Online or in the classroom, teachers and students must show up every day, new rules say
When it comes to education, the new state budget goes beyond providing $70.5 billion in funding for K-12 schools — it sets fundamental accountability rules for a new era of distance learning in California by requiring teachers to take online attendance and document student learning.
The budget bill, which Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to sign, anticipates that schools will continue to rely heavily on online instruction when campuses reopen in the fall. It also implicitly acknowledges the deep learning losses of the last semester, especially among students from low-income families, when school systems struggled to get all students online.
The new directives establish minimum teaching parameters for distance learning while protecting teachers against immediate layoffs.
“Educators and teacher unions have won fairly steady funding from Sacramento to reopen schools this fall,” said UC Berkeley education professor Bruce Fuller. “Now the imperative is to deliver a rich blend of online and face-to-face instruction.”
Fuller said the emphasis on documentation reflects concern by state leaders that “tens of thousands of kids simply unplugged in the spring, then fell further behind.”
Whether schooling is online or in person, the rules reimpose the state’s minimum daily instructional minutes requirement of 180 for kindergarten, 230 minutes for grades 1 through 3, and 240 minutes for grades 4 through 12. Distance learning can be documented with student work as well as time online.
Schools also must develop procedures for reengaging students absent from distance learning for more than three school days in a school week. Schools are allowed to develop alternate plans, with input from parents, for achieving these mandates when necessary.
When the pandemic forced campuses to close in March for the remainder of the school year, the state told educators to continue teaching by any form necessary and possible — and schools statewide scrambled to distribute computers, internet hot spots and hastily assembled paper packets.
Recognizing this burden, state officials set aside fundamental and familiar rules such as taking attendance and providing a requisite number of minutes of teaching each day. School district leaders and charter school operators frequently followed suit — emphasizing compassion over rigor and recognizing that schooling could not simply be switched instantly and seamlessly from a face-to-face classroom experience to face time over a screen. CONTINUE READING: What are the California school rules for online learning? - Los Angeles Times
