How Covid-19 is Ruining Education

As an educator, friend and family member of fellow educators, and long-time student, I have a unique firsthand glimpse into the education system that exists because of Covid-19. There isn't a question in my mind about the fact that the American education was already utterly horrifying. But the distance learning our schools have adopted recently is an abhorrently pathetic excuse for education.

Currently, I work as an independent study instructor for students in TK-6th grade, with all of my students currently being in the fifth and sixth grade at the moment. What this means is that our school district has gone back to on-ground learning for TK-6th grade students, but those students whose parents are uncomfortable with the students being physically together in the classroom stay home and participate independently instead.

The process for me as an independent study instructor is fairly simple. On Mondays, students or their parents are expected to drop off the previous week's completed homework packet. I try to pick those up Monday afternoons so that I can grade the packets that afternoon. We are required to have one one-hour weekly check-in with each of our students where we can go over the previous packet, review trouble areas, discuss the student's grades, and preview the current week's packet. This is another reason I try to have all packets picked up by Monday afternoon.

Prior to beginning the first of these check-ins, we have to make initial contact with the students' parents and lead an orientation in which we review the terms of agreement in the independent learning contract, establish a schedule for our weekly check-ins, exchange important contact information, and address any additional questions the parent or student may still have.

This is a summary of some of my experiences thus far.

Student 1:

Bilingual, parent does not speak English (and I only speak English).

There is a translator available at that school site who assisted me with the orientation but told me she does not aid with weekly check-ins because the student is bilingual and can translate when/if necessary.

One hour per week is not enough time to satisfactorily address all subjects, especially for students who also need to translate.

Student clearly copies homework from somewhere; some of her responses are literally verbatim (including answers in which the answer key says "answers may vary").

Claims she does not have access to any books for independent reading, but continually hasn't asked the school if she can borrow books from the library. I have told her I will accept magazines or online news articles if she still can't get books after three weeks but she still has not filled out a single reading log.

Regularly does not fully complete assignments.

Parent does not attend weekly check-ins (this is mandatory for both student and parent) or make any effort to communicate with me and check on the student’s progress.

Student 2:

Parent is regularly present and continually states that he will help student on anything she is unsure of, while student regularly declines any help I offer, which leaves me unable to help as they don't seem to want the help.

Student submits largely incomplete work.

Student and parent missed at least one weekly check-in with no communication and failed to respond to my reminder/notification of missed check-in.

When students miss check-in, I cannot review their work with them to ensure that they are actually learning. This is extremely important for this student considering she is currently failing every subject.

Student 3:

Off to a rough start right off the bat. Contacted parent for orientation, scheduled it for the following day. Parent and student both missed the orientation. I contacted the parent with a reminder about the missed orientation. We played phone tag all afternoon. Eventually we completed the orientation, without the student present (student and parent participation is mandatory).

We set up our weekly check-in date and time, the parent set a reminder on her phone. Both parent and student missed the first and second check-in.

Parent doesn't currently live in the school district limits and requested to set up their packet drop offs on a different day of the week. I coordinated with the school and accommodated the parent, who not only didn't submit the packet on time, but also failed to drop off the packet altogether. Currently missing two weeks worth of work.

Myself and the site principal have been attempting to reach the parent, who still does not respond.

Parent apparently finally responded to site principal, claiming the student's Chromebook does not work. I received this information from the site principal, but parent still has not acknowledged me or let me know of any of this information despite my repeated efforts to contact her.

Student 4

Mom seems to be very actively engaged in student learning but has acknowledged she is not a teacher and is afraid she will be hurting the student’s progress in the long run by keeping him on independent study. Since my district made it very clear that independent study students are primarily the parents’ responsibility, it falls entirely on the parent to do about 98% of the teaching now.

It has been nothing but issues, in some way or another, for everyone. Fellow independent study instructors in my district have reported seeing parents filling out their kids' packets for them. Generally speaking, my students are not doing their work, not asking for help, not understanding when I explain to them, and parents (who are arguably more clueless and behind than their kids are) are entirely responsible for teaching the bulk of the material. The students' regular classroom teachers do not teach these students and generally do not even deal with them at all now that they are on independent study.

I myself struggle with teaching some of these subjects and I have access to more of the teacher materials than any of the parents do. But I am not a full fledged teacher myself, nor have I ever had to actually teach full lesson plans long-term. How are parents expected to teach their children any of the material, let alone teach subjects like math that have been altered so students have to do things by Common Core standards in order to get their answers marked as correct?

When I attended the training for this independent study program, we were quite literally told to "err on the side of grace" when it comes to grading. Which effectively means that they deserve a passing grade as long as they put something down on the paper.

The sad thing is that most of the students on my caseload only fully fill out the pages that I cannot verify, such as their PE log, so for all I know they aren’t even truly doing that. And the unfortunate thing about this is that I have been giving credit for even the tiniest details and every student on my caseload is still failing at least one subject every week.

These students are very clearly not learning anything on a week to week basis and I don't foresee that changing any time soon. Their assignments are so incredibly easy and they aren't even bothering to attempt them most of the time, let alone submitting completed assignments. Knowing that I am giving credit for literally just writing something on a piece of paper is still not enough incentive to attempt part of each assignment.

I recognize that Covid-19 was an unanticipated event but it has been long enough to where we should have a better planned system in place by now. The American education system was already screwed up to begin with- one would have to be absolutely blind not to recognize that- but this whole learning from home and being taught by non-teacher parents thing is only further pushing student learning down the drain.

It really saddens me that this has become so widely accepted as appropriate. It really saddens me that public school administration puts more thought and consideration into things like what they should name their in-person learning cohorts than into the actual learning and teaching processes. It really saddens me that neighboring districts are operating by completely different standards from one another. It really saddens me that there is no true standard to begin with.

In a culture where teachers were already being blamed for students' bad behavior and for parents' lack of involvement in the students' lives, students are now only being further encouraged to slack off and be content with mediocre knowledge and basic life skills- at best.

We aren't educating our children. We are teaching them how to cheat the system, how to fake intelligence, how to just get by.

We are raising a generation that can’t tell you a thing about science or history, can’t tell the difference between ‘your’ and ‘you are’, and refuses to put in the 10 minutes it takes to complete an assignment, yet is willing to scour the internet for half an hour to find an answer key just so they don’t have to actually learn. We are raising a generation that can’t not look at their phone for a whole 50 minutes of class time. We are raising a generation that is literally conditioned to expect a reward for doing less than the bare minimum, because at least it’s something.

We are raising a generation that is increasingly illiterate and lacks basic communication and comprehension skills. Sure, there are some positive things that are coming out of current generations, but we can’t genuinely look at any aspect of contemporary education and say that we’re doing a good job. It’s beyond embarrassing that the average college student is still incapable of writing a basic persuasive essay with minimal mistakes even after proofreading.

Good education doesn’t start in college. Good education starts when a child begins school, even before that if you're feeling ambitious. And it’s about time we stepped up and expected — demanded — that our students actually get such an education.

But that takes more than just the handful of educators who care. It requires the parents, families, students, everyone, to maintain high standards and encourage one another to cultivate an educational environment and a lifestyle that revolves around learning. It requires a community that doesn't put education at the bottom of the totem pole of importance.

Pandemic or not, we need education and that will never change. So I hope if you or someone you know are a student, you push just a little bit harder and you raise the bar and you hold yourself to a high standard and you learn something new and you strive for the best every single day because everyone deserves the best of the best when it comes to education and learning, but I can guarantee you won't get it from our public education system. Especially not now, thanks to Covid-19.