1/ A thread about pandemic-induced K-12 virtual schooling, based mostly on my experience as the parent of a 5th grader in public school.

Summary: It's been really difficult and definitely has limitations, but it's also working in significant ways.

2/ To start, some context that should absolutely influence how much you think these observations are generalizable.

Arlington Public Schools is somewhat diverse (46% white, 29% free/reduced lunch) in an unusually wealthy and highly-educated close-in suburb of Washington, DC.

3/ Because Virginia unjustly and unwisely lets school districts keep all of their property tax revenue, APS spends roughly $20,000 per student, which is a *lot*, far above average.

In other words, APS has about all the money it could have to tackle virtual learning.

4/ My wife and I both have white-collar jobs that we can do from home, which means my 5th grader has a parent on call to help with tech and other issues for pretty much the entire school day. We also have fiber optic broadband into our home.

5/ So what I'm about to describe is essentially a best-case scenario, one that millions of American schoolchildren do not currently enjoy, because our school finance system is terrible and the federal government has shamefully failed to provide more COVID relief.

6/ The school district did an enormous amount of work over the summer to prepare for what turned out to be an all-virtual Fall semester. Everything was scheduled, planned, and organized. The staff were trained and ready to go on day one. But....

7/ By trying to use the full range of technology tools to supplement in-person virtual instruction, they ended up ramping up a whole bunch of different platforms and programs all at once.

8/ APS selected Canvas as its learning management system, where students go on iPads every day to see schedules and assignments. The district uses Microsoft Teams for synchronous video-based learning as well as break-out sessions for specific subjects and special education.

9/ They’re also running everything through a Virtual Private Network (VPN), which is good for privacy, but also one more thing that can get complicated or not work or otherwise bollix up the system. The whole first morning of school was blown out for this reason.

10/ In addition to Canvas and Teams, the kids are getting assignments on NearPod, Google Docs, Google Slides, SeeSaw, DreamBox, Lexia, FlipGrid, and so on.

11/ The district did this with good intentions. They’re trying to use all available tools to provide as rich an education as they can while also creating space for person-to-person instruction.

12/ But all of these programs have different user interfaces, login protocols, passwords, etc. And my N=1 sample is not magically intuitive with technology. If anything she’s mostly post-GUI; she just tells Alexa what she wants to listen to or watch on TV.

13/ And of course the whole process, specific technology issues notwithstanding, was alien for everyone involved. The teachers and the students were trying to figure out how to engage and communicate and learn, what translates from the in-person classroom and what doesn’t.

14/ Add it all up and the first couple of weeks *suuuuucked.* The new learning modality plus all of the technology friction was just way too much to overcome to actually teach anything.

15/ You know how people get all whiny and passive-aggressive with tech support when their laptop doesn’t work or whatever? Imagine that, except from two dozen 10-year-olds, simultaneously, on Microsoft Teams, with the parents listening in from the other room.

16/ The only other time I’ve seen the inhuman level of patience, emotional control, and general sang-froid my kid’s teacher exhibited was when I watched an emergency room nurse spend an hour stitching up a drunk buddy’s face after he got into a 2AM street fight in Adams Morgan.

17/ It was really, really hard.

But then it started getting better.

The district figured out the VPN. The kids learned how to switch programs and enter passwords and move from one Teams room to another. Everyone started picking up the rhythms of virtual conversation.

18/ As of now, halfway through the semester, I think they’re learning things. Turning in assignments, taking quizzes, mostly staying on track with the curriculum.

It is, to be crystal clear, *not as good as in-person learning.*

19/ And, very notably, getting to that not-as-good level required a great deal of sweat and toil from everyone involved. I have no idea how long it can be sustained.

20/ There’s also no way it could work as well with young kids where school done right is more fluid and interactive and based around play. “Virtual pre-K” isn’t really a thing that exists.

21/ All of that said: In my experience, virtual 5th grade is not nothing, or at least, doesn’t have to be. And that’s something we should be mindful of as we engage in the incredibly difficult weighing of educational costs and public health benefits this year.

22/ For example! We should provide the aid to state and local governments--i.e., public schools--that Republicans have blocked for the last five months, so the teachers who are working harder than they’ve ever worked before can get the resources they need.

23/ We should provide more direct aid to households and subsidies for hard-hit businesses and expand unemployment assistance so parents can afford to be home and help their kids when the VPN goes down or the NearPod password doesn’t work.

24/ We should 10X accelerate broadband deployment and subsidies into lower-income and rural communities so all children have access to the information infrastructure on which their education now entirely depends.

25/ None of which diminishes in the slightest the need to take all steps to control the pandemic. But the current choice between public health and public education doesn't need to be so stark.