I interview for my college, and I’ve interviews seniors from three of the four local schools. Both public schools are hybrid, and the private school is full time in person. (Dunno about the other private school.)
A friend who is on the board of trustees at the private school says applications are way up because parents want their kids at school.
The kids doing hybrid tell me it’s working, though. They say that last spring when things closed with no plan it was a mess, but this fall the schools and teachers planned for it, things are going pretty well. They miss the social interaction of full time school, but two of the three told me they like the flexibility of remote learning and can spend more time on understanding stuff.
These are all academically motivated kids who have a private bedroom and their own computer for school.
I’ve also been tutoring kids at an urban school with mostly poor kids without a family history of academic success. They are full time remote, and it’s not going well. I’ve talked to some who are literally balancing work with school. That is, they are on site at work while texting me about their math assignments, during class time. A lot of the kids just don’t show up.
The academic motivation is a bigger issue than being poor, though. I have a friend who is a high school physics teacher at a magnet school in a poor district of Chicago. He says his kids never turn on the camera, and he suspects many are sitting on the toilet during class because that’s a private room with a door. He doesn’t know the race or sex of half his kids. He had to trim the syllabus a little because he has fewer class hours. But, he says, despite all that, his kids did better on the first semester final this year than last.
None of the teachers I’ve spoken with wants to go back in person. Physics teacher had to teach from the classroom for a while (kids at home) and he bitched about the bad HVAC, wore an n95 mask fill time, and stressed about infecting his family of he got exposed. He’s delighted to be teaching from his living room. The teachers I’m supporting locally also think it’s too dangerous to reach in person.
These are all at high school. Elementary school is a different beast, and my cousin, who administers a nursery school, has worked hard to keep the kids in class. (She did know a hell of a lot about covid testing options, though, when we needed that.)
Private schools may have more square feet per kid, and better hvac than aging urban schools. But yeah, they also have teachers they can threaten to fire.
A lot of teachers have quit this year. Another friend who teaches middle school computer science told the administration that if they made her show up in person she would quit. She’s teaching remotely this year, largely because she had the economic clout to make that choice.
