NYT article about online education continuing post-covid

[Eos]

Cross-posted with General Education.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/technology/remote-learning-online-school.html?

This raises so many questions and there won't be good data on outcomes for years.  

Plessy vs Ferguson.  As it's tax-payer funded, will localities begin to compensate caregivers whose children are enrolled?  One of the comments pinpoints that paying one history teacher per district will be far cheaper than one per grade.  

All those years of what about socialization?  I guess zoom is the new community.

Thoughts?

Edited April 12, 2021 by Harpymom

[DoraBora]

At least one of our (DFW) suburbs is exploring the option of an "online academy", though the majority of students will be in face-to-face classes.

I think online school -- as in Every.Day.All.Day.Long, synchronous instruction and practice -- is depressing, but some families might enjoy it.  Affluent families could have more flexibility for travel.  And I guess those students would be fully enrolled, so they'd have access to clubs and sports (thinking upper grades, here), which would be nice.

[DoraBora]

1 hour ago, Harpymom said:

Cross-posted with General Education.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/technology/remote-learning-online-school.html?

This raises so many questions and there won't be good data on outcomes for years.  

Plessy vs Ferguson.  As it's tax-payer funded, will localities begin to compensate caregivers whose children are enrolled?  One of the comments pinpoints that paying one history teacher per district will be far cheaper than one per grade.  

All those years of what about socialization?  I guess zoom is the new community.

Thoughts?

Agree that there are tons of issues to work out with funding and access.  Zoom, teams, discord, etc., are great for some things, but not so much for community.  My college ds won't attend club meetings or church college group online because he spends so many hours on those platforms for school.  He's sick of them.  He's not the only one, of course.

[City Mouse]

Online Charter School were available in many states long before Covid. I think Covid has shown the last few hold outs that there is a place for online schools. 

There are a lot of political issues with charters vs districts, unions and staffing and salary, and funding. 
I do not thinks students or families should be forced into online only school as they were during Covid. ( I mean, during non-pandemic times. Schools did what they could during the pandemic)

Online schools work for some students and some families for a variety of reasons. Public school doesn’t have to be an all or nothing, one way only proposition.

I don’t think socialization is legitimate argument against online schools as most families do not keep there children isolated from others all day long (again not counting Covid). After school, kids are participating in sports, music, scouts, church, etc or even just playing with others. Abusive families will still exist, and while online schools may make it easier to hide in some states, many states have very limited over site of homeschooling which already allows people like that to hide. (Not saying that all homeschooling families are abusive - just that the bad families don’t need online schooling to abuse their kids)

 

Edited April 12, 2021 by City Mouse

[theelfqueen]

My state had offered online schools for decades. I think more options available and highlighted to more families is a win for choice in education. I sincerely hope that coming out of a year of covid has some positive effects on the family dynamics side- that more families who have been forced to a different pace of life can see at least some value.  That more parents who saw thier kids education first hand and wanted a different kind of involvement can find it.

I know people champing at the bit for normal - but I know.more people who want to retain some new found flexibility in their jobs and activity. 

Edited April 12, 2021 by theelfqueen

[vonfirmath]

1 hour ago, Harpymom said:

Cross-posted with General Education.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/technology/remote-learning-online-school.html?

This raises so many questions and there won't be good data on outcomes for years.  

Plessy vs Ferguson.  As it's tax-payer funded, will localities begin to compensate caregivers whose children are enrolled?  One of the comments pinpoints that paying one history teacher per district will be far cheaper than one per grade.  

All those years of what about socialization?  I guess zoom is the new community.

Thoughts?

one history teacher per district?  They think one teacher can handle an entire district's worth of kids? Even online, that isn't going to start to be sufficient.

 

I know our district is really wrestling with this. THey have much worse attendance/assignment turn in issues from the kids online than the ones in person.

Edited April 12, 2021 by vonfirmath

[City Mouse]

5 minutes ago, vonfirmath said:

one history teacher per district?  They think one teacher can handle an entire district's worth of kids? Even online, that isn't going to start to be sufficient.

 

I know our district is really wrestling with this. THey have much worse attendance/assignment turn in issues from the kids online than the ones in person.

I live in a very small school district where there is already only one teacher per subject for high school (only 1 high school). Long before Covid the driver’s Ed teacher was streaming his classes because he worked at the elementary school 40 min away from the high school and only taught the 1 class for high school. 
 

Online charter schools in our state offered the kids in these very rural areas a choice for schooling that they would never had otherwise. 

