What One District Did to Prevent Students From Failing - The New York Times

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Schools in the pandemic: report cards

When a small area of ​​Texas requires all students to attend classes in person, academic performance will improve. But the same is true for coronavirus infections.

Lubbock, Texas—Madison Hermosillo was alone in his second-year class at Roosevelt High School in his room. He was confused and quickly fell behind.

Her school is a face-to-face school located between cotton fields and oil derricks on the outskirts of Lubbock, Texas. However, the coronavirus cases were rampant, and her mother decided to stay at home.

Lubbock

county

Dallas

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Houston

New York Times

students

Latino percentage,

White percentage

Black percentage

Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander

In person only

Madison, now 16, is busy making remote distributions in geometry, chemistry and world geography. Soon, she failed in all courses except physical education.

She said, "My mother will tell me to do it, and then I will go to the room and watch TikTok on my phone."

She is not the only one. By the end of the first marking period in September, 77% of remote high school students in the area had failed at least once. In contrast, those who choose to participate in person are mostly passers.

Similarly, about 30% of the youngest students, especially those in the first and second grades, did not meet the grade expectations for reading assessment at the beginning of the school year, which is about twice as high as in previous years, the principal of elementary school Delynn Wheeler said.

For local officials, this is evidence that distance education caused students to withdraw last spring.

Those who were still remote at the beginning of the fall semester struggled to catch up.

Therefore, the school district took drastic action: it ended the option of distance learning and required all its 1,010 students (from kindergarten to 12th grade) to return to the classroom.

"This works for us in our elementary school district," said principal Dallas Grimes. "It won't work anywhere."

The Roosevelt Independent School District is similar to many other areas in Texas: small and rural areas, with a large population of Hispanic students, many of whom live in poverty. As in other regions, the region is still working hard to provide remote guidance, despite creating mobile hotspots for students who do not have the Internet, and often checking in with students who are behind.

The results of personal guidance have been mixed. Dozens of teachers, staff and students have been infected, and many more have to be isolated at home due to exposure. The absence disrupted everything from classroom teaching to building maintenance.

But teachers and administrators say that the best thing for students is to go to school.

"When those kids walked through that door, that was fine," said Theresa Hoffman, the assistant principal of the elementary school in the area, recalling her mood as she watched the students go back. "There is no school that does this-I just can't imagine."

The entire Roosevelt Independent School District is located on one campus, along flat country roads. A large number of yellow buses arrive every morning, carrying most of the students, many of them wearing the maroon school colors of the Eagles.

Students are 57% of Latino, 37% of whites, black students are small, and other races are small. More than three-quarters of people are eligible for free or reduced price lunches.

Roosevelt was one of the first regions in Texas to terminate distance learning, and parents were notified on September 22. All students must return next Monday. (Most students in Texas go to school in person.)

Of the approximately 140 distance learning students, 15 students dropped out of school because their family members worried about the health risks of attending classes in person.

Grimes said that seven other people have left school in a conservative and often suspected area of ​​West Texas for the opposite reason: their parents objected to a state order requiring all persons 10 years of age or older. Of children wear masks.

Grimes said that the decision to bring everyone back to the classroom has improved performance so far. By the time of winter vacation, only 9% of high school students failed at least one class.

But as performance improves, this pandemic has also increased.

From the beginning of the school year to the beginning of January, many of the 170 teachers, administrators and other staff in the school district tested positive for the coronavirus (52) or had to be quarantined due to contact (27).

Absenteeism forces teachers to attend classes, lunch, and even take away rubbish. The supervisor, Mr. Grimes, must drive the bus when the regular driver’s test is positive, or have to be isolated due to exposure.

High school principal Tim Crane and his wife (special education teacher) tested positive in early November. He said: "We are still recovering from Covid." "My wife and I are doing our best , But we did it."

As more and more schools across the country open in the fall, evidence suggests that face-to-face learning does not necessarily lead to widespread transmission of the coronavirus in schools-despite the emergence of a new and potentially more infectious coronavirus, which triggered The worries about reopening. school.

In Roosevelt, there are no regular coronavirus tests, but the area has taken basic safety measures, including requiring a mask when eating, and taking action when eating and firing.

The greater risk is infection outside of school. In the fall, an outbreak in the surrounding communities of Lubbock County in Texas was promoted by returning college revellers and local residents tired of pandemic influenza prevention measures.

Grimes said there were no cases related to school connections. But contact tracking is not yet complete. Mr. Crane said that neither he nor his wife heard of the tracer in Lubbock County after they fell ill.

Moreover, the community is not immune to the cost of this pandemic: a bus driver who tested positive after the week’s Thanksgiving holiday died a few days later.

The cafeteria table that can accommodate twelve students is limited to three. Numbered lunch tables fill the school gym. Some students ate at the place marked with blue tape in the stands.

The school has no space to maintain a six-foot separation in the classroom. The desire for collaborative work or gossip brings students closer.

"Guys, you will have to sit down," English teacher Kylie Martinez told three students who stood together in her freshman English class one morning last fall.

Under the dim lights of her classroom on the second floor, students read quietly and answered questions on their laptops-last year, this was a large part of school life and a way for students to understand whether they must be isolated at home.

"There is a mother, I am worried," Ms. Martinez said. She has two young children attending elementary schools in the area. "I am worried that they will be sick and we will be isolated."

So far, it has not happened. However, the pandemic directly affects about one-third of students: since the second week of January, 53 have tested positive since the beginning of the school year, and another 282 had to be isolated for two weeks due to exposure.

“I took a large geometry class, half of which was quarantine,” said Madison Hermosillo, a sophomore struggling with distance learning, before the Thanksgiving break.

Madison has adapted to the new habit of going back to school, from wearing a mask to sitting in a designated lunch seat. A few weeks after returning to school, her grades began to improve.

By the beginning of January, she had passed all courses.