Highly Ranked, Wealthy Virginia School District Still Can’t Teach Kids Online After Six Weeks

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
The district’s technology staff are refusing to take any blame for the fiasco, the Post reported, and their union is demanding that they receive additional “hazard pay” even though students and teachers still can’t connect for learning.

“In the immediate future, Fairfax teachers will refrain from real-time video instruction, and use tools such as Google Classroom, prerecorded videos and learning packets,” the district superintendent has decided, according to the Post. His solution includes hiring lawyers and convening committees to evaluate the failures. Who knows how long that will take. The Post notes a dad who decided to pull his daughter from the district and homeschool her for the rest of the year as a result of the chaos.

Fairfax is one of the highest-ranked school districts in the state and nation, and the tenth-largest in the country. It spends approximately $16,000 per student per year, according to federal data.

Fairfax’s online schooling difficulties, delays, and incompetence are not an anomaly as governors indefinitely suspend kids’ futures due to coronavirus mass death theories that are failing to materialize. A survey of 82 of the nation’s largest school districts, which educate nearly one-fifth of American school kids, found in late March that only 10 percent were providing defenestrated children “any kind of real curriculum and instruction program.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/2...still-cant-teach-kids-online-after-six-weeks/
 

SamSpade

Well-Known Member
PREMO Member
Interesting use of "defenestrate". Prior to today I thought it just meant "out the window".
 

SamSpade

Well-Known Member
PREMO Member
I'm not entirely convinced anyone has a good handle on this yet - but I give them grace because they had to hobble together an education plan which caught them completely flat-footed. I think I am particularly frustrated with our own system in that, the only way to track their progress is to log in as THEM - and look at it. And that other portions of their school curricula - P.E., Music, Art - and for my little one, Social Studies and Science - are NOT part of the main program and have to be submitted completely separately.
 

RareBreed

Throwing the deuces
My youngest brother teaches in that district. The first day it went operable the students spent the entire day creatively using the f word and posting derogatory information about each other. He said it's still a nightmare a week or so later.
I heard some HS kids put porn on the site and that caused some of the issues as well.
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Fairfax Public School Leaders Have Failed My Children During Coronavirus Closures, And Should Resign

My son’s teacher had effectively used alternative, secure platforms to connect with her students, even attempting to avoid Blackboard’s clogged system by meeting earlier than the start of our regularly scheduled school day. But she was told to stop.

Why? Because FCPS is a bloated system that brings everyone down to the lowest common denominator instead of meeting new challenges with flexibility. We could be sharing best practices and resources across classes and schools; instead we are waiting for a Blackboard software update that has yet to materialize.


Last week, Maribeth Luftglass, the assistant superintendent of the FCPS Department of Information Technology, resigned from her position. It’s time for Brabrand and all the school board members to follow suit.

The challenges of this pandemic will not end with this school year, or even when our kids return to school in the fall. We have 190,000 children who have missed almost a third of a school year, and Fairfax County Public Schools must make significant decisions about how to address this education gap.

Brabrand and the school board are clearly incapable of leading through this challenge. Their performance is an embarrassment, and our children would all be better served by new leadership.


I wonder if someone ' got paid '
 

kom526

They call me ... Sarcasmo
St. Mary's isn't much better. There is a lot of CYA on Moakley as opposed to let's figure this out and try and do what's best for the kids.
 
Top