Edited April 12, 2021 by City Mouse

[vonfirmath]

4 minutes ago, City Mouse said:

I live in a very small school district where there is already only one teacher per subject for high school (only 1 high school). Long before Covid the driver’s Ed teacher was streaming his classes because he worked at the elementary school 40 min away from the high school and only taught the 1 class for high school. 
 

Online charter schools in our state offered the kids in these very rural areas a choice for schooling that they would never had otherwise. 

If there is already only one teacher, then needing to hire only one teacher isn't going to be a cost savings.

 

[DoraBora]

I can see both sides.  Texas has offered distance public school for free for quite a while, but this is looking (at least here) like they hope to make it more localized.

Choices are great, but there are probably quite a few high school kids who will prefer face-to-face learning.  If students participate in sports, scouts, clubs, part-time jobs, etc., their flexibility (with regards to schooling from anywhere there's internet access) is diminished.

[melmichigan]

My conservative small district, that won't even participate with the local CC middle college program because of fear of loosing money, is starting an online academy next year because a full 25% of students remained virtual all year by choice.

[SKL]

I've long advocated for offering more online options for kids and adults for whom that would work well.  I think a blessing of the past year has been that we have gotten a much better idea of what does and doesn't adapt well to online learning.  I believe that in the long run, if reasonable minds win out, this will reduce education costs in our country, which we really need to do in order to have a more fair society.

It will be interesting to see how people decide who should and shouldn't go online vs. in person, or how that would work best for cohorts of people.  Would 2-3 day weeks make the most sense for many?  or 5 mornings/afternoons?  Should high school students be allowed to choose their school hours vs. being "truant" if they don't sit in the building from 8am to 3pm?  So many ideas to think about.

[Bootsie]

I think online options can work well for some students and can be a good option for some families. And I favor as many options in education as possible.

But,  I do not think online education will significantly reduce educational costs.  We have had libraries for centuries with books full of information.  We have had videos of expert teachers teaching material that can be played on VCRs across the world or broadcast on public TV stations.  It isn't that a recording of the material taught by one history teacher can teach 1000s of students because the material is on the internet rather than a video.  Teaching is much more about relationships, encouragment, inspiration, conversation, etc.  A teacher can only do those things with a limited number of students. 

I think public schools will look to expanding online options over the next few years to maintain revenue.  If a district recevies revenue on a per-enrolled student, then losing a student to an online charter school or to being homeschooled will  be expensive.   

[Penelope]

3 hours ago, City Mouse said:

Online Charter School were available in many states long before Covid. I think Covid has shown the last few hold outs that there is a place for online schools. 
 

 

 

58 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

 

I'm glad that there are options offered to kids who need something non-traditional but I'm not sure many children are served by online schooling. My fear, living in a state that always underfunds its public schools, is that this will be seen as another way to reduce expenses. 

They’ve been around a long time, but I wonder if it will be different now. With forced online schooling, districts were required to provide internet access (in theory, anyway, and I want to think mostly in practice, though it wasn’t perfect). And that was expensive.

So in the fall and beyond, might the expectation more often be that a family can choose online, and also receive accommodations for internet access if those are lacking? I don’t know if this was the case anywhere before the pandemic, or not. 

[Arcadia]

45 minutes ago, Penelope said:

So in the fall and beyond, might the expectation more often be that a family can choose online, and also receive accommodations for internet access if those are lacking? I don’t know if this was the case anywhere before the pandemic, or not. 

 

36 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

I doubt it. I think it's like how charter schools aren't required to provide transportation. 

When we were with an online charter many years ago, we do get internet reimbursement checks if we income qualify. 
 

When the local public schools went virtual, the students have XfinityWiFi free access to fall back on. The schools and libraries were closed but the WiFi were kept on. Some school district received donations of hotspots  and chromebooks/iPads to loan to students. 

“Xfinity WiFi Hotspot Access Opened Nationwide in Response to Coronavirus

Xfinity WiFi hotspots in out-of-home locations are available for free to anyone who needs them, including non-Xfinity Internet customers, to keep our communities connected with their friends and family.”

 

Edited April 12, 2021 by Arcadia
Punctuation

[HS Mom in NC]

Assuming each is well done, all options are valid and meet the needs of some students and their families.

