: you'll find alcohol free episodes of all of our episodes,
Speaker 3: so you can use those as you wish.
Speaker 5: And Aaron and we have an affiliate page on bookshop
Speaker 5: dot org. You've heard us talking about it before in
Speaker 5: this podcast. If you haven't Google Bookshop, it's a really
Speaker 5: cool website. And one final piece of business it is.
Speaker 3: It's Quarantin any Time.
Speaker 5: Quarantin any time. We are drinking quarantine ey ten.
Speaker 3: We're so creative with these titles.
Speaker 5: I know, I know it's about as bad as hepatitis ABCD.
Speaker 3: I know, actually that's a really good comparison.
Speaker 5: But I finally can understand and empathize, and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 5: I feel bad for criticizing them.
Speaker 3: That's really funny.
Speaker 5: Okay, So what is in quarantine E ten? You may ask,
Speaker 5: I do ask, and I will tell you that it
Speaker 5: is guava simple syrup, which sounds very complicated, but it's
Speaker 5: actually not. I promise you can make just by if
Speaker 5: you have guava frozen pulp. So like Goya brand frozen pulp.
Speaker 5: They have a ton of different seas.
Speaker 3: We just all have freezers full of fruit pulp. Erin,
Speaker 3: I had.
Speaker 5: Some from when we made the Dancing Plague Quarantine eight,
Speaker 5: the fever fever. Yeah, and I had because if we
Speaker 5: used guava juice and so I had guava pulp from then,
Speaker 5: and so anyway, I was like, what am I supposed
Speaker 5: to do with this leftover honk of guava, and so
Speaker 5: I made guava simple syrup. So you just make two
Speaker 5: to one simple syrup, so like two cups of sugar
Speaker 5: one cup of water, and then you do whatever quantity
Speaker 5: that produces. You do equal amounts guava pulp and that. Anyway,
Speaker 5: it's fantastic. It's really good. So it's not just guava
Speaker 5: simple syrup. It also has lemon juice, vodka, and grapefruit
Speaker 5: club soda.
Speaker 3: Yum, pretty tasty. I think this is probably our fanciest
Speaker 3: of these COVID quarantinies.
Speaker 5: But I mean genuinely, I had all of these things,
Speaker 5: so like, I don't.
Speaker 3: Know, it's still a pandemic quarantini.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you could also just use whatever simple syrup you
Speaker 5: want to make out.
Speaker 3: Of a fruit juice.
Speaker 5: So there you go.
Speaker 3: There you go. Yeah, And we will.
Speaker 5: Post the recipe to the quarantini and the non alcoholic
Speaker 5: Placy Brita on our website This podcast will kill You
Speaker 5: dot com.
Speaker 3: Yes, all right, so all right, let's get into this episode,
Speaker 3: shall we.
Speaker 6: Let's do it.
Speaker 3: This is the second time in the series that we
Speaker 3: ventured outside of the public health arena that we are
Speaker 3: most comfortable in to talk about the impact of COVID
Speaker 3: nineteen on other aspects of life and society. Just like
Speaker 3: we talked about in our economics episode, in this current pandemic,
Speaker 3: we're seeing how public health and disease intersect with basically
Speaker 3: every single aspect of our lives, and education and schooling
Speaker 3: is one of those aspects that has really felt the
Speaker 3: massive impact of this pandemic.
Speaker 5: But again, even though we really want to ask and
Speaker 5: learn about the effects of COVID nineteen on public schools,
Speaker 5: we Aaron and I don't have the expertise to answer
Speaker 5: those questions or to even be jour out Nope, But
Speaker 5: do you know who does? Journalist Jennifer Berkshire, an education historian,
Speaker 5: doctor Jack Schneider hosts of the Have You Heard Podcast,
Speaker 5: which is an awesome, awesome podcast on educational policy and politics.
Speaker 5: And we were four enough to pick their brains on
Speaker 5: some of the biggest issues facing public schools today during
Speaker 5: this COVID nineteen pandemic, and also kind of exploring the
Speaker 5: historical context of these issues. It was such an interesting
Speaker 5: and enlightening interview.
Speaker 3: It was so fun, it was so good.
Speaker 5: Okay, so we will let them introduce themselves right after
Speaker 5: this break.
Speaker 7: My name is Jack Schneider. I'm an assistant professor of
Speaker 7: education at UMass Lowell. I live in Somerville, Massachusetts, with
Speaker 7: my wife and daughter. My wife is a teacher who
Speaker 7: has been moved into the world of online instruction for
Speaker 7: the last several weeks. My daughter is a student, a
Speaker 7: fourth grader, who has been moved into the strange hybrid
Speaker 7: world of homeschooling and online schooling. And we are all
Speaker 7: doing our best to make sense of the world right now.
Speaker 7: I also co host the Education Policy podcast Have You
Speaker 7: Heard with Somebody who does more work on it than
Speaker 7: I do?
Speaker 8: And I'm Jennifer Berkshire. I am a writer. I write
Speaker 8: about education. I worked for half a dozen years for
Speaker 8: one of the teachers' unions in Massachusetts, editing a statewide newspaper,
Speaker 8: and as a result of that, I got to visit
Speaker 8: all kinds of urban schools and became what some people
Speaker 8: would call obsessed with the issue. So I started a
Speaker 8: podcast and I are also the co authors of a
Speaker 8: book that's going to be coming out this fall called.
Speaker 6: A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door. It's a pretty great title.
Speaker 6: So that's my story.
Speaker 3: That's a very great title. That's excellent, awesome. Okay, so
Speaker 3: thank you guys again for joining us. So one of
Speaker 3: the things that we wanted to ask you about sort
Speaker 3: of to start off with, was kind of the historical
Speaker 3: precedence of what we're seeing right now in terms of
Speaker 3: these massive school closures. Have we ever seen anything like
Speaker 3: this before, maybe during the nineteen eighteen influenza pandemic or
Speaker 3: other epidemics that have happened since then.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So, in nineteen eighteen, you're absolutely right, schools were
Speaker 7: closed all across America. In fact, they were closed across
Speaker 7: the world. And these closures ranged from a few weeks
Speaker 7: to a few months, maybe even longer. Records aren't great,
Speaker 7: and there was really no uniformity there. That's largely because
Speaker 7: school boards and local authorities were the ones who made
Speaker 7: the determination to close schools. One question that I had
Speaker 7: when Jennifer and I were researching this for one of
Speaker 7: our shows was did it work? And interestingly, scholars studied
Speaker 7: how forty three cities across the US responded to the
Speaker 7: so called Spanish flu and found that the cities that
Speaker 7: acted early to adopt non pharmaceutical interventions like school closures
Speaker 7: actually had a lower peak mortality and lower overall morbidity.
