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Schools are planning extended years, summer programs and tutoring sessions to address Covid-19 reading loss. Credit: Terrell Clark for The Hechinger Report
A deluge of data released late last year confirmed what has long been suspected: The coronavirus pandemic caused widespread learning loss while also amplifying gaps across racial and socioeconomic lines. The situation is especially concerning among younger children: one analysis of reading level data by Amplify Education, Inc., which creates curriculum, assessment and intervention products, found children in first and second grade experienced the most dramatic drops in grade level reading scores compared to previous years. This year, 40 percent of first grade students and 35 percent of second grade students are “significantly a
A Final Frontier of the Digital Divide: Getting Wi-Fi to the Most Remote Areas
A new approach to providing broadband through satellites gives reliable internet access to far-flung communities including a Texas school district. by
Marquita Brown is the managing editor of EdTech: Focus on K-12. Before joining EdTech, she was a program manager for the nonprofit Education Writers Association. She also worked as a reporter for 10 years, primarily covering K-12 education for daily newspapers in Mississippi, Virginia and North Carolina.
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When leaders of Ector County Independent School District learned in March that 39 percent of their students lacked reliable broadband access at home, they went to work on finding a solution. It was crucial that students be able to connect to remote instruction.
Counselors offer insights on COVID - Odessa American: ECISD
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As the pandemic continues, counselors inside and outside of Ector County Independent School District have noticed an increase in suicidal ideation, stress and anxiety among children, parents and the community.
Christy McGuire, a counselor at Gonzales Elementary School, Anthony Garza, an SAS counselor at Nimitz Middle School, Mary Perry, a psychosocial coordinator for PermiaCare, and Mark McQueen, clinical director for Centers for Children and Families, spoke about during a panel discussion on ECISD Live Thursday night.
The discussion was titled Winter Wellness.
Garza said when students go to middle school they expect to see their friends and go from class to class. The pandemic has disrupted that and counselors have to do their best to help them adjust and give them resources so they can focus on their education.
Administrators like Delgado were caught off-guard, as they were actively recruiting teachers and already scrambling to adapt to an academic year amid a pandemic. It cut the number of foreign workers hired on the country’s most common teaching visa in half nationwide. The ban added to the country’s growing teacher deficit, leaving many schools with dozens sometimes hundreds of unfilled positions at the start of the school year.
Those teachers would have served some of America’s most vulnerable kids, administrators say. “Eighty-eight of the teachers that we had offered jobs to are special education teachers, which is a critical shortage, not only in Nevada, but nationally,” said Jesus Jara, superintendent of the Clark County School District.