May 5, 2020

Asking Online Panels About Online Access Is A Thing And A Blueprint For Schools, Plus Shavar Jeffries, Values V. Empiricism, Tresha Ward Talks To School Leaders – Distanced Of Course! More…

By Bellwether

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There is some interesting stuff in this new NEA poll of parents, but it’s an online poll and they asked parents about how much access to technology is an issue for them. Good news! Just 6 percent said it was.It’s an online poll…c’mon…Across the country millions of kids are not being served because of issues with device access, internet access, or both. We have to do better…

Here’s some student voice via The Times:

Talking out of turn. Destroying classroom materials. Disrespecting teachers. Blurting out answers during tests. Students pushing, kicking, hitting one another and even rolling on the ground. This is what happens in my school every single day.

You may think I’m joking, but I swear I’m not.

Based on my peers’ behavior, you might guess that I’m in second or fourth grade. But I’m actually about to enter high school in New York City, and, during my three years of middle school, these sorts of disruptions occurred repeatedly in any given 42-minute class period.

That’s why I’m in favor of the distance learning the New York City school system instituted when the coronavirus pandemic hit.

Emmeline Zhao and I sat down with Shavar Jeffries to talk about coronavirus and education politics and the federal response. He also shares his backstory. Video and text.

Bellwether’s Tresha Ward talks to school leaders about coronavirus response in a series of videos:

In the May Education Leadership Dan Willingham and I take a look at education’s research problem. Does our pre-Covid lede, augmented with a parenthetical, hold up?

Most people know the basic story of handwashing in medicine: Infections in medical facilities were a seemingly intractable problem until, starting in the 19th century, iconoclastic doctors used data to show that washing hands (and instruments) reduced infections and saved lives. Yet whether from stubbornness, politics among practitioners, or genuine disbelief that washing made a difference, there was plenty of resistance before basic steps to prevent infections took hold. Today, however, routine steps to prevent infection are commonplace. For instance, when you visit a doctor’s office or emergency room, you’ll see sanitizer by the door (even more so now in the midst of the coronavirus crisis).

In education, though, we still don’t “wash our hands.” Instead, we too often alternatively ignore, belittle, or weaponize scientific findings relevant to education, depending on personal or institutional preferences. We don’t, in the education sector, do enough to support a culture or politics that prizes empiricism and learning—including learning about which education practices work best and what empirical data indicates about which practices are most effective.

If you are into things like threshold of certainty and the tension between values and science, you might like it.

Via an education task force AEI put together here’s a blueprint for reopening schools – not a template but a set of issues to think about.

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