Speaker 5: That's fascinating and it also, I mean makes sense. And
Speaker 5: so you know, I want to shift a little bit
Speaker 5: to talking about the role of schools and how the
Speaker 5: role of schools now is much bigger than just a
Speaker 5: place to learn, just a place to become educated. So
Speaker 5: over the past fifty years this has changed substantially, and
Speaker 5: so now schools provide many services that go beyond just
Speaker 5: simply education. So can you talk a little bit about
Speaker 5: what some of those services are, and also can you
Speaker 5: address a little bit how this pandemic is revealing this
Speaker 5: the role of schools being more than just this place
Speaker 5: to learn.
Speaker 8: So you guys probably recall that in the sort of
Speaker 8: agonizing days leading up to these mass school closures, you know,
Speaker 8: you had all these big urban districts grappling with what
Speaker 8: to do about the fact that so many of their
Speaker 8: students rely on schools to eat basically, right, that we
Speaker 8: kept seeing the figure twenty two million students tossed around.
Speaker 8: It's probably even higher than that, but this is the
Speaker 8: number of kids who who get consume most of their
Speaker 8: calories at school. This is something that makes the US
Speaker 8: really different from other industrial countries that have more robust
Speaker 8: welfare programs. And basically what happened is that in the
Speaker 8: Johnson administration we made a pretty dramatic turn away from
Speaker 8: that path, and that instead of going more towards Northern
Speaker 8: European welfare state, we did something really different. We went
Speaker 8: all in for trying to solve poverty through the schools.
Speaker 8: And that's made to the extent that we have welfare programs,
Speaker 8: they're in and around the schools and made them more
Speaker 8: palatable for people who maybe don't approve of welfare programs otherwise.
Speaker 8: But it's put schools in this very weird position where
Speaker 8: they are essentially playing the role of the safety net.
Speaker 8: And so when suddenly something happens like a pandemic and
Speaker 8: we have to close schools down in mass we're left
Speaker 8: with this sort of social disaster where kids who rely
Speaker 8: on schools for food and counseling and all sorts of
Speaker 8: other services no longer have access to them.
Speaker 7: It's also important to think about the process of school
Speaker 7: and how schooling is really about far more than content delivery.
Speaker 7: So Jennifer was just talking about how, particularly for disadvantage students,
Speaker 7: access to basic necessities like food and medical services which
Speaker 7: many students receive through the schools, or language instruction which
Speaker 7: many students and their parents receive through the schools. In
Speaker 7: addition to these things, all students are getting a whole
Speaker 7: lot more from school than just basic instruction in core
Speaker 7: content areas. And I think that when school works, there's
Speaker 7: so much happening there that we really take for granted
Speaker 7: that we're beginning to recognize more now. I overheard a
Speaker 7: student say that right now, school for her is being
Speaker 7: passed through a sieve with all of the enjoyable parts
Speaker 7: filtered out. And if we think about an ordinary school
Speaker 7: day now compared with what young people are getting in
Speaker 7: the online hybrid homeschooling environment, we can think about all
Speaker 7: of these questions that we might ask about schools that
Speaker 7: ordinarily we don't like. Do kids feel cared for? Are
Speaker 7: they happy? Are they motivated? Are they trying? Do they
Speaker 7: have time to play or be creative? Are they getting
Speaker 7: instruction in the arts? Are they developing healthy relationships? Are
Speaker 7: they being exposed to people who are different from themselves? Schools,
Speaker 7: as I like to argue and Jennifer likes to make
Speaker 7: fun of me, for are much more like ecosystems than
Speaker 7: they are like car engines. And I think in this
Speaker 7: present crisis, seeing all of the ways that the many
Speaker 7: things schools do for young people have been paired back
Speaker 7: may enhance our appreciation for those things once we're able
Speaker 7: to return.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's a really nice analogy that filtering through a sieve.
Speaker 3: That's very sad. Yeah, So, I think one thing that
Speaker 3: we're noticing with this pandemic is of course that schools,
Speaker 3: like you said, are not able to play this same
Speaker 3: role that they were previously. And because of that, a
Speaker 3: lot of the inequalities in education that have been present
Speaker 3: for a long time have really been heightened, and I
Speaker 3: think people are becoming more kind of acutely aware of them.
Speaker 3: So could you talk about some of the inequalities that
Speaker 3: we see in education today and what those historical roots are,
Speaker 3: maybe give us a few examples.
Speaker 7: I think the biggest inequities are outside of school. You know,
Speaker 7: today's schools aren't equal, but they're certainly more equal than
Speaker 7: at any other time in American history. So if you
Speaker 7: were to walk into a quote unquote low achieving school,
Speaker 7: you would find a lot of great teachers in a
Speaker 7: pretty typical looking school, and so for me, that raises
Speaker 7: this question, and that question is what's going on, And
Speaker 7: what's going on is that outside of school, kids experience
Speaker 7: highly unequal realities and that's what shapes the achievement gap primarily.
Speaker 7: And the roots of it are as we are beginning
Speaker 7: to discuss in our society given the work of some
Speaker 7: left leaning economists. The roots of it are are in capital,
Speaker 7: who has access to wealth, who has been able to
Speaker 7: build wealth across generations. And I think a lot of
Speaker 7: people assume that wealth gets translated directly into learning, because
Speaker 7: people maybe buy better schools for their kids, or buy
Speaker 7: tutoring for their kids, and that really isn't the effect.
Speaker 7: The effect is that wealth enables the kinds of activities
Speaker 7: that young people benefit from. So a classic example of
Speaker 7: this would be having a parent at home paying a
Speaker 7: lot of attention to that child in the early years.