People can only choose from options that a) exist AND b) they have access to.  That goes for parents, students, teachers, schools, and districts.  Too many Americans are unaware of the teacher crisis in the US and that it's likely to get worse relatively quickly. In the longer term, the birthrate has dropped off, so at some point there will be fewer kids in schools which should ease things some. Thanks to the pandemic, most employers, parents, students, teachers, schools, and districts were forced to try new things.  Now it's time to work out the kinks and get each option as good as it can be, and to do that cost cutting can't be the only consideration.  That said, funds are a limited resource, so parents and schools will have to face up to the realities of limited funds.

I had hoped this would be an opportunity for all institutions and businesses to look at themselves and ask how they can update, streamline, and consolidate their operations more effectively, like those of us who had decreased household incomes due to the pandemic did, but self-reflection and analysis aren't the adjectives usually associated with Americans and American institutions, so I'm not holding my breath.

It's all so complicated and nuanced.

[Dmmetler]

22 minutes ago, Arcadia said:

 

When we were with an online charter many years ago, we do get internet reimbursement checks if we income qualify. 
 

When the local public schools went virtual, the students have XfinityWiFi free access to fall back on. The schools and libraries were closed but the WiFi were kept on. Some school district received donations of hotspots  and chromebooks/iPads to loan to students. 

Xfinity WiFi Hotspot Access Opened Nationwide in Response to Coronavirus

“Xfinity WiFi hotspots in out-of-home locations are available for free to anyone who needs them, including non-Xfinity Internet customers, to keep our communities connected with their friends and family.”

 

It seems likely that this will end by this coming fall, though. I also have a mixed emotional response. On one thing, it was a nice thing to do. OTOH, the way they do it is by turning the Cable modems provided to their customers into HotSpots, and for most of this past school year, it means that every weekday morning and afternoon, when the carline for the elementary school across the street is out, our home internet has been extremely slow and unstable due to the number of people trying to connect to it from their car outside our house. I am rather looking forward to NOT providing wifi for the neighborhood again!

[Arcadia]

8 minutes ago, Dmmetler said:

. I am rather looking forward to NOT providing wifi for the neighborhood again!

You can set that option off.

https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/disable-xfinity-wifi-home-hotspot

[melmichigan]

1 hour ago, Arcadia said:

You can set that option off.

https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/disable-xfinity-wifi-home-hotspot

Or you can use your own devices that xfinity doesn't have the passwords for. 😉

Edited April 12, 2021 by melmichigan

[kokotg]

3 hours ago, Penelope said:

 

They’ve been around a long time, but I wonder if it will be different now. With forced online schooling, districts were required to provide internet access (in theory, anyway, and I want to think mostly in practice, though it wasn’t perfect). And that was expensive.

So in the fall and beyond, might the expectation more often be that a family can choose online, and also receive accommodations for internet access if those are lacking? I don’t know if this was the case anywhere before the pandemic, or not. 

My husband's district gave every student a device and (I believe) had hot spots available for people who needed them pre pandemic. And we've had both statewide and county virtual options for quite awhile now. 

[SKL]

Our district gave every kid a Chromebook and had some arrangement for people who didn't already have wifi at home.  I don't know exactly what the wifi fix was, but I was hoping it would be something that would last beyond the virtual school period.

There are programs in my county to provide free internet for every home in certain low-income / working class areas.  This began years before Covid and will surely continue as long as it is needed and affordable on a macro level.

Since the investment has been made in many areas, it seems likely that this will be affordable to sustain if a school district / local government decides that it is helpful.

I just want to mention that my school district has already come out and listed all-virtual KG as an option for 2021-2022.  I haven't heard about other grades, but I thought that was interesting and wondered how common it is nationwide.

[vonfirmath]

15 hours ago, SKL said:

Our district gave every kid a Chromebook and had some arrangement for people who didn't already have wifi at home.  I don't know exactly what the wifi fix was, but I was hoping it would be something that would last beyond the virtual school period.

There are programs in my county to provide free internet for every home in certain low-income / working class areas.  This began years before Covid and will surely continue as long as it is needed and affordable on a macro level.

Since the investment has been made in many areas, it seems likely that this will be affordable to sustain if a school district / local government decides that it is helpful.

I just want to mention that my school district has already come out and listed all-virtual KG as an option for 2021-2022.  I haven't heard about other grades, but I thought that was interesting and wondered how common it is nationwide.

Locally, parents were the most hesitant to send K/1st graders this year. (We had district-wide populations that were less than half of what they should have been).  THey are expecting next year's cohort to be larger than normal.

[Arcadia]

16 hours ago, SKL said:

 

I just want to mention that my school district has already come out and listed all-virtual KG as an option for 2021-2022.  I haven't heard about other grades, but I thought that was interesting and wondered how common it is nationwide.

