What will public school be like for U.S. students in the fall? | Coronavirus pandemic News
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With many masked orders being thrown out in public places in the United States and coronavirus vaccines being available to Americans 11 years of age and older, many parents are wondering if their children will finally return to the classroom this fall.
There are still many variables. Even though clinical trials are being conducted in children as young as six months to 11 years old, there is no specific timeframe when vaccines will be available for children – and some parents have been hesitant to get their children COVID-19 shots. not at all.
Then there are concerns about the spread of new strains like the Delta variant, which could lead to restrictions again.
All of these factors have caused a great deal of uncertainty around the 2021-2022 school year, which for some states will begin in mid-August.
Some governors, such as Phil Murphy of New Jersey, have insisted that after offering hybrid and distance learning opportunities for a year, personal schools will resume in the fall, regardless of student enrollment status.
Science supports these types of orders to return to the classroom. New examination It has been published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that with controlled community transmission and moderate mitigation strategies – including teacher vaccinations, reduced classroom size, and asymptomatic analysis – elementary schools can be safely reopened.
Economists are also confident that the reopening of personal schools and kindergartens is key to getting American parents back to work and continuing the U.S. recovery well. the record number of women left the labor force to care for their children during the coronavirus pandemic.
But while some parents are happy with the opportunity for their kids to get back on the school bus, others are worried about what it might look like this year.
Presence concerns
Rhiannon Bettivia, the mother of a minor child, in a suburb outside of Boston, Massachusetts, fears reopening a complete fall would mean losing her mask orders, which could lead to a reassessment of the best option for her son.
“My baby will not go back to school without a mask,” Bettivia told Al Jazeera, saying this year his son’s school mask and social exclusion policies are “draconian but necessary”.
“Science makes it clear that they work,” he said, adding that he wanted a mask mandate to continue indefinitely for school-age children.
“I always vote for masks,” Bettivia said. “This year I haven’t missed the flu and the contamination.”
Students are incredibly resilient … However, we need to consider what we need to do to compensate for lost learning time, which has disproportionately affected children of color.
Other parents are concerned that vaccinations will be mandatory, as well as fear of parents who are in favor of the vaccine.
“I was vaccinated, but the vaccination trial period was very short for the children,” said Chrissy Thomas, a mother of a high school student who is eligible for the vaccine living in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Myocarditis is of particular concern for rare heart infections. US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms myocarditis It occurred in 226 people Children under 30 who have received the COVID-19 vaccine.
As rumors are heard along the line and there are no official words in many neighborhoods whether vaccinations are needed or recommended, parents are looking for answers and feel they will be left in limbo.
‘New normal’
Other parents who saw their children fit well into remote or hybrid learning models are now looking for a “new normalcy” when it comes to education.
Stride, Inc., a nonprofit company that sells online learning solutions to state and local governments. has conducted a survey Qualtrics, a third-party research provider, asked more than 1,000 parents in the United States how the pandemic shaped their views on education.
According to a survey by Stride, Inc., the majority of American parents believe that schools are ill-prepared to re-learn online from in-person studies if pandemic conditions so require. [File: Mary Altaffer/AP Photo]
In the survey, two-thirds of parents of Kindergarten 12th graders said U.S. schools have shown that they are ill-prepared to relocate from personal learning to online learning if needed in the fall, and more than 70 percent said they will consider a hybrid model that mixes “online and face-to-face learning.”
According to the study, this willingness may be due to concerns about the ability of public schools to focus quickly on distance learning, Kevin Chavous, president of academic policy and foreign affairs at Stride, told Al Jazeera.
In fact, the COVID-19 crisis and the disruption of education have led to an explosion of private technology solutions for families.
Rebecca Mannis, founder and study specialist at the Ivy Prep Learning Center, said the pandemic has given parents a unique window into their children’s education styles as they learn from home.
The Manhattan-based education enrichment center creates individualized education plans for students, and Mannis has seen how being at home with children is a perfect learning environment for parents to do and what they need to do.
“Some kids did better than they did in recent years, even if the reasons for that were great,” Mannis told Al Jazeera. “Some believe there was less transition or less demand for domestic work. For some students, having fewer distractions in the classroom or parents traveling less has allowed them to have more structure. ”
My baby won’t go back to school without a mask … I always vote for masks. This year I didn’t fail to catch the flu and streptosis.
These observations, Mannis explained, have led some parents to consider ways to optimize their child’s learning in the new school year, regardless of COVID-19 concerns.
“Very smart parents are also overwhelmed, and are looking for someone who can include their observations to create a plan to address the concerns they saw this hard year,” Mannis explained, adding that the advantage of being able to create and take unscrupulous companies.
“The area of education and mentoring is largely unlicensed, with many biases brought by educators or‘ homework helpers ’to this process, in Dubai, Dallas, Doha or Deer Valley,” Mannis said, and probably quality control he added that it will be. the main concern of parents in the coming years.
Educational inequality
The proliferation of nonprofit wealth centers, both online and in person, has worried some parents and policy makers that they are strengthening a two-tier system where wealthy families can afford the resources they can afford, leaving other children behind.
Research has shown that the COVID-19 epidemic has exacerbated the crisis of educational equity, and that vulnerable students and low-income students are more likely to fall behind.
A examination According to the Policy Analysis for California Education published in April, although some economically disadvantaged students lost their learning, some of their wealthiest members accelerated their learning in the last academic year.
The report recommended a “systemic transformation in the way schools respond to overlapping learning, behavior, and emotional needs that support effective learning and teaching.”
Some children did better than in recent years, although the reasons for this were widespread. For some, it was less of a transition or less of a domestic work requirement. For some students, having fewer distractions in the classroom or traveling less allowed them to have more structure.
Zora Wolfe, director of K-12 education leadership programs and associate professor of education at Widener University, believes it is crucial to address this difference.
“The students are incredibly resilient,” Wolf told Al Jazeera, which “when it didn’t work we had to be careful not to slip back into what we were doing.”
“However, we need to consider what we need to do to make up for lost learning time, which has had an undue effect on children of color,” he said.
Research has shown that the COVID-19 epidemic has exacerbated the crisis of educational equity, that vulnerable students and low-income students are more likely to be left behind, and that richer families can provide support for online learning. [File: Charlie Riedel/AP Photo]
The solution could be to turn to technology, says Troy Wheeler, president of the Ed-Fi Alliance, an organization run by a nonprofit community that connects educational actors with data tools, he told Al Jazeera.
He believes that relying on data to standardize and compare metrics will be key to helping ensure equity.
“Relying on feasible data helps teachers focus students effectively and efficiently and ensure education through education in all modalities,” Wheeler said. “District leaders are able to keep pace with each student’s academic status to prevent loss of learning and ensure favorable outcomes.”
And while the upcoming school year may look “normal” than the 2020 school year – regardless of where mask orders and vaccination requirements may be located – the educational landscape for parents, teachers and students can definitely transform this past year.
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