Speaker 7: And that's a privilege that not everybody has.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 7: A lot of parents simply have to go right back
Speaker 7: to work immediately, and many families that do go back
Speaker 7: to work have the privilege of, if they can't be
Speaker 7: with their kids, of sending their kids to a high
Speaker 7: quality daycare program where their kids are going to end
Speaker 7: up getting the kind of preparation that's going to enable
Speaker 7: them to succeed on day one in school. Another example
Speaker 7: is having a college educated parent at home who's a
Speaker 7: sally setting a standard without saying a word about college.
Speaker 7: And because of things like this, we don't tend to
Speaker 7: see huge rates of intergenerational mobility because these are the
Speaker 7: kinds of privileges that people are able to pass down
Speaker 7: to their kids because they essentially have social and economic advantage.
Speaker 7: And the roots of this are the story of American history.
Speaker 8: So I just wanted to talk a little bit about
Speaker 8: one particular divide that we're seeing a lot of and
Speaker 8: hearing a lot about, and that's the digital divide that
Speaker 8: the You know, there's this huge shift underway to they
Speaker 8: call it remote learning, they call it distance learning. One
Speaker 8: of the reasons they're calling it that instead of online
Speaker 8: learning is because you have so many kids, both rural
Speaker 8: and urban, who lack access.
Speaker 6: To reliable internet. Now why is that.
Speaker 8: It's because we still don't treat internet access like a utility.
Speaker 8: So if you're in a rural area, I just interviewed somebody,
Speaker 8: they not do they not have reliable internet access, But
Speaker 8: it's a part of Michigan that doesn't have good cell
Speaker 8: service either, and so they're really kind of in a bind. Right,
Speaker 8: The library is still giving off a signal, so kids
Speaker 8: have the option of going there and sitting at a
Speaker 8: picnic table, but that's not particularly safe given the times.
Speaker 8: So here we you know, we see this this inequity
Speaker 8: that's playing out in a very visible way where like
Speaker 8: your ability to do you have a device that's dedicated
Speaker 8: just to your school work, is internet always on at
Speaker 8: your house? That's going to be a really different situation
Speaker 8: than a household that gets access to the Internet through
Speaker 8: a phone with a limited data plan. And now, as
Speaker 8: you see unemployment beginning to rise exponentially, those expensive cable
Speaker 8: bills and data plans those are the first things that
Speaker 8: cash strap families are going to give up. And so
Speaker 8: it's not just that that we have this digital divide,
Speaker 8: it's that it's going to get worse.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So a lot of the discussion that we'll have
Speaker 5: today and that we've had so part focuses generally on
Speaker 5: the United States. But can you talk a little bit
Speaker 5: about whether there are other countries where there are similar
Speaker 5: inequalities or where these inequalities are being revealed by this
Speaker 5: current pandemic.
Speaker 8: So the short answer to your question is that if
Speaker 8: we're talking about industrialized countries, the answer is really no.
Speaker 8: Right that other countries have robust welfare policies.
Speaker 6: They don't.
Speaker 8: Schools aren't the only place where students have access to food.
Speaker 8: They treat internet as a utility, right and so. And
Speaker 8: what infuriates me, like as someone who makes my living
Speaker 8: as a freelancer, the reading all these stories about countries
Speaker 8: like Germany and Canada that have figured out ways to
Speaker 8: cushion the blow for their citizens as the bottom has
Speaker 8: dropped out of the economy. Right that you can, if
Speaker 8: you're a Canadian, you can apply for help and you
Speaker 8: get it the next day. Yesterday I read in a
Speaker 8: story and The Times about creative people in Berlin, photographers
Speaker 8: and writers and musicians who you know, like Berlin has
Speaker 8: made a billion dollars worth of help available to them.
Speaker 8: And so we have countries who are prioritizing trying to
Speaker 8: keep people from flailing, so that already things look really
Speaker 8: really different. The same level of inequality isn't being exposed
Speaker 8: because it doesn't exist, and they don't rely on their
Speaker 8: schools as the sole vehicle for overcoming.
Speaker 7: Poverty in education. A favorite comparison that people like to make,
Speaker 7: and this is a comparison that paints the US and
Speaker 7: negative light, is with Finland. Finland has been the darling
Speaker 7: of the educational reform community for a decade, and essentially
Speaker 7: the argument is that the US should be more like Finland,
Speaker 7: look at the results that they get, we should adopt
Speaker 7: some of the practices that Finland has adopted in its
Speaker 7: educational system. And there is increasingly a group of people
Speaker 7: who point instead to what happens outside of the schools
Speaker 7: in Finland, where not only are the elements of the
Speaker 7: social safety net that Jennifer pointed out earlier in place,
Speaker 7: but they also have universal health care, universal access to
Speaker 7: higher education, universal paternity and maternity leave. And so to
Speaker 7: the points I was making earlier about some of the
Speaker 7: out of school variables that end up shaping young people's
Speaker 7: long term school success. If you live in a country
Speaker 7: like Finland and you know that if you succeed in school,
Speaker 7: that college will be paid for. If you live in
Speaker 7: a country where one or both parents are able to
Speaker 7: stay at home with you for the first year or
Speaker 7: two of your life, if you live in a country
Speaker 7: where you know that you always are going to have
Speaker 7: access to a meal, are simply going to have a
Speaker 7: different kind of life outlook and a different set of
Speaker 7: educational outcomes than if you live in a country like
Speaker 7: the United States, where we tend to talk more about
Speaker 7: equal opportunity than we do to act to create the
Speaker 7: kinds of systems and structures that would ensure it.
Speaker 3: I really wish you could have seen my enthusiastic nodding
Speaker 3: during that.
Speaker 5: No, it's as someone who lived in Finland for a
Speaker 5: post act, I can definitely attest to the amazing social
Speaker 5: services and social support network that was there. Even the
Speaker 5: short time that I experienced it. It was a very
Speaker 5: interesting experience. So yeah, I appreciate that comparison.
