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Schools are stumbling out of the pandemic’s shadow transfigured, cleaved in two as they teach some children in classrooms and others at home, remotely. Originally imagined as a time-limited response, that duality is reshaping schools for next year, and possibly longer, prompting new questions about how separate—and how equal—remote learners’ educational experiences will be.
If even 20 percent of students learn virtually next year, that would create “a whole new parallel track for schools,” said Heather Schwartz, a RAND Corp. researcher who led a recent study
showing that 1 in 5 districts were planning or considering a fully remote learning option for 2021-22. Before the pandemic, less than half of 1 percent of U.S. K-12 students studied virtually, according to 2018-19 federal data