“If you cheat on your road work in the dark of the morning, you will be found out in the big fight under the bright lights.”
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After all these years I’m starting to get a bit of an understanding of charter school parents, and some supporters, frustration with public schools. Before you slam the door, hear me out.
In the early days of school closures, due to the ongoing pandemic, I thought, “Well this sucks, but there is an opportunity here. There is a chance that since we are being forced to change already, we’ll use this time to re-adjust and address some of the past inadequacies and inequities. Ultimately public education we’ll come out better for this challenge.”
Under this cynical exterior beats the soul of an optimist.
However, innovation is not what has happened over the past 6 months. Instead, it’s been a constant drumbeat to get kids back in traditional school settings. Instead of focusing on providing the best educational opportunities for children, we have focused almost singularly on refilling school buildings.
Over the summer when districts should have been developing plans to, at the bare minimum, incorporate remote instruction into reopening plans, they focused almost entirely on preparing for the re-entry of students into buildings. As a result, when August arrived and it was clear that it wasn’t going to be possible to restart in-person learning, principals and teachers were left scrambling to develop plans to deliver remote instruction to students. Plans that, despite the best CONTINUE READING: IT IS NOT THE BUILDING THAT IS IMPORTANT – Dad Gone Wild