Speaker 3: So one of the clear inequalities that we're seeing both
Speaker 3: in the media and that you kind of touched upon already,
Speaker 3: Jennifer is in this switch to distance learning. So can
Speaker 3: we talk a little bit more in detail about who
Speaker 3: who all is being left out in this switch to
Speaker 3: distance learning? Is it is it only the kids without
Speaker 3: access to internet or is it broader than that.
Speaker 6: It's much broader than that.
Speaker 8: And you know, I actually teach one class online at
Speaker 8: the college level. I teach in the journalism program at
Speaker 8: Boston College, and my students are primarily seniors. They are
Speaker 8: they have like all their ducks in a row.
Speaker 6: They know exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 8: And even with them, I noticed right away that I
Speaker 8: lost about a quarter of them that they just you know,
Speaker 8: once we shifted online, that they drifted away. They're you know,
Speaker 8: they're reeling. And I think, Man, if my students are
Speaker 8: having that level, if the transition to online is that
Speaker 8: challenging for them, what's it like for students who have
Speaker 8: all sorts of other hurdles to navigate. And that's really
Speaker 8: exactly what you're seeing. There's the issue of internet that
Speaker 8: I talked about before. There's this whole issue of space
Speaker 8: right that like, if you're fortunate enough to have, you know,
Speaker 8: your own room and your own device where you can
Speaker 8: do your homework. That's another thing. There's the content that's
Speaker 8: being offered right That is the stuff that you're being
Speaker 8: offered engaging, and that's where you see big splits between
Speaker 8: districts that are really well resourced and districts that are
Speaker 8: just having to spend all their time figuring out just
Speaker 8: how to get chrome books and hotspots to kids. So
Speaker 8: those are some of the big inequities that we're seeing.
Speaker 8: And then finally, like the issue of special education is
Speaker 8: just huge right now. I spent last year working at
Speaker 8: a special education school in Massachusetts where the student to
Speaker 8: staff ratio is almost one to one. That's a reflection
Speaker 8: of just the intense needs that these kids have. And
Speaker 8: when I think about how students like this will fare
Speaker 8: in the world of online learning, I mean, there is
Speaker 8: just no that can't be done through a screen, no
Speaker 8: matter how devoted the teacher is, Like, there is no substitute.
Speaker 8: Zoom is not going to make up for that immediate
Speaker 8: presence of a counselor for the extremely skilled speech pathologists.
Speaker 8: And so you see school districts grappling that with that,
Speaker 8: you see parents of special needs kids agonizing over that,
Speaker 8: and you hear frankly, I would say more conservative advocates
Speaker 8: of remote learning being all too dismissive of the rest
Speaker 8: of us worrying about that.
Speaker 7: If you look at the educational research on distance learning
Speaker 7: and online learning, it fairly consistently indicates that it is
Speaker 7: more successful with older and more experienced students. And why
Speaker 7: is that? Because they know how school works. They have
Speaker 7: the basic moves down and they're highly motivated. So I
Speaker 7: teach you at university where we offer several online graduate programs,
Speaker 7: and generally they're pretty good because our students meet the
Speaker 7: above criteria. But for younger students and for less experienced students,
Speaker 7: and particularly for students from vulnerable populations, students who need
Speaker 7: additional support to thrive in school, online education is a
Speaker 7: bad idea. It doesn't give them the kinds of supports
Speaker 7: they need. It doesn't engage them in the way that
Speaker 7: we know that those populations need to be engaged. They
Speaker 7: are simply a bad fit for learning in the online environment. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Do you think that this pandemic will make policymakers and
Speaker 5: politicians see the economic value of schools and how fundamentally
Speaker 5: important schools and public schools are to the economy overall,
Speaker 5: or do you think that this might lead to a
Speaker 5: further decrease in funding to public schools, ultimately resulting hopefully
Speaker 5: not but in a dismantling of the entire public school system.
Speaker 5: And then sort of more broadly, how do you think
Speaker 5: that our definition of school might change? Pandemic? It's a
Speaker 5: lot of questions there.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Well, I'll focus primarily on the last one for
Speaker 7: recency bias, and say that for the past twenty years,
Speaker 7: we have had an accountability system in this country that
Speaker 7: measures schools by primarily standardized test score results in two
Speaker 7: subject areas math and English in grades three through eight,
Speaker 7: as well as one year of high school. At the
Speaker 7: high school level, they look at graduation rates, and increasingly,
Speaker 7: across the states, they are looking at student attendance rates.
Speaker 7: This is such an impoverished way of trying to understand
Speaker 7: school quality that I have sort of shouted myself hoarse
Speaker 7: over the past ten years about the damage that this does.
Speaker 7: It does damage to schools in that schools are incentivized
Speaker 7: to narrow their missions, and particularly schools serving the least advantaged, who,
Speaker 7: by virtue of the fact that they are serving the
Speaker 7: least advantaged, are less likely to have high standardized test scores.
Speaker 7: Those are the schools that are most incentivized to narrow
Speaker 7: their missions. Moreover, these kinds of narrowmetrics pit schools against
Speaker 7: each other in a way that makes some schools look
Speaker 7: good and other schools look bad, even if they're all
Speaker 7: doing a stellar job, and this undermines the work of
Speaker 7: public education. It denigrates the work of teachers, It demoralizes
Speaker 7: students and communities. And I think the present pandemic is
Speaker 7: beginning to show us a little bit more about what
Speaker 7: schools actually do. Like, my kid is really happy when
Speaker 7: she goes to school, and that sure isn't measured in
Speaker 7: the accountability system, but I can see it with my
Speaker 7: eyes right now. See she's dragging in a way that
Speaker 7: she doesn't when she goes to school. And that's particularly
Speaker 7: powerful for me because when I was a kid, this
Speaker 7: is like what I dreamed of, Like just give me
Speaker 7: an unannounced, unanticipated, several month break from school where I
Speaker 7: can just stay home. And that's not what she wants.
Speaker 7: She wants to go to school. She misses her teacher
Speaker 7: with whom she's established a real connection, Like it's a
Speaker 7: highlight of her day to just see her teacher. Measure
Speaker 7: that right, it's a highlight of her day when she
Speaker 7: gets to connect with her classmates with whom she's built
Speaker 7: real bonds. And I'll say that this is a diverse school,
Speaker 7: and her class is a diverse class, and so the
Speaker 7: fact that she is connected with them is something that's
Speaker 7: not only meaningful socially for her, I think it's meaningful
Speaker 7: politically for our community and for America measure that right.
