One year after the coronavirus pandemic shuttered classrooms around the country and the world, U.S. parents are guardedly optimistic about the academic and social development of their children, an NPR/Ipsos poll finds.
But 62% of parents say their child's education has been disrupted. And, more than 4 out of 5 would like to see schools provide targeted extra services to help their kids catch up. This includes just over half of parents who support the idea of summer school.
The nation has lacked solid national data on precisely where classrooms are open to students. In our survey, half of parents said their children were learning virtually, a third were attending in person full-time, and the remainder were in person part-time. As other polls have found, Black and Hispanic parents were far more likely than white parents to say their children were all-remote — 65% for Black parents, 57% for Hispanic parents, and 38% for white parents.
In a sign of the disruptions that have become routine this school year, 43% of parents said that they had switched among virtual, in-person or hybrid since the previous fall.
It has been "a bit of a journey, to put it mildly," said Nick Ehrenberg, a father of two in Minneapolis, who was one of the parents polled. School for his children has shifted back and forth between virtual, hybrid, and virtual again due to closures and CONTINUE READING: Audio: NPR/Ipsos Poll: Nearly One Third Of Parents May Stick With Remote Learning | 89.3 KPCC