Academic Bridge

Distance learning for public school kids has largely been a failure. I saw it with my grandkids. I also hear it from other parents, and read it in kids' letters to the editor and in national columns. A lot of kids failed, although I doubt there's a single school or district that's holding them back. As bad as it was, it's coming around for another round.

Even in my own state, I can see what's coming. Kids are not going to be in the classroom every day for a full day this Fall. It will fall on the parents' shoulders again, but this time, nowhere near as many of them will be out of work and staying home to help the kids. Students have already lost several months' worth of academic progress, and it's going to get worse. The system that's set up just can't keep the kids on track.

Behind the scenes, I'm working to get church retirees to be willing to be an Academic Bridge. We'll take mornings or afternoons, as many days a week as necessary, to staff a team right there at church. Our parents can drop off their kids on their non-school days, and we'll make sure they keep up on their assignments, tutoring them when needed. It doesn't necessarily have to be former teachers, but I've already got 3 of them lined up. I'm shooting for 8 adults, so we can rotate.

Church leadership approved Academic Bridge, along with a grant to fund a wireless internet upgrade, if needed. My core group of volunteers is going to start recruiting this weekend.

Public schools start up in 11 days and as of last night's board meeting, they're still not committing to either part or full-time. Only telling parents to have 5-day child care lined up, just in case.

Our small group of volunteers has been helping a handful of families for a couple of weeks now. The school district only permits students to go to school two days a week.

Here's what I have seen so far. The public school system should have learned from their springtime debacle of distance learning. They should have spent the whole summer making improvements and fixing what went wrong (pretty much everything). Then the fall would have been better.

But it's not and I'm mighty angry! On the other 3 days a week, there's next to no work being assigned. And what they do get is 95% busy work, which is putting them farther and farther behind. It's a crime!

Most of my time has been spent with a 5th grade boy, who desperately wants to learn. I've seen how the educational system has failed him his whole life. They never had him learn and memorize his math tables, so he goes through a finger exercise to solve 11-7. (I taught him a different way. I'm sure a public school teacher would be horrified. But in less than a minute, he was able to figure problems out in his head.)

He was never taught phonics, which has lowered his reading and spelling grade levels. He can't sound out multi-syllable words. But instead of going back to tried-and-true ways from the 19th century and earlier, this is what "education" did to fix it. Now the kids can highlight the question or passage, "click", and listen to the laptop read it aloud. This fixes nothing!

Get your kids (and grandkids) out of public schools. Short of that, look into their education and see what's going on. And demand accountability. Vote for like-minded school board candidates.

(Rant over.)

Our group of kids is relatively small, but steadily growing. These students (grades 2-6) need a lot of help in getting the online work done. The quality of the assignments is actually quite poor, and the teachers' work investment is all over the map. Why couldn't the district learn from their spring experience and take the best of the best methods and standardize it across the board?

Homeschoolers and private school students are going to gain a whole year on their public counterparts. What an absolute waste of their time and a fraud upon their parents. I know that there will be multiple studies of this travesty, but the results will never see the light of day.

Parents and kids are burned out on the public schools' reaction to COVID and are taking schoolwork less and less seriously. After 6 weeks of no students showing up for our help, we shut our ministry down.

Don't know if I shared this on another thread, but there's an advisory board in town that actually considered adding a 5th year of high school. What a crime! Yeah, kids are behind. But this is what should happen: double up on the core subjects until they're caught up. And throw the fluff classes and social justice stuff out. There, now there's plenty of time to get it done.

That is a shame. It sounded like a great opportunity.

Distance learning is an absolute farce.