Speaker 7: These are the sorts of things that I think many
Speaker 7: parents and community members may be experiencing as they're seeing
Speaker 7: their kids in terms of their social and emotional outcomes
Speaker 7: right now, in terms of their engagement, in terms of
Speaker 7: the things they're learning right Like, I can't deliver music
Speaker 7: instruction to my daughter the way she was getting in school.
Speaker 7: I wish I could. I can deliver art instruction, but
Speaker 7: the fact is that she doesn't really want to learn
Speaker 7: painting and drawing from me. She wants it from her teacher.
Speaker 7: She has a different relationship with her teacher. So I
Speaker 7: think that one of the things that may come out
Speaker 7: of this is a broader definition of school, a definition
Speaker 7: that aligns more with the kind of implicit definition that
Speaker 7: we all operate under and that I think we often
Speaker 7: aren't really cognizant of because we've become so habituated to
Speaker 7: the accountability regime and the kind of narrow metrics associated
Speaker 7: with it.
Speaker 8: So there are actually two distinct issues here. One is,
Speaker 8: you know, what is the impact going to be on
Speaker 8: kids closing schools has? Right like the months of lost
Speaker 8: time But then there is this bigger issue of what's
Speaker 8: going to happen as the bottom falls out of the economy.
Speaker 8: We saw just yesterday the governor of Hawaii announced twenty
Speaker 8: percent pay cuts for teachers. This the dip in state
Speaker 8: coffers is going to be like nothing we've seen before.
Speaker 8: We've gotten used to hearing politicians say that money doesn't
Speaker 8: matter when it comes to schools. It's a refrain we
Speaker 8: hear regularly from our Secretary.
Speaker 6: Of Education, Betsy de Vos, But this isn't true.
Speaker 8: There is now a mountain of evidence of just how
Speaker 8: much money matters, and just how much kids, especially the
Speaker 8: most vulnerable, were hurt when states whacked at their budgets
Speaker 8: during the Great Recession. Now we're looking at something that's
Speaker 8: going to be worse, and so when we talk about
Speaker 8: the impact that this time is going to have on kids,
Speaker 8: we need to make sure that we're thinking about this
Speaker 8: next stretch when we're dealing with of this budget fallout,
Speaker 8: because that's when you're going to hear people start to say,
Speaker 8: you know, there's a way we can do this much
Speaker 8: more cheaply. We can just move it all online. And
Speaker 8: when we hear that, we need to remember that we've
Speaker 8: just seen what that looks like and just how many
Speaker 8: kids are left out of that equation.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 5: Do do you feel like before this pandemic happened, what
Speaker 5: was sort of the trajectory of the way the public
Speaker 5: school system was going. Was it sort of going to
Speaker 5: be better funded or was it going to be sort
Speaker 5: of bolstered, or do you think that it was already
Speaker 5: at risk of continuous budget cuts? I know it's always
Speaker 5: one of the first places that get sort of slash,
Speaker 5: But you know, what were we seeing before the pandemic
Speaker 5: in terms of trends, things.
Speaker 6: Were actually motoring along quite nicely.
Speaker 8: Jack and I are in a state, Massachusetts that made
Speaker 8: a big leap forward because of years of grassroots activism
Speaker 8: from parents and teachers. We basically shamed the legislature into
Speaker 8: passing what was called the Student Opportunity Act, and it
Speaker 8: was a massive investment into schools to narrow the funding
Speaker 8: gap between wealthy districts and poorer districts, and similar things
Speaker 8: happened all over the country. You guys probably remember the
Speaker 8: Red for Ed movement and the scenes of all those
Speaker 8: teachers marching on their state capitals. Well, you know, they
Speaker 8: made a lot of progress in terms of demanding raises
Speaker 8: but also more funding for schools, and now all of
Speaker 8: that is really in jeopardy. The state budget stuff is
Speaker 8: just a complete question mark. People don't even know how
Speaker 8: to run the numbers. They've never seen anything like this.
Speaker 8: So actually we were seeing a lot of progress and
Speaker 8: now all of that is in doubt, and I think
Speaker 8: the next phase looks pretty bleak.
Speaker 7: At the same time, there was another trajectory which Jennifer
Speaker 7: and I spent a lot of time researching for the
Speaker 7: book that we have finally completed, and that is a
Speaker 7: decades old effort to unmake public education. And one of
Speaker 7: the key policy aims that is the product of these
Speaker 7: decades of ambition is to move students out of brick
Speaker 7: and mortar classrooms and online. Because you can really ratchet
Speaker 7: up the size of classes, you can reduce the number
Speaker 7: of teachers, you no longer have to pay for building upkeep,
Speaker 7: you can really reduce people's expectations with regard to what
Speaker 7: school is. And so while you know earlier I was
Speaker 7: talking about how this experience will give people a fuller
Speaker 7: sense of what schools do, it also is opening the
Speaker 7: door to a very slippery slope. Right, We have now
Speaker 7: done exactly what these advocates for dismantling public education have
Speaker 7: long wanted to do. We have shifted students out of expensive,
Speaker 7: teacher heavy brick and mortar schools and into a less
Speaker 7: expensive online environment where, by the way, it's harder to
Speaker 7: unionize teachers. It is easier to quote unquote personalized education,
Speaker 7: which allows people to pursue a number of aims which
Speaker 7: might be in contradiction with the public good, and that
Speaker 7: may get normalized. So while it may be that this
Speaker 7: is an opportunity for people to reflect on all the
Speaker 7: things that they get out of school and all of
Speaker 7: the value that school adds to our society, it also
Speaker 7: may be an opportunity to normalize something that otherwise might
Speaker 7: have come as a real shock to people.
Speaker 5: That's kind of terrifying to think that this is that
Speaker 5: could be one of the trajectories that this is going.
