School districts take unplanned plunge into online learning

A lot of schools are leaving parents almost entirely (or entirely) on their own.

I run an edtech company, and we started offering free access to our reading software soon after shutdowns started two weeks ago. We have heard from a lot of teachers and administrators, but we've also heard from many parents who are trying to educate their kids with little to no support.

Although it is more efficient for us to create accounts for teachers (and cover 30 students simultaneously), we heard from so many parents who can't get ahold of their kids' teachers that we started making temporary accounts for parents also. It has been shocking to hear how many parents are unable to even contact their kids' teachers — I have a small child who is home from school, and if the teacher were MIA I would be surprised and not thrilled (though in these unprecedented times, kindness and flexibility are important to keep in mind!).

Yep we just got started for my kindergartner and it's a disaster so far. It takes constant supervision to get him to do any work. My mother reminded me that I was in half day school through second grade (830-12, including lunch) and she says she made no special effort to enhance my academics after school. This did not stop me from taking all the moderately advanced math I could get my hands on later in school, at least through the end of high school. I also fates decently in writing and reading throughout.

So I am taking a low pressure approach, mostly focused on writing (reading and math are things the child will do without supervision if they come in the form of screen time). I still feel he is severely missing out because K is mostly about socializing, but at least he won't be behind anyone else his age on this front.

There are going to be all kinds of interesting sociology studies on the kids who went through school this year.

Are you guys hiring? My wife is looking for work. (masters in ed psych with a lot of experience designing lms and facilitating training)

My kid is a kindergarten student at a very well-resourced school in Silicon Valley. Pretty immediately, they set up a virtual learning system that is used to assign tasks and for kids to share work. I appreciate that the teachers are doing what they can, but honestly for younger kids this sort of thing isn't really that helpful.

The system is far from seamless (even as someone who runs an edtech startup, I have found it very difficult to navigate). A task that takes the kid 5 mins to complete often takes at least as long to upload/process. That's not a good time ratio when you're looking to have your kid occupied so you can work/make food/etc.

Instead of using the online system, we are taking this as an opportunity to let our child explore interests and get much more personalized learning than is given at school. Khan Academy has been great for math, and the books we read at home are more advanced than the standardized assignments given online.

Doing things this way definitely takes a bit of time from our schedules, but I'm not sure it actually takes more time than if we did the online stuff. And at the end of the day, our child will have learned much more and with a more engaged attitude. Honestly, I think one of the bigger risks/downsides is that our kid will develop an arrogant attitude toward school — that it's too easy and not worth paying attention to.

Many jurisdictions around the world are already planning that all students will need to repeat the year, at least for those in the final year of school who wish to sit SATs (etc). Its unclear how the school infrastructure will handle that. Particularly, whether an extra year needs to be accommodated in schools, or you just keep the same students in the same position.

This obviously has flow on impacts to Universities and childcare/kindergarten.

Its probably a good opportunity to question whether University for All is still a good idea. Keeping University for the top 15% of students, and redirecting everyone else into the workforce or Tradeschool probably makes a lot of sense now. There will be no 'bullshit jobs' left after this is over anyway.