CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 2022, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“ZOOM LEARNING GETS ITS GRADE: F FOR
FLOP”
The
official results of more than a year of full- and part-time Zoom learning are
in, and the practice that became almost universal for schoolchildren in 2020
has gotten its final grade: F for flop.
Here are
a few of the most salient facts that emerge from state data on student
performance in the 2020-21 school year that ended last June:
Less than
25 percent of California students took standardized tests in 2021, one result
of the disengagement brought on by scarcity of in-person teaching. Graduation rates
dropped by 1 percent, with Latinos almost doubling the overall drop and Black
student graduation rates falling four times that much. By the end of the last
school year, only 83.6 percent of students who started high school four years
earlier were able to get diplomas. And the younger students were, the worse they
fared with Zoom.
Some
realities of Zoom learning, mostly done via laptop computers passed out by
schools, were obvious long before the figures were in.
Students
were less involved than when taught in person. They could simply walk away from
their computers and not participate in classes, and in millions of cases there
would be no one present to steer them back. Kids could eat all they wanted
during class and phones would ring, too, distracting them further.
The
results of all this were seen in student performances on standardized tests.
After five years of steady improvement, test scores declined for the least
privileged groups of students, mainly Blacks and Latinos.
These
were the conclusions of the Smarter Balanced assessment test scores, even
though so many fewer students actually took the tests in 2021. They were
canceled in 2020. The small turnout for the tests probably indicates that only
the most involved pupils were included – and scores dropped even for them.
English
language arts results fell by 4 percent from 2019 to 2021, with just 48 percent
meeting or exceeding national standards (another term for passing the test),
and by 5 percent in math, with just 33 percent meeting or exceeding standards,
compared with 38 percent two years earlier – already a lousy performance.
Pass
rates fell by 12 percent in math and 6 percent in English language arts
testing. The drops were much sharper for
Latinos (22 percent in math, 10 percent in English) and almost as bad for
Blacks (down 9 percent in math and 7 percent in English).
In short,
Zoom – or distance – learning proved disastrous to the students it was aimed to
keep involved through the worst times of the pandemic.
So California’s
public schools, already considered a disgrace by many parents and others, grew
far worse when students couldn’t attend them in person.
And that
was just for kids who can speak English proficiently. For the state’s
approximately 1.1 million English learners, matters went from bad to worse.
Their performance drops were even greater than the overall results for ethnic
minorities overall.
All this
appalls adults who work to improve the futures of today’s schoolkids. “(This)
has the potential to have life-altering impacts, especially for our youngest
(students),” Samantha Tran, managing director for education policy for the
Children Now advocacy group, told a reporter.
State
officials tried to downplay the disastrous results. The kids taking the tests,
they said, might not have been representative of all California students. In a
normal year, they pointed out, 95 percent of all students must take these
tests, but only about one-fourth that number actually did last year.
But this
reality indicates the real scores, had the usual number of students been tested,
would have been far worse than what was recorded.
For by
their very presence, those participating were selecting themselves as more
interested than others. And the more interested kids are in school, the better
they usually test.
The
bottom line is that despite legitimate worries about contagion, schools must
stay open if at all possible, or the future of their students – and all
California – will be seriously at risk.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias at
tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising
Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now
available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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