Speaker 5: And I mean, I just don't see how it would
Speaker 5: be feasible to have kids at home. Maybe just an
Speaker 5: overall shift for a work to home, but there's so
Speaker 5: much that is low I think in that transition as
Speaker 5: you as you went into in detail, and that was yeah,
Speaker 5: just horrible to think about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's I really honestly can't even imagine how
Speaker 3: much every other aspect of our society would have to
Speaker 3: shift for that to even be possible.
Speaker 7: Like, well, they've got centers where they can I mean,
Speaker 7: you can go visit one of these places. They're essentially
Speaker 7: warehouses for children where they've got an adult who is
Speaker 7: not a licensed teacher and is therefore much less expensive
Speaker 7: to hire, who monitors the students while they sit in
Speaker 7: front of their computer terminals all day long. This has
Speaker 7: already happened. They're not doing it at home, and they
Speaker 7: simply need to scale up the capacity for these warehouses
Speaker 7: in order to meet the needs of desperate parents who
Speaker 7: right now may be willing to send their kids to
Speaker 7: one of these facilities because they're just overwhelmed at home.
Speaker 7: So yeah, it's terrifying.
Speaker 5: Yeah, with those warehouses and these places where their kids
Speaker 5: have done more of a distant learning or remote learning
Speaker 5: for a while, do we see that it works well? Like,
Speaker 5: how does that work in terms of comparison? And I
Speaker 5: know that it's difficult to measure sort of the as
Speaker 5: you mentioned, what these progress points are, or how do
Speaker 5: you measure the quality of education. But what have we
Speaker 5: learned from those about how well they work?
Speaker 7: Go ahead, Jack, you take it, Jennifer, because it's so
Speaker 7: fun to be able to say it. They are abysmal
Speaker 7: in terms of their results. Obviously, we aren't measuring the
Speaker 7: full range of things that we ought to measure with
Speaker 7: regard to school quality, but with regard to simply the basics,
Speaker 7: like our schools helping students reach the basic milestone of graduation,
Speaker 7: their numbers tend to be pretty bad with regard to
Speaker 7: how much students are learning, and this is through the
Speaker 7: very crude measure of standardized test scores. They also tend
Speaker 7: to do pretty bad. So even advocates of charter schooling
Speaker 7: or voucher programs, other efforts to create an alternative to
Speaker 7: the existing public education system, even they will say, well,
Speaker 7: online schools, online charters, virtual charters, those are a separate issue.
Speaker 7: Don't associate us with them.
Speaker 3: Wondering if you could maybe talk a little bit about
Speaker 3: what kinds of effects we might see when schools reopen
Speaker 3: for the students who are students right now. How are
Speaker 3: we going to recover when, as you mentioned, when we
Speaker 3: talk about all these inequalities, some kids are going to
Speaker 3: have continued to learn during this pandemic and others will
Speaker 3: have likely fallen a lot further behind. How are we
Speaker 3: going to be able to catch up so that this
Speaker 3: pandemic doesn't just further deep in that divide.
Speaker 8: So this is actually a huge issue, and you see
Speaker 8: it playing out in urban districts where they're trying to decide,
Speaker 8: you know, like, well, how can they even go about
Speaker 8: teaching new material when they know that a substantial chunk
Speaker 8: of the students that they're responsible for don't have access
Speaker 8: to to reliable internet, right, and so they're like, they're
Speaker 8: not participating in that assignment off the bat.
Speaker 6: And so we know that, like you Jack was.
Speaker 8: Describing to me earlier today, all the stuff that he
Speaker 8: and his daughter are doing, so she'll she'll come back
Speaker 8: to school really not having missed a beat. So then
Speaker 8: the question is, well, what do you do about all
Speaker 8: of that? And that's going to be fought out among
Speaker 8: policy experts. There's already a pretty intense debate happening. You
Speaker 8: have some folks who are very wedded to the kind
Speaker 8: of accountability regime that Jack was describing earlier, saying the
Speaker 8: most important thing we can do is test those kids
Speaker 8: the minute they get back to school, because they're going
Speaker 8: to need all sorts of remediation. Now, some of that
Speaker 8: remediation is backed by research, right that kids who who
Speaker 8: work in small groups with tutors can make up for
Speaker 8: a lot.
Speaker 6: That's great, But we.
Speaker 8: Also want to we want to make sure that we
Speaker 8: don't fall into the trap that Jack was describing, which
Speaker 8: is that you punish the same kids who, through no
Speaker 8: fault of their own, were the.
Speaker 6: Ones who fell behind.
Speaker 8: Right, So that if you had the good fortune to
Speaker 8: attend school in a well resourced district, you have access
Speaker 8: to high high speed broadband at home, you have a
Speaker 8: quiet space to learn, you have parents who are dedicated
Speaker 8: to your enrichment, and so you then go back to
Speaker 8: school not having missed a step. And so your reward
Speaker 8: is that you don't have to be remediated. Right, you
Speaker 8: can see how unfair that is that you're being punished
Speaker 8: if you're a student.
Speaker 6: Who fell behind.
Speaker 8: So I think we are going to see we're going
Speaker 8: to see.
Speaker 6: A debate about how to handle this.
Speaker 8: Some people are saying, well, we need to those kids
Speaker 8: who fall behind. They're going to need to repeat a
Speaker 8: grade that you know that's controversial. The research isn't there,
Speaker 8: So this is going to be a big debate.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, wow. So we've been trying to in these in
Speaker 5: these interviews often end up being, you know, sort of
Speaker 5: a very bleak outlook for the state of the world
Speaker 5: today and the state of the world in the future.
Speaker 5: So we try to end by asking, you know, what
Speaker 5: positive changes do you hope to see come out of
Speaker 5: this or do you expect to see come out of this?
Speaker 5: What is the what is the ideal impact on education?
Speaker 3: Is there a silver lining that we find?
