Students at Risk During Pandemic
Focus on At-Risk Students’ Basic Needs, or Lose Them, UCLA Expert Advises
“We are at risk of losing an entire generation of young people.”
UCLA education professor Tyrone Howard made this bleak prediction at a virtual public meeting Wednesday while discussing Los Angeles County youth in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems who are heading back to upended schools during the disruptive storm of the coronavirus.
Howard warned members of the County Office of Child Protection’s Education Coordinating Council that COVID-19 threatens to widen the learning gap between these students and their peers, leaving them in danger of dropping out of school, entering the criminal justice system and developing even deeper mental health problems.
Support for these students will have to focus on their families’ basic needs, like rental assistance and child care, as well as equity issues, said Howard, who directs the Black Male Institute at the UCLA Pritzker Center for Strengthening Children and Families.
With public schools throughout the county offering classes online, a July report by the Los Angeles Unified School District found that children of color and foster youth are participating in distance learning significantly less than other groups of students.
Los Angeles Unified School District found that children of color and foster youth are participating in distance learning significantly less than other groups of students.
Los Angeles Unified School District found that children of color and foster youth are participating in distance learning significantly less than other groups of students.
To effect change, Howard said education and child welfare professionals must discuss taboo topics such as race, racism and mental health. If they are unwilling to have these “hard conversations,” he added, children will suffer.
Students with special needs are of particular concern to members of the education council – which includes representatives of community-based organizations, former foster and probation youth as well as officials from the county’s school districts, juvenile courts and child welfare agencies.
Well before the pandemic, special education students inside and outside the child welfare system struggled for equal education. During the pandemic, the barriers they face have increased, said Helen Berberian, a deputy director for the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. Berberian told council members that 31%, or 8,300, of the 27,000 K-12 students in foster care in L.A. County schools have individualized education CONTINUE READING: Students at Risk During Pandemic - LA Progressive