Online Schools Are Here to Stay, Even After the Pandemic

The current education situation in the US, and elsewhere, continues to be in flux. Depending on who one listens to, or reads, schools are going to go back to the same old same old when the pandemic all-clear is sounded…

Or…. as this story below suggests, many things will be different now. Or, as some hope, everything will be changed.

PSA wonders if a new form of blended learning will arise, and surprisingly be driven, in part, by teacher’s unions,  whose members have discovered it can be nice not to be physically in a classroom every day. When kids are at home, some of the teacher’s parenting obligations are lessened, and the actual parents are responsible for part of the student’s care and feeding.

Which is part of the way toward a more “community schools” type of approach, which PSA supports. Yet with the new spending from states and Feds for education, the problem of the have-not kids, whose home environments are not conducive to learning, or even health, needs to be substantially addressed. Which again, might be doable with the expansion of the “community schools” approach into many needy neighborhoods.

Gigantic undertaking…but big efforts needed to give all US kids the education they need to succeed.