 

45 minutes ago, vonfirmath said:

Locally, parents were the most hesitant to send K/1st graders this year. (We had district-wide populations that were less than half of what they should have been).  THey are expecting next year's cohort to be larger than normal.

Locally, the parents with lower elementary kids want their kids back in school because the kids can’t read well yet unlike the upper grades. 

[Farrar]

Here's the thing that I think is the most important thing to take away from the article:

Over the last decade, government regulators have accused some of the largest for-profit online school providers of fraud, cited them for poor academic outcomes and closed low-performing schools. Multiple studies have reported that children in full-time online schools, particularly cyber charter schools, have poorer educational results than peers in traditional public schools.

Basically, online education usually is terrible compared to in person and it's also a place with a ton of fraud and bad practices. Again, usually. This is not a comment on whether it works well for some students, but rather about averages. Also not a comment on whether there are honest or good businesses in the field, but rather that there are definitely sleazy ones.

But we know that online education can be done more effectively, that it does work for some students, and that regardless, it's here to stay.

So with that in mind, I'd say the focus needs to be not on oh, is this okay or not. Or on staked out wars between left and right, but on figuring out how to use best practices in online education and to stop allowing it to be a way that money is funneled into large corporations that do a crummy job of educating kids. Obviously schools need to outsource the digital platforms for online learning by subscribing to things like Zoom, Canvas, etc. And obviously there are online supports that can work well a la Khan Academy. However, when they turn education over to entirely virtual resources with limited oversight by humans, we know the quality drops dramatically. And when those virtual resources were built quickly and poorly with mediocre content (as is often the case) then the issue only gets worse.

 

 

[Pam in CT]

I do hope that public recognition of the need for low income and rural households to have access to good quality internet access, and for all students to have access to internet hardware, will be an enduring silver lining of this long nightmare.  I think there's a chance it will.

 

(In our pre-plague travels, we've been to so many places where whole cities and towns have open public wifi.  As infrastructure.  It's a mindset we haven't had here, but that online school kind of brought up to the surface.)

 

[Arcadia]

1 hour ago, Pam in CT said:

(In our pre-plague travels, we've been to so many places where whole cities and towns have open public wifi.  As infrastructure.  It's a mindset we haven't had here, but that online school kind of brought up to the surface.)

Google sponsored Mountain View’s city wifi as a trial project. My city has free wifi as they use the wifi to read the electric meters so they let the public use it as well, its not fast speed.

Google sponsored chromebooks, Apple sponsored iPads for schools. Basically a lot of corporate sponsorships going on. Hotspots were sponsored too by companies. 

[Pam in CT]

re corporate sponsorship of public wifi networks and/or hardware for students who need it

1 hour ago, Arcadia said:

Google sponsored Mountain View’s city wifi as a trial project. My city has free wifi as they use the wifi to read the electric meters so they let the public use it as well, its not fast speed.

Google sponsored chromebooks, Apple sponsored iPads for schools. Basically a lot of corporate sponsorships going on. Hotspots were sponsored too by companies. 

Yep -- and in a time of crisis like COVID, such corporate efforts are both immensely helpful, and also generate a lot of (deserved) goodwill and PR.

I'm a big believer in private-public partnerships. There are many cases where they can be win-win.

The thing about private incentive structures, though, is that they NEED to be win-win, in order to happen. So in the places where there isn't a fairly short timeframe private incentive (sparsely populated rural areas, for example; or very low income areas) they don't happen  (just as rural electrification would never have happened without government mandates; nor would AT&T ever have built networks out to Kansas without strong regulation forcing them to do so).  So there's a need for the "public" side of the partnership as well, in both oversight of the private "gifts" (ie, how much private individual data is yours to datamine/ harvest/ monetize if you put in "free" wifi) and actual buildout of the connectivity infrastructure in unprofitable areas.

[Lecka]

I have moved and know for two school districts nowhere near each other...

For high school, “credit recovery” classes are totally separate from “regular summer school.”  

Credit recovery is *only* allowed for students who have actually failed a class.  If you are trying to just take a class by choice, you cannot take a “credit recovery” class.

This is confusing because both will be called “summer school.”  

My son heard about “summer school” and was hearing a mix of things about credit recovery and non-credit recovery.  

Well — they are very different!

They will also offer different classes.  My son has wanted to take a class that was only offered for credit recovery but was not available as non-credit recovery.  
 

