To be sure, many adults are having a hard time staying focused on their work amid the health and political chaos of 2020, so why would anybody expect young people to be any better?
And is it fair to give kids regular A-F grades when nothing has been regular about the way they are living and learning since March, and won’t be for some time?
Last spring, when the coronavirus pandemic began and schools across the United States closed and reverted to remote learning — literally overnight — many districts decided to halt giving A-F grades and institute some form of a pass-fail system.
School and district officials said then that giving A-F grades wouldn’t be fair because of the inadequacy of remote learning at the time and because many students did not have sufficient technology and/or Internet access and/or a quiet, safe place to learn at home and/or no resources to help with their school work. Before the pandemic, millions of children attended poorly funded schools and lived in poverty, but the pandemic exacerbated the inequities.
When the 2020-21 academic year began this fall, A-F grading systems returned even though many students were still learning from home. Now there are news stories from across the country about a CONTINUE READING: More students got F’s in first term of school year - The Washington Post