Speaker 8: So we talked a little bit about the change in
Speaker 8: people's attitudes towards public education as a result of this,
Speaker 8: that that teachers in the role that schools play has
Speaker 8: has risen. And I have a silver lining that's maybe
Speaker 8: a little bit wonkity, but I think, you know, we
Speaker 8: have put such stock in the idea that our schools
Speaker 8: are going to be the thing that fixes all sorts
Speaker 8: of societal problems, that they're the they're the thing that's
Speaker 8: going to lift kids out of poverty. We're relying on
Speaker 8: them right now, you know, to not just to provide
Speaker 8: food to kids, but in some in some places, somehow
Speaker 8: they're going to fix the fact that cities lack affordable,
Speaker 8: reliable internet access. I think that we may finally have
Speaker 8: a wake up call that we've been asking our schools
Speaker 8: to do things that they cannot possibly do, and that
Speaker 8: somebody else, some other government entity, some other you know,
Speaker 8: social force is going to have to step up because
Speaker 8: the schools can't do it all. And I think that that
Speaker 8: would actually be a silver lining, because those unrealistic expectations
Speaker 8: are big part of why people are perpetually so disappointed
Speaker 8: in our schools.
Speaker 7: I've got a different kind of silver lining, but it
Speaker 7: is equally contingent on how people respond, and that is
Speaker 7: that students may really welcome the return to school. They
Speaker 7: may be very excited to get back to a normal
Speaker 7: routine and to get out of their houses and away
Speaker 7: from their families, and to have an opportunity to play
Speaker 7: with their friends and to see teachers they trust and
Speaker 7: other adults that they trust in the school, to run
Speaker 7: around at gym, to play music, to engage in art projects.
Speaker 7: And I think if we capture that opportunity, if we
Speaker 7: allow educators the freedom to use student excitement to generate
Speaker 7: some really positive momentum for the rest of the year,
Speaker 7: if we go back this year or for the beginning
Speaker 7: of the year or next year. It could be a
Speaker 7: really powerful experience for students in terms of the way
Speaker 7: they perceive school. School is in fact a great gift
Speaker 7: that we give to young people. We do a lot
Speaker 7: to make it seem like it's a punishment rather than
Speaker 7: a gift. But maybe the silver lining here is that
Speaker 7: we can all see schooling for what it is, which
Speaker 7: is this incredible opportunity that we afford to all young
Speaker 7: people in this country, regardless of their background, and if
Speaker 7: we treat it that way, it can be a really
Speaker 7: powerful and transformative experience.
Speaker 5: That such a wonderful interview, I feel like I learned
Speaker 5: so much.
Speaker 3: Honestly, Oh my gosh, so much.
Speaker 5: Thank you again to Jennifer and Jack for taking the
Speaker 5: time to chat with us about the impacts of this
Speaker 5: pandemic on schooling. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: I also want to say that we had to shut
Speaker 3: down our video stream while we were recording this interview
Speaker 3: because it was like making too much of a lag
Speaker 3: in the audio. And I'm really bummed about it because
Speaker 3: I was enthusiastically nodding along during this whole interview and
Speaker 3: it was just I was doing it alone and they
Speaker 3: didn't get to see my enthusiastic nodding.
Speaker 5: So I mean, honestly, I was just so like enthralled
Speaker 5: by the interview. I genuinely was fascinating.
Speaker 3: But it was. It was so great.
Speaker 5: It would have been even greater had the video not
Speaker 5: been so laggy.
Speaker 3: Distance learning problems, you know, where you go.
Speaker 5: I also want to give a huge thank you to
Speaker 5: my big sister care who has a background in educational
Speaker 5: policy and history, so she helped us develop and kind
Speaker 5: of workshop some of these questions, which was super helpful.
Speaker 5: And so now like you know, we've got Bloodmobile aka
Speaker 5: my brother Dan's music, and we've got Carrie's input on questions.
Speaker 5: So I feel like this episode kind of turned into
Speaker 5: a Welsh family flavor, Welsh family endeavor. I love it.
Speaker 6: It was fun.
Speaker 5: Okay, Aaron, what did we learn in this episode?
Speaker 3: What didn't we learn? Number one, we learned that this
Speaker 3: isn't the first time there have been massive school closures
Speaker 3: to try and stop the spread of a pandemic. During
Speaker 3: the nineteen eighteen influenza pandemic, schools across the US were closed,
Speaker 3: but there wasn't a lot of uniformity in when they
Speaker 3: were closed or how long they stayed closed. It was
Speaker 3: mostly up to local school districts, and so this variation
Speaker 3: in when schools were closed during that nineteen eighteen pandemic
Speaker 3: and how long they stayed closed allows us to test,
Speaker 3: like retrospectively, whether school closures actually did any good on
Speaker 3: slowing the spread of infection, and it turns out they do.
Speaker 3: In the interview, Jack mentioned a study that looked at
Speaker 3: how cities in the US adopted different non pharmaceutical interventions
Speaker 3: like school closures, and they found that where schools were
Speaker 3: closed and public gatherings were banned, there was a significant
Speaker 3: reduction in excess death and total mortality. So, because we're
Speaker 3: the Errands, we did a little more digging on this,
Speaker 3: and we found another study that looked at the effects
Speaker 3: of school closure and reopening during the two thousand and
Speaker 3: nine swine flu outbreak in Alberta, Canada. So there, the
Speaker 3: end of the school year was during the first wave
Speaker 3: of the pandemic, so they didn't close specifically for the pandemic,
Speaker 3: but they closed and then there was a drop in
Speaker 3: influenza transmission in school aged kids, especially during that first wave,
Speaker 3: and then the reopening of schools in the late summer
Speaker 3: contributed to the huge peak in the second wave and
Speaker 3: might even have started that second wave. So that's pretty interesting.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The bottom line, and I think this is especially important
Speaker 3: to remember as we've seen these protests across the US,
Speaker 3: is that these closures might feel extreme, but they work.
Speaker 3: They save lives. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I know that we're probably preaching to the
Speaker 5: choir here, but you know, if somebody around you, or
Speaker 5: somebody you know needs a little convincing, you know, maybe
Speaker 5: that knowledge will be helpful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we can. We'll show them the data because we'll
Speaker 3: link to that study.
Speaker 5: We will link to those studies. Yes, okay. Number two.