For both places we have lived, the credit recovery classes have a reputation for nice teachers and extra help from teachers, but much easier versions than the class as taught during the regular school year.  I have no idea if this is true or not, but it is what my son has heard.  

Edit:  just to say — it is confusing, because there are 3, at least, different versions of online classes in our district.  There is credit recovery.  There is an Edgenuity platform.  There are separate online classes taught by district teachers.  They all have totally different reputations.  They are all just called online school, virtual school, etc, so one person is talking about one and one is talking about a different one.  It is very very confusing.  

 

 

Edited April 13, 2021 by Lecka

[Arcadia]

1 hour ago, Lecka said:

For both places we have lived, the credit recovery classes have a reputation for nice teachers and extra help from teachers, but much easier versions than the class as taught during the regular school year.  I have no idea if this is true or not, but it is what my son has heard.  

A friend’s child had to do credit recovery for English. The public school she attended only offers credit recovery classes for summer. It is easier because it is meant to help kids who has a D or F get a C. No idea if the teachers are nicer.

[theelfqueen]

5 hours ago, Farrar said:

Here's the thing that I think is the most important thing to take away from the article:

Over the last decade, government regulators have accused some of the largest for-profit online school providers of fraud, cited them for poor academic outcomes and closed low-performing schools. Multiple studies have reported that children in full-time online schools, particularly cyber charter schools, have poorer educational results than peers in traditional public schools.

Basically, online education usually is terrible compared to in person and it's also a place with a ton of fraud and bad practices. Again, usually. This is not a comment on whether it works well for some students, but rather about averages. Also not a comment on whether there are honest or good businesses in the field, but rather that there are definitely sleazy ones.

But we know that online education can be done more effectively, that it does work for some students, and that regardless, it's here to stay.

So with that in mind, I'd say the focus needs to be not on oh, is this okay or not. Or on staked out wars between left and right, but on figuring out how to use best practices in online education and to stop allowing it to be a way that money is funneled into large corporations that do a crummy job of educating kids. Obviously schools need to outsource the digital platforms for online learning by subscribing to things like Zoom, Canvas, etc. And obviously there are online supports that can work well a la Khan Academy. However, when they turn education over to entirely virtual resources with limited oversight by humans, we know the quality drops dramatically. And when those virtual resources were built quickly and poorly with mediocre content (as is often the case) then the issue only gets worse.

 

 

I think a lot of this is true.

But in my area at least, there is a self selection bias. Online charters have often been seen as a last resort for already struggling teens and families. So they were always going to score badly compared to the regular public schools and in person charters .

[Ali in OR]

Working in a high school, I can tell you that while there are some kids who thrive online, most do better in-person. My previously homeschooled kid does fine--she knows how to access learning on her own. Most kids do not have that skill. There is this passivity and lack of engagement that really gets in the way of learning anything. We are sort of starting hybrid now after a year online and will be completely in-person starting May 3rd. Freshmen entered the building for the first time yesterday. And most showed up--most are quite eager to get back to learning with people. I do think our district will continue to offer online next year but I think it will less than 10% that uses it.

[Farrar]

1 hour ago, theelfqueen said:

I think a lot of this is true.

But in my area at least, there is a self selection bias. Online charters have often been seen as a last resort for already struggling teens and families. So they were always going to score badly compared to the regular public schools and in person charters .

Yeah, I think that's true. You'd need to do something to adjust for that in the data, I think. But the difference is stark enough that it's pretty clear that it's not just because the populations of the online charters are different.

[Terabith]

We elected to do an online charter this year for my ninth grader because of covid.  I figured the virtual charter that did K12 would be more stable than the local school district going back and forth between online/ hybrid/ in person.  And our local schools were swearing up and down all last summer that all instruction would be asynchronous, and I wanted my kid to have some interaction with a teacher and kids.  I'm pretty sure she is way less engaged than she would be in a brick and mortar school.  She's doing fine, although I've been surprised at how kinda awful K12 is.  The history and science are great, but the English is bizarre and disjointed.  The tests and quizzes are written by drunken baboons.  The math started off terrible but has improved.  She's performing well, but she's spending way less time doing online learning than she would in in person learning, and I don't think she's learning as much, and she's got two very involved parents.  (My husband sits with her and does every math lesson with her.  I work with her a lot on history and English.)

ETA:  I would totally have homeschooled, except high school is an all or nothing proposition here, and she really wants (and frankly, I want her) to go to brick and mortar post covid.  If she'd been K-8, we would have homeschooled in a heartbeat.

