How Are Students Returning to Learning Across the Country?

Looking at Inequity and Access

Most students across the United States will be returning to the classroom over the next two weeks, and teachers, parents and students themselves are preparing for a very different back to school experience than in past years. But some schools may be better equipped to support students than others. Watch the video, and answer the discussion questions. To read the transcript of the video above, click here. 

• When schools across the nation shifted to remote learning at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the change exacerbated several inequities between students including class, race, access to technology, and learning abilities, indicating which students may or may not succeed.
• Some of the gaps identified that face low-income families and low-funding schools include access to computers, broadband internet, parental availability, safe and comfortable learning environments for remote work and aging, obsolete infrastructure for in-person learning.

Discussion Questions

1. Focus question: Other than the solutions suggested in this NewsHour piece, what ways do you think unequal resources can be addressed so that all students have safe and effective access to learning?
2. Media literacy: What story of back to school this year do you think is being under-covered by the media? Why?

Extension Activity

This past weekend, NewsHour broadcast a number of stories on the ways education is returning across the country. Have your students choose one story and analyze it by identifying the 5Ws and an H (Who is the story about, what are the people in the story doing to prepare for the school year, when and where is this happening, why are these solutions needed, and how are they carrying them out). Then have students share with the class.

1. COVID-19 & The Classroom: Parents share their struggles and plans as schools reopen
2. Making virtual learning work for you: Tips from Khan Academy founder Sal Khan
3. Homeschooling through the coronavirus pandemic
4. COVID-19 is pushing some schooling outdoors, but will it work for NYC?
5. Can outdoor schooling work for everyone?

Dig Deeper: All through this summer, NewsHour EXTRA has been gathering stories on what return to the classroom is set to look like. Each school district and each state faces its own unique challenges and has posed its own unique solutions. To find out more about back to school plans as they’ve developed this summer, examine these lesson plans:

• Who decides whether or not schools should reopen?
• Ask Juliette Kayyem: What will it take for communities to feel safe reopening schools?
• Teachers in Florida push back against reopening mandate

Republished with permission from PBS NewsHour Extra.