As a concerned parent, your timing could not be any more perfect!

Dive Insight:

Addressing the “COVID slide” presents one of the most complicated challenges of the pandemic beyond the transition to distance learning. During a typical summer, there’s already some expectation of a “summer slide.” A study published in July in the American Educational Research Journal, using data from Northwest Evaluation Association, followed students in grades 1 through 6 over five summers and found 52% of the students lost an average of 39% of their total school year gains during the summer months.

Students returning to school this fall, however, have the compounded effect of not just the summer break, but of a spring disrupted by school closures and the aforementioned switch to online learning models. That transition was particularly prohibitive for many low-income students whose families lacked home access to the internet or devices, or who have been in unstable home environments.

Even as early as a 2014 study analysis, the U.S. Department of Education described online learning as “one of the fastest-growing trends in educational uses of technology” and found blended instruction has been more effective than strictly face-to-face or online instruction

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos recently encouraged superintendents to plan for distance learning even beyond the fall.….

“One of the great things about online and blended learning is that it provides the opportunity for students to benefit from the flexibility of pace and time of when they work,” Professor Friend said. And Friend, who believes this could be the beginning of a shift in education, said once parents and students are given the option of personalized and blended learning, many won’t be willing to go back to traditional models of instruction and could expect flexibility beyond COVID-19.

“Districts now will understand that creating online and blended environments can no longer be just a luxury. They’re going to have to be prepared for it.”

Laurie Wolfe, the chief academic officer at Gem Innovation Schools, which has one virtual school and three brick-and-mortar schools in its network, has seen similar results. “One thing that [our teachers] have realized is that their students in the brick-and-mortar setting are far less independent than students in the online setting,” Wolfe said.

“I don’t think that the local school building is going away,” he said. “But I think people have been awoken to the idea that ‘going to school’ doesn’t mean I must be dropped off at this physical space Monday through Friday.”

Trying to “set the stage for the new future of K-12 education,” Sanford Kenyon, CEO of the micro-certifier Bloomboard, said some organizations have already begun offering teachers micro-credentials to support hybrid learning and a learner-centered approach.