This is the Coronavirus Schools Briefing, a guide to the seismic changes in U.S. education that are taking place during the pandemic. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
The coronavirus pandemic is hastening sweeping changes to the SAT college entrance exam. The College Board, which produces the test, said that to reduce demands on beleaguered students, the general exam would no longer contain an optional essay section. And subject-matter tests will cease in the United States, too.
“The pandemic accelerated a process already underway,” the organization said in a statement.
Standardized testing — once a given in a college application — has taken a hit since the pandemic started. The College Board tried and failed to quickly create a test that could be taken digitally at home, although it said it was still continuing to work on the project with the aim of offering proctored versions at testing centers. And many colleges dropped the requirement that students take the test, as well as its competitor the ACT — a trend driven in part by concerns about equity that received a boost during the pandemic.
The pandemic has also raised safety concerns about testing. Our colleague Emma Goldberg took the SAT in September, as testing centers closed around her. The airborne virus heightened an already stressful experience.
“Normally you’d have this foreboding sense that comes from taking a test in a room with 100 other students,” a fellow test-taker, Nikola Kasarskis, 17, told Emma. “Now, instead, you have this foreboding sense of taking the test in a room with someone who might have a deadly virus. I don’t know what’s worse.”
Critics of the College Board said the decision to drop the subject tests and essay was almost certainly driven by financial considerations. (In the past, the SAT has represented a substantial portion of the College Board’s more than $1 billion in annual revenue.)
Now the board may be pivoting its economic strategy, the critics said: The College Board also administers Advanced Placement tests and cited the tests’ “expanded reach” in the decision to cancel the SAT subject tests.
The chief executive officer of the College Board, David Coleman, said the organization’s decision was not a financial one, and its goal was to eliminate redundant exams.
“Anything that can reduce unnecessary anxiety and get out of the way is of huge value to us,” he said.
But a greater focus on A.P. scores may only increase pressure on high school students. They have to take those tests by the end of junior year for colleges to see their scores, pushing the laborious college admissions process even earlier into adolescence. Pencils down, masks up.
Teacher shortages close schools
The United States has long dealt with a staggering teacher shortage. Years of steep cuts in school funding, low wages, difficult working conditions and lack of respect have driven qualified people from the profession.
The pandemic has worsened that shortfall, to disastrous effect. Teacher shortages have become one of the main reasons that schools and even entire districts have had to shut down in-person instruction during the pandemic, often for weeks on end. That’s because of two trends.
First, the ranks of the nation’s educators have thinned out. Because of the pandemic, many teachers left the profession or took early retirement. And many retired teachers who worked as substitutes have turned down in-person gigs.
Second, educators have struggled through an often unsafe, revolving door of a semester. Spikes in virus infections and exposures have led more educators to stay home. Limited access to coronavirus testing and minimal contact tracing have unnecessarily extended quarantines.
“It’s just such a ripple effect,” said Laura Penman, a superintendent in a small, rural district in Indiana. “Teacher shortages can make a whole school go virtual.”
To fill classrooms, districts have increased pay for substitutes. (Some have even advertised for temporary positions on local billboards). Some states and districts have also relaxed requirements and training to get emergency substitute teachers into classrooms.
Experts have criticized both measures. And those stopgap solutions don’t always work.
In Georgia, Gwinnett County Public Schools — one of the nation’s largest districts, with about 178,000 students — tried both approaches to no avail. With 460 teachers stuck at home in January because of possible coronavirus exposures, the district temporarily switched to remote learning.
Nevada also relaxed teaching requirements for large urban districts, and substitutes have had to fight to make it through each hectic day.
“It was just chaos,” said Brandon Summers, a violinist who took on a semester-long substitute assignment as an orchestra teacher in the Clark County School District in Nevada, the nation’s fifth-largest. “They were just happy to get another adult body in front of these kids.”
Around the world
College update
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Yale University said the vaccine would most likely be available to all members of the campus community by April.
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Union College is quarantining all on-campus students after a spike in cases.
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In West Virginia, more than 3,000 people who work in higher education have received the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine.
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On football: Kent Babb, a sports reporter at The Washington Post, wrote a detailed profile of Tony Franklin, a football coach who fought for his principles at Middle Tennessee State University before he left the field for good amid concerns over the virus.
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A good read: The Hechinger Report looked at one of the most worrying trends in higher education right now: young men who are choosing to work instead of attend college. “We’re more focused on money,” said Debrin Adon, 17, a senior at a public high school in Worcester, Mass.
K-12 update
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The Chicago Teachers Union plans to meet on Wednesday afternoon to discuss taking steps toward a strike, WBEZ reports.
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About half of Washington, D.C.’s public school teachers and about 70 percent of support staff members received notice to return to buildings on Feb. 1.
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Schools across Europe have started to close to fend off the new coronavirus variant, after countries expended considerable effort to keep them open.
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South Africa delayed reopening both its public and private schools, as the new variant spreads and hospitals fill.
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School funding in Texas still hangs in the balance. Although the state passed significant funding for public schools in 2019, legislators have not yet decided whether they will cut district funding, which has historically been tied to enrollment.
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Working students: Linda Jacobson wrote a moving piece in The 74 about teenagers struggling to balance remote learning and part-time jobs, often at the same time.
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A useful resource: Education Week is keeping tabs on where teachers are eligible for their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.
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A true hero: Jacob Kohut, a sergeant in the D.C. National Guard, is also a music teacher. He is holding classes remotely from his Humvee while deployed for the inauguration, playing instruments over a laptop. “The last thing these students need is a disruption in their teaching,” he told The Washington Post.
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A good read: Sarah Carr, the editor of The Boston Globe’s education team, wrote a devastating piece on reading loss. She interviewed 15 families over six months. Her piece is long, involved and essential. We highly recommend you read it.
Tip: Manage screen time
The Times recently reported on how soaring screen time among children has alarmed parents and experts.
Some families may want to change their relationship to devices. Here is an article from The Times with tips on how to create “screen-life balance.” Here are five suggestions to reduce family screen time from an adolescent medicine specialist. And here is a first-person account from Anya Kamenetz, an education correspondent at NPR who wrote a parenting book on screen time, about her approach to dealing with screens at home during the pandemic.
