“We are actively dealing with problems remote learning caused. A whole generation of kids is further behind than they were tracking to be behaviorally, mathematically, and in reading scores.”
Gee I wonder what would do that, is it three+ years of unmitigated exposure to a virus that causes brain damage? No, the problem is they stayed home, which makes you developmentally challenged, as we all know. Oh, you don’t want to get COVID? Then stay home.
Long Covid is certainly a factor, but the argument isn’t that the delays are caused just by staying home specifically. It’s that they were caused by not receiving instruction, which is also obviously true. Kids lose progress just from not receiving instruction over spring break. Lockdown was, for a lot of kids, just that for a whole year.
We don’t see articles hand-wringing about this for years after the fact, though. There is no one saying that the whole three months (!!!) every year that kids are out of school for summer is harming their development.
There are indeed articles about how summer break is harmful to development. They’re just not as popular. And that delay is very much still being felt by teachers and will continue to be felt for another decade+. The effects snowball rather than dissipate over time. Our intervention systems weren’t set up to handle all the kids that need services. Just another ripple effect of failure caused by shitty handling of Covid, I guess. I get your point and I’m not trying to dismiss that people are engaging with it in the wrong way. Just this is something that’s very current for teachers and students.
Fair enough; I am not a parent nor a teacher, so I’m willing to say this is not my wheelhouse. To my knowledge the idea of a prolonged summer break like that is not such a popular concept in other countries than the US so I believe when you say there is a concern, I just wish everyone was consistent instead of this mealy-mouthed crap where we ignore the massive elephant in the room for, I don’t know, a tapir or something, and then it’s not even all the tapirs in the room!
Absolutely. Some consistency would be a breath of fresh air there 100%. Leaving children disabled by a preventable illness isn’t helped by that same overwhelmed intervention system either.