Why isn't it more popular if it is so great? The article was from the 1980s.
My first thought when reading this question was: nobody likes change, especially schools. Which is only partially true. Schools love faddish education trends "Whole of language is amazing!" "Phonics is better!" "No need to teach grammar directly..." (oops).
But rarely do you see fundamental change in how they run things. We've been at schools who made "radical" changes like moving from two week schedules to one week schedules, and back... Alternating the number of lessons a day (and lesson length). None of these are really meaningful changes to the idea of what a school day looks like. So much talk of "changing education" but schools rarely look the actual format of school as something that could be changed.
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I am in Australia, we were a little over half way through our first term (of 4 terms) when covid got serious here. In my state holidays started a week early. Every school in the state (and much of the country) scrambled to deliver their normal curriculum remotely for term 2. Most of them had to choose, plan AND rollout a remote learning system in 2-3 weeks over the holidays, more proactive schools started their planning before a lockdown was called so they were able to train their kids before they went on holidays, at least a little.
There are many themes to how remote schooling has been achieved, but very few schools have done anything as radical as your school proposes.
Firstly AEH is 100% correct: how well rolling things out remotely has worked does seem to have been predictable based on the previous functioning level of the school and of individual teachers. Some schools have done far better than others. Some teachers have done far better than others.
It's also become very clear that some kids cope with remote school at their previous level of engagement/acheivement, some don't cope at all and some shine (unexpectedly). I have had a teacher friend comment that they have noted the top students are still working at the same level, but the middle group are significantly impacted by not being able to see what the advanced students are doing, how they approach things, classroom discussion etc. Newspaper articles report on certain children that are loving remote learning and are desperate NOT go back (and doing MUCH better academically), including teachers being interviewed that they are noticing this that certain kids are unexpectedly much better of academically. And of course there are also articles on the children/families desperate to go back ASAP.
It's a very mixed bag.
I have a child who has not coped with their school's approach to remote learning at all. I can honestly say the school has worked SO hard, it's not for lack of hard work, good intentions or good will on the part of school, teachers (or child). Happily we have been able to maintain a good relationship through the abject mismatch of my child / their model. It's no-ones fault. I see from parent support meetings, FB groups etc, that other parents have found the model successful. And in fact are asking about whether certain features (which were unworkable for my child) would be kept when things returned to normal...
A lot of how well it works will come down to the quality of communication and learning management systems in place already, or added in, how well teachers use them, how usable they are for students.
This especially impacts kids with any EF issues. If completing a lesson requires looking in 3 separate parts of the school's technology systems to know what to do, when, how and by what date it must be delivered, well things will likely go wrong. Schools where they have multiple poorly integrated systems, especially if systems are also poorly utilized, are going to have a much harder time than those with single, everything in one place systems (which were already working well).
A very particular problem for children with EF issues: Our experience, across multiple schools and multiple states, using various different LMS technology, is that parents usually get an account of their own but never is it set up in a way that provides access that allows them to see what their child sees, what they should be doing, and help them manage it all. When we raise this with schools we have been told (by multiple schools) "Your child is supposed to work independently, and do this themselves, but if you really need to help you log in as your child...". My child's response is "You have an account. If you were supposed to see this stuff they'd have let you, you look at your account I will look at mine." This was problematic at the best of times, but at least I could, to some extent, rely on teachers seen during the day and the momentum of of the classroom environment to sort many issues out. Not so once remote. If all of the child's input and output is supposed to come through systems that they struggled with before, and you have no window into that environment, well it's very, very tough.
Increasingly software companies seem to be making it impossible to fix this (often for privacy reasons). Google classroom suite for example, you can audit as a parent, but a lot of what comes through is to the effect of "teacher posted a document", along with a short comment instructing the kids to read the document, but only students can read the document so you are no closer to understanding what happened in history today (other than that your child's teacher shared a document).
Schools that can keep using technology everyone knows, at least for core functions, will find it easier than those who need to guess which technology might get them though this. And of course the children and families in the most vulnerable circumstances are least likely to be at well prepared schools and least likely to already have at home what they need to participate remotely, which is not a problem that you will face. Our government has had to make a significant commitment to providing devices and internet dongles to children that didn't have them so that they COULD do school.
My feeling is:
How successful the school/teachers were before is a good predictor of how likely they are to cope with a radical new model going forward. Even so, models that work don't work for everybody.
For my child your school's proposal sounds significantly more likely to have worked. But no guarantees.
How happy are you with your school? Both their academic/teaching qualities, and their systems and communication?
How happy are you with CTY (and other providers) their courses, systems and communication?
For myself I have found CTY to have solid systems, courses well designed for remote delivery, great teachers and excellent feedback (we've only done literacy courses). But very difficult to communicate with in any way other that with the teacher via the course you are already enrolled in. And they seem to have been hammered with trying to make summer courses remote and I suspect extra load due to many families deciding to use CTY as "school" now. If CTY has to even double their teaching capacity for the coming year that's 50% of the teachers that have never taught CTY before. What if they try to ramp up to 10 times previous levels? I have never seen writing feedback of the quality my daughter has been receiving from CTY, I imagine it's non trivial to find writing instructors that able. Math maybe doesn't require the detailed personalised feedback, but the point of CTY is to deal with teachers who are accomplished at teaching gifted kids. Obviously CTY has a limited potential pool of students and it's expensive, but I still think they both are and will be hammered. I am concerned that CTY is going to find things quite rocky for a while.
Reading the CTY FB group there are regular posts from parents whose child has just qualified who are wondering whether they should sign their child up for a full school replacement course load of CTY courses. And lots of parents telling them not to try too many courses at once, never having tried CTY before...Also remember that CTY accepts children from around the world it's not just the US families of gifted kids who might turn to CTY at the moment.
I don't mean to diminish CTY offerings at all, we've been very happy and will continue to use then, but I do suggest you consider that CTY will have issues of it's own to deal with in the coming year.
