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The
COVID-19 pandemic is causing massive academic failure among poor
students in K-12 public education. They already trailed behind their
working- and middle-class counterparts, but there have been major
declines in reading and math during the past 18 months. Remote
instruction has exacerbated this gap for several reasons.
The
abrupt and necessary switch from in-person teaching to Internet
instruction caught administrators and teachers off guard. There was
little preparation for this schooling transition. The vast majority
of educators had never taught via computers and had hardly any
training or planning for this immediate education changeover.
In
addition, poor students, especially those of color, were ill-prepared
for this new education paradigm as they lacked the psychological and
equipment readiness. In many families, there was a limited period to
get ready for the changeover.
There
was also a lack of laptop and desktop availability and regular access
to Wi-Fi. In many urban communities, disproportionately populated by
poverty-ridden ethnic-minority students, wireless networks are
luxuries, and they are frequently unavailable among rural, mostly
White communities where Internet access is sketchy or does not exist.
Another
barrier to success in remote learning is that numerous households
contain two or more K-12 students in different grades who could not
share a laptop for their daily classes. Educators only began
addressing this obstacle after several months of remote instruction
when school systems started providing laptops and iPads to students
who needed them.
COVID-19
effectively closed off students experiencing academic difficulty and
students enrolled in school-day and after-school tutorial and
mentoring programs to bring them up to grade level, leaving these
at-risk students and their parents to their own devices.
Many
of these parents work in low-wage industries and struggle to give
their children the support they need to improve their lives. Yet they
lack the oral language development and vocabulary skills to
supplement their kids’ learning at home that students from more
economically advantaged families routinely receive.
During
the 2020-21 school term, there was a dramatic loss in literacy and
math among poor students and those of color, in particular. This
group’s learning loss far exceeds the traditional summer
drop-off in academic proficiency. Some schools have used funds from
Biden’s American
Rescue Act
in a belated effort to develop educational interventions with minimal
success to date.
Perhaps
the most egregious disappointment of this K-12 educational collapse
is the essentially non-instruction of students with special needs.
In-person teaching of these vulnerable groups - those with
deaf/blindness, emotional, visual, autism, and intellectual
disabilities and/or some combination thereof - does not lend itself
to instruction through the Internet where tactile contact is
unavailable.
In-building
teaching allows for one-on-one encounters and small group tutoring in
dedicated spaces that cannot be replicated by Wi-Fi. Also, hundreds
of thousands of poor, regular and special-needs students across the
racial spectrum simply disappeared from school rolls, as school
districts reeled from their new educational responsibilities.
The
aforementioned issues combine to push poor students further behind in
their quest for educational success. And the broader community seems
not to be bothered by this deepening crisis as the poor are not at
the forefront of their minds, specifically when they are ethnic
minorities. Few in positions of power and leadership have
acknowledged these realities.
These
educational failures are being ignored by Democratic leaders who
claim to be avid supporters of K-12 public education and the people
of color who propelled them to majority status at the national level.
Presently, House Progressive Democrats consume themselves with their
personal vanity of passing a $3.5 trillion social infrastructure bill
that they have decided needs to be voted on post-haste even though
they lack the Senate votes to do so in its current form.
While
the children of their support base - Blacks, Latinx, Asian and
Pacific Islanders, and Indigenous Americans - are suffering “bigly”
in K-12 public education, Democratic elected officials are following
their own political instincts and neglecting to frame a message that
will galvanize their voters in the 2022 midterms and ultimately
enable them to retain power.
The
Democrats’ firm support for the design and funding of programs
for poor students and students of color, who are now the majority in
K-12 public education, would be a positive sign for their parents
whom Democrats need in order to guarantee their hold on federal
power. But they act as if they are blind to this political certainty.
National
Democratic politicians presently seem unaware that not having the
educational failures of the COVID-19 pandemic on their political
radar may likely contribute to a Democratic loss of House and Senate
seats in the 2022 midterms.
They
have three opportunities to turn around their sinking political
fortunes: pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill, come to an
agreement on the contents and final cost of the reconciliation bill,
and immediately design a collective message that will generate
enthusiasm among the Democratic base that will cause them to turn out
in historic numbers in 2022. Otherwise, they will be toast.
There
is still time for Democrats to get a grip on their political
actuality. But only if they will!
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