NEA Educator Voice Academy Addresses COVID-19 Equity Gap
With distance learning, the digital divide has widened into a chasm, swallowing whole populations of students who are now off the educational grid. They’re unreachable because they have no Internet access, or not enough home devices, or nobody at home to help them with learning packets. The equity gap, exacerbated by COVID-19, will continue to grow as vulnerable students fall even further behind.
“We, as educators, as humans, have to step up,” said NEA Vice President Becky Pringle during the Educator Voice Academy, a three-hour virtual meeting of 100 educators, including teachers, education support professionals, organizers and NEA state affiliate staff held April 18, 2020. “A bright light is shining on the vast and deep inequities in this country and the work of the Educator Voice Academy is absolutely essential.”
Like dominoes, schools closed one after another, giving educators little time to prepare for how they’d continue instruction. For those in more resourced districts, distance learning was relatively easy to implement. Most students had their own devices and easy access to the internet at home. But in low-income communities and rural communities across the country, access is harder to come by and many students have had to rely on schools or libraries to get online and now have no options.
“As we converted to digital instruction other problems popped out right away,” said Pringle. “Some of our districts seemed to move away from their commitment to students with special needs, so we need to figure out how to work with our partners and demand that students with disabilities have what they need even as we CONTINUE READING: NEA Educator Voice Academy Addresses COVID-19 Equity Gap
