North Carolina General Assembly
President Pro Tempore
Senator Phil Berger
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 17, 2020
"Sound, Basic Education?" Not with This Governor.
Cooper, school districts violating Constitutional right to sound, basic education
Wall St. Journal: "Remote learning widens education gap"
Raleigh, N.C. –
Today's Wall Street Journal
story
, "Are They Setting My Children Up for Failure?’ Remote Learning Widens Education Gap" lays bare the consequences of closing school to in-person instruction.
The public school system exists to provide
every
student with a sound basic education and an equal opportunity for success. It's even a requirement in North Carolina's Constitution.
Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) said,
"Gov. Cooper's decision to allow schools to close down entirely to in-person instruction will cause some children, many of them from low-income families, to fail. It's an unspeakable travesty for those children that's fully caused by the Governor’s ill-advised decision, and something that is completely preventable."
We know that at-risk children are more likely to need in-person instruction in order to make educational progress. We also know that children from middle- and upper-income families generally will continue to have access to out-of-classroom supplemental educational experiences and instruction from their parents, tutors, and other materials that money can buy. But children from less fortunate circumstances trapped in systems with closed schools will be on their own with no tutor, no help, and no network to save them.
Berger continued,
"By state decree, children from wealthy families will continue to make educational progress while children from difficult economic circumstances will be even more likely to fail. Gov. Cooper's plan is a fundamental violation of the Constitution's requirement that the state provide to its children a 'sound, basic education.'"
At a minimum, Gov. Cooper should require school districts to accept students whose parents request full in-classroom instruction. Those are likely to be students from lower-income families who do not have the resources to supplement "virtual" learning.
Here are excerpts from today's Wall Street Journal story, but you should read the whole piece:
"The problems were amplified for children in the nation’s worst-performing schools, including at Jackson Public Schools, where 95% of the students are Black and just as many are considered low income. District parents say if education is the great equalizer, their children are at a growing disadvantage.
...
"Preliminary research suggests students nationwide will return to school in the fall with roughly 70% of learning gains in reading relative to a typical school year, and less than 50% in math, according to projections by NWEA, an Oregon-based nonprofit education-services firm. It expects a greater learning loss for minority and low-income children, who have less access to technology and whose families are more likely to be affected by the economic downturn.
...
"Missing those months will leave some children across the country, especially those already behind, struggling to catch up, educators said. 'I think of it as an academic death spiral,' said Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington Bothell. 'I don’t know how you do algebra without pre-algebra.'
...
"Ms. Grant, a 29-year-old single mother, reads to her son and has him read to her, but he didn’t understand work provided by his school and she didn’t have time to help him while working a full-time cleaning job in the next city, she said. Javonta is learning disabled and has already been held back a year.
...
"Falling behind academically is a top reason why students drop out of school, according to the National Dropout Prevention Center, based in South Carolina.
...
"When the shutdown started on March 16, Ms. Bunton said that her son only regularly heard from one of his teachers and that homework packages weren’t available, either online or through physically picking them up.
"On April 9, she asked on a district Facebook post if students would receive work packages like a neighboring district. She didn’t receive a response."
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