So much good to quote from spaghetti, so this will be long...
Many local school systems take direction from the state they are in and despite autonomy on paper, lack the actual system to look at thrivers vs strugglers. Some states have cancelled their testing --- nobody knows what's been lost or who has thrived. The consensus I've been hearing is that we can't know until everyone is back to "normal".
I think you hit the nail on the head here about autonomy and information gathering. Now, full disclosure, I'm no fan of weeks-long standardized tests. However, streamlined tools exist, and could be implemented to baseline student progress. If you can't measure a problem, you can't engineer a targeted solution.
Then you have not been everywhere. I know of some school systems that have sent people into the homes daily to help children log on and participate in virtual education, who have had extra tutoring for an hour each morning built into the school day for those who are thought to be falling behind.
I can only speak first-hand to my experience, but am eager to hear what other places are doing.
I am delighted to hear this! Our province offered a maximum of two to three weeks of summer catch-up, and uptake was dismal, because program dates were released after parents had already pre-committed to camps and childcare, most of which have non-refundable deposits. *facepalm*
The McKinsey deck I added really fascinated me, because France seemed to have a thoughtful roll-out of its programming, with an understanding of the UX for families to drive enrollments in discretionary programming and reduce stigma of participating. Even Mozambique (no disrespect to Mozambique) had put together a realistic and ambitious hiring campaign 6 months ago.
A huge bureaucracy with massive staffs and rules and regulations where the situation does not fit the system.
I actually see this differently. Bureaucracy aside (and I think we can agree about the inefficiencies of bureaucracy), a large system allows a lot of simultaneous experiments to be undertaken to find the best solution, or a range of solutions that fit in different contexts.
I think it is unlikely that anyone has the extra effort to look at designing new curriculum under these circumstances.
I think you might have misunderstood my comment upthread about creating a Google Classroom. I didn't mean to suggest new curricula should be developed. Rather, that is what I was able to create - a tech novice on the tool, with no prior curriculum I'd developed. For teachers who have prior curriculum, converting that to online in all but a few exceptional classes should be both feasible and reasonable on a short turnaround.
I think what you're looking for has been happening in the private schools who were able to pivot quickly to virtual learning, and then plan and implement in person learning fairly efficiently.
Fair point. But in a school like ours, with no prior online tools, and with comparable tuition fees and teacher-student ratios to the public schools, it begs the question: why the disparity? Here's part of the answer: our teachers and administrators worked over the two-week March break to build out the online system, so it was at least a minimum viable product when the students returned online. Our public neighbours faced multiple weeks of shutdowns, bickering over quotas for synchronous learning, and, frankly, chaotic roll-out.
As to public schools struggling, absolutely. From your description, the situation where you are sounds quite dire, and I imagine health and occupational safety considerations are pretty central to those difficulties for teachers. They have my heartfelt sympathy. I'm cognizant that we have been fortunate where I am, in that the health lens has been quite good, and so there hasn't been an exodus of teachers from the public system.
However, what has been accomplished in my neck of the woods isn't overly impressive, IMO. And you and I may be talking at cross-purposes about our respective public schools, so bear that in mind. The head of one of the largest K-12 unions in my province recently went on the record advocating for a moratorium on all standardized testing until 2022. That, to me, is unconscionable. It's this false binary thinking of "full throttle testing or nothing" that does not engender nimble solutions. (I am in no way attributing that straw man to you.) There is a lot of territory between those extremes that a) doesn't over-tax students or test administrators, b) gathers information diagnostically and non-punitively, and c) allows for a more informed and evidence-based evolution.
And I know this is just an anecdote - and I'm sure it can equally be matched with stories of dedicated public teachers: this past June, I spoke with a high school teacher who lives on my street. When I asked him about how he's helping his students cover learning losses, he said, "Oh, I just need a vacation. They can wait until September." That indolence is what's wrong with Canada's education system, in a nutshell.
Gosh, that was quite a rant, wasn't it?