Speaker 5: For decades, the US has largely invested in its social
Speaker 5: welfare programs through public schools and public schools alone, and
Speaker 5: we're pretty much the only industrialized country that relies on
Speaker 5: schools to re use poverty. And the results of this
Speaker 5: is that public schools in the US play a much
Speaker 5: bigger role than just as a place to learn. There
Speaker 5: aren't millions and millions of kids who depend on schools
Speaker 5: for food or counseling or other services, and so when
Speaker 5: a pandemic like this leads to these massive school closures,
Speaker 5: those kids no longer have access to those services because
Speaker 5: there's no social safety net outside of schools. And so
Speaker 5: when we talk about the achievement gap and education in
Speaker 5: the US, most of that comes from inequities outside of schools.
Speaker 5: Schools in the US are actually more equal now than
Speaker 5: they have ever been in the past, but outside of
Speaker 5: schools is where kids experience these unequal realities that contribute
Speaker 5: to their ability to succeed in school. And these inequities
Speaker 5: are so deeply entrenched in our history that these gaps,
Speaker 5: educational and otherwise just continue to grow.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a sad learning point.
Speaker 6: It is so true.
Speaker 5: It's sad but real.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Number three, distance learning can work, but for very
Speaker 3: specific populations. So older kids seem to do better with
Speaker 3: remote or distance learning because they're able to work independently
Speaker 3: and maybe keep to a schedule. But for many other groups,
Speaker 3: distance learning just doesn't work. And these groups include younger
Speaker 3: kids of course, kids without access to high speed Wi
Speaker 3: Fi or a device that allows them to get on
Speaker 3: the internet, and kids with special needs, among others. What
Speaker 3: this pandemic has shown us is that there really isn't
Speaker 3: an adequate substitute for that in person learning experience, and
Speaker 3: as you heard in our first hand accounts, both teachers
Speaker 3: and students are very keenly aware of this right now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, Number four, the future of public schools in
Speaker 5: the US might be in serious danger. I get all
Speaker 5: the depression learning points.
Speaker 4: We know.
Speaker 5: Funding for public schools is often hit hard and early
Speaker 5: by federal and state budget cuts during economic crises, as
Speaker 5: we saw during the two thousand and eight Great Recession,
Speaker 5: and there have already been pay cuts for public school
Speaker 5: teachers during this current pandemic.
Speaker 3: This is absolutely infuriating.
Speaker 5: Absolutely none of this bodes well for the future. Before
Speaker 5: this pandemic, a lot of progress had been made in
Speaker 5: terms of funding for public schools, and now all of
Speaker 5: that progress is in serious jeopardy. And one thing we
Speaker 5: need to be watchful for is politicians or policymakers looking
Speaker 5: at this shift to distance learning as a test run
Speaker 5: for the restructuring of public schools and is justification for
Speaker 5: budget reductions and fewer brick and mortar schools. We really
Speaker 5: need to pay attention during this pandemic to make sure
Speaker 5: we don't head down a slippery slope of reduced expectations
Speaker 5: for school because at the end of that slope is
Speaker 5: the dismantling of the entire public school system.
Speaker 3: Heavy and gracious, that is heavy. That kind of brings
Speaker 3: us to our fifth point, which is actually a silver
Speaker 3: lining maybe a little bit of these school closures. I
Speaker 3: think that this pandemic is making so many people more
Speaker 3: aware of the incredibly important and very diverse role that
Speaker 3: public schools play in the lives of students and families.
Speaker 3: So we can use this time to reevaluate how we
Speaker 3: think of schools as more than just places for educational
Speaker 3: content delivery, and also how to better measure their performance
Speaker 3: or impact as parents, as students, as anyone who has
Speaker 3: ever benefited from the public school system. I am definitely
Speaker 3: a product of a public school system, like same here,
Speaker 3: still in a public school. Let's keep this appreciation party
Speaker 3: going so that we protect schools and who knows, maybe
Speaker 3: we even increase their funding.
Speaker 6: What a thought, What a thought?
Speaker 3: Can one dream? Oh gosh, yeah, we can.
Speaker 5: Dream, We can dream. Thanks one more time to Jennifer
Speaker 5: and Jack for taking the time to talk education with
Speaker 5: us and listeners out there. You should definitely check out
Speaker 5: their amazing podcast called have You Heard. They do such
Speaker 5: a good job with it, and I highly recommend it,
Speaker 5: even as someone without any background in educational policy or
Speaker 5: anything like that. And they even have a couple of
Speaker 5: episodes currently out number eighty five and eighty six I
Speaker 5: think to be exact, that discuss the impact of COVID
Speaker 5: nineteen on schools. So if you're looking for more information,
Speaker 5: more in depth information, you know where to find it.
Speaker 5: And we will link to their podcast on our website
Speaker 5: under the post for this episode, as well as on
Speaker 5: our social media posts about the episode.
Speaker 3: We will also post the links to those papers that
Speaker 3: we found that discuss the impact of school closures on
Speaker 3: slowing the spread of influenza.
Speaker 9: As always, as always, and in the interview there was
Speaker 9: a little bit of a discussion about Finland and comparison
Speaker 9: and education system within Finland and the US.
Speaker 5: And on that note, I want to shout out a
Speaker 5: book called The Nordic Theory of Everything by Anu Partinen.
Speaker 5: So she's a finished journalist and in this book she
Speaker 5: makes some really interesting comparisons between the US and Nordic
Speaker 5: countries in terms of social welfare programs and other aspects
Speaker 5: of life, including schools. It's an interesting read. It's it's
Speaker 5: a pretty also like kind of pop nonfiction I would
Speaker 5: call it, so it's pretty accessible.
Speaker 3: We will also post links to some resources for educators
Speaker 3: and parents that we've found, and if there are any
Speaker 3: links or any resources that you have found particularly helpful,
Speaker 3: please send them our way and we'll post those as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Thanks again to my big sister Carrie for all
Speaker 5: the help with this episode, and also thank you. Thank
Speaker 5: you to Bloodmobile for providing the music for this episode
Speaker 5: and all of our episodes.
Speaker 3: And thank you to you listeners for listening to this podcast.
Speaker 3: We hope that you're enjoying it and all of this
Speaker 3: COVID content. Yes, thanks depressing.
Speaker 5: Thanks for sticking by through these depressing episodes. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 5: Well until next time, wash your hands
Speaker 3: You filthy animals.