Lockdown, distance learning likely to increase social class achievement gap
&gt; First, we review research showing that social class is associated with unequal access to digital tools, unequal familiarity with digital skills and unequal uses of such tools for learning purposes<p>I have several friends who are elementary and middle school teachers. This echoes what they’ve been saying: The pandemic response among parents has been starkly divided across class lines.<p>Families with stay-at-home parents are, obviously, the least impacted. However, many of their children from less well-off households simply disappear completely during quarantine periods. The problem is so bad that they have scheduled time each afternoon to try to call all of the parents whose children didn’t log on to the remote learning session (with their school-provided computers with school-provided cellular connections). If they can reach the parents at all they often indicate they don’t even care that their kids were absent because they don’t believe in the distance learning. The indifference is mind-boggling as a parent, but it’s real.<p>That said, leaving schools fully opened at all times wasn’t really a viable option. Kids may not be as vulnerable to COVID as adults, but put 20-30 of them in enclosed rooms and the virus will spread. Local school districts here tried to stay open as long as possible but they quickly ran into a lack of teachers as the teachers became ill (multiple times in several cases) or simply quit because they couldn’t risk it for themselves or their families at home.