Edited April 13, 2021 by Terabith

[Arcadia]

@Roadrunner Written by CTY JHU https://medium.com/brightnow/everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-the-future-of-online-learning-in-schools-but-were-611e18b376be

“Online learning isn’t going away.

When schools went online last year, kids proved themselves to be facile and resilient users of technology, Anderson said. “Now that students have experienced online learning they’re not going back to paper and pencil only ever again

...

Academically advanced kids still have needs that aren’t being met.

Over this last year as schools raced to provide access to online learning for all students, some schools dropped world language and Advanced Placement courses, and stopped providing enrichment and differentiation for advanced learners because they did not have enough capacity, Arena said.

...

Parents, not schools, will continue to be the drivers of their child’s education.

“We’ve seen an immense rise over the last year in parents making decisions about their children’s learning,” Anderson said. Whether it was to create learning pods or find safe extracurriculars or advanced learning opportunities for their child or make the decision to homeschool, parents made countless critical decisions about education this year. “As we get to reopening schools in the fall, the voice of parents and their decision for what works best for their child will continue to be the strongest voice in the conversation,” she said. “We have changed the landscape of education to be much more parent-centric, and schools will have to change to offer access to what parents want.”

More changes are coming.

There will be more opportunities for online learning to be integrated into schools. For example, Arena is hopeful that schools will be able to use online learning to provide students with a broader range of courses. “School districts could offer virtual versions of certain niche courses to the entire district, and they would only need to employ one teacher to teach this course to 20 or 30 students across the district, as opposed to having to put a teacher in each school for a particular course,” he said. “One-to-one learning is now available to schools where it was unavailable pre-COVID-19. We’ve opened the doors for a tremendous amount of options to be available to educators to provide the right solution to meet the needs of individual learners.”

Parents, trust your instincts.

There was much handwringing this year when parents disagreed with the decisions their schools were making specifically or generally about their child’s education. “Parents should trust their instincts about what their child needs to be successful to learn,” Anderson said. If your child has been so successful learning in their learning pod that you don’t want to change to in person schooling, don’t second guess yourself. “Sometimes things work out.”“

[Roadrunner]

That suits CTY because they are charging $$$$$$$ for their online platform. Not the unbiased source. 

[Arcadia]

10 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

That suits CTY because they are charging $$$$$$$ for their online platform. Not the unbiased source. 

They aren’t UC a-g accredited anyway. Just quoted the article because it isn’t anti-homeschooling. California would have to continue negotiating with teachers unions.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article250670654.html

”Newsom said he expects a full school reopening to follow by the normal start of the academic year, but it will depend on the willingness of schools and educators to come back.

California has more than 1,000 school districts, and reopening conditions must be negotiated with labor groups representing teachers and classified employees. Some districts have struggled to find common ground with their employees.

“We can do this, and we must do it. And we must do it sustainably, and we must prepare now for full in-person instruction come this next school year,” Newsom said. “In order to do that we have to prove that we can safely do this, prove that we can continue the progress we made.” 

The governor has been criticized by some parent groups and Republican lawmakers for not taking a more forceful stance in reopening schools earlier in the year. Meanwhile, the administration continues to face pressure from teachers unions and school employees who are worried about the virus spreading in the event of a return to classrooms.

Newsom and legislative leaders earlier this year passed a $6.6 billion reopening package for schools. It included $2 billion to help districts resume in-person instruction by April 1. California schools are in line to receive even more money from the latest federal coronavirus stimulus bill signed by President Joe Biden.”

[Mrs Tiggywinkle]

I don’t know. I see a huge push on the part of parents to return to in person schooling. My local district is back full time.  Neighboring, larger districts are doing hybrid with the option for full virtual.

Less than 5% of parents locally have opted for virtual school.  Most hate hybrid.  They want normal, face to face school.

This might be skewed by being a somewhat impoverished area.  Everyone is working at least one job, most are essential or blue collar workers with no opportunity to work at home, and having a stay at home parent is rare. Childcare has been such a headache locally during the pandemic.

Even my friends in other areas throughout the country seem to be anxious to be done with any online schooling.

[Farrar]

One interesting thing about CTY as a platform is that they figured out how to milk that $$$$$ from districts ages ago. In tons of east coast school districts, CTY (and previously, Duke TIP before they shut down) is provided free to gifted students as a way for the district to meet their obligations to provide gifted students appropriate accommodations. The district approves the funds after the testing, but it's on parents to really follow up in most cases. So their line that the parents are the drivers is also in keeping with how they tend to do business.