Kurt Van Deren
Van Deren teaches English and social studies at Molalla High School. He lives in Portland.
We are living in extraordinary circumstances. The COVID-19 pandemic has shut down schools statewide and imposed restrictions on our daily lives – closures that I applaud and recognize are necessary in the interest of public safety. But as an educator, I am frustrated that the Oregon Department of Education, more than a week and a half after schools were closed, is largely cautioning districts against offering online instruction. The underlying message? Students’ needs can wait.
The stated reason for the agency’s stance is equity. The education department asserts that moving forward with some sort of virtual instruction could lead to inequities between and among students and families within districts and across the state – particularly for students with special education needs or who lack access to technology. While there is undoubtedly some validity to this concern, what it does is turn the idea of equity on its head. We should be assessing the needs of individual students and saying to those students who have unique needs, “We will provide you with the supports and accommodations you need to ensure that you are able to move forward successfully.” Instead, the education department is saying “No one is allowed to move forward unless everyone is.”
However admirable that may appear on its face, it’s not how individualized educational plans function in the classroom, nor should it be how we manage instruction during the current closure. Let me make an analogy. New students enter classes at my school on a regular basis, having transferred from other districts, or in extreme cases, having moved to the United States from outside of the country. A percentage of those students have unique educational needs; they may have dyslexia or ADHD or suffer from anxiety that interferes with their ability to process new information, they may have visual or hearing or other physical impairments, they may be English language learners, the list goes on. Those students who do have unique educational needs have their needs assessed when they enter our school, and an individualized educational plan is crafted to try to help them access class material and achieve the same academic success as all other students in the class. We do not, however, cease instruction for the rest of the class while the process of assessment and accommodation for those students with unique educational needs is ongoing.
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While the agency cites lack of access to technology as a reason to wait, the irony is that some districts are seeking to learn students’ technology needs through the use of on-line surveys. Think about that for a minute. And in an effort to keep students engaged during the closure, some districts, like mine, are providing generic educational resources that are available to students and families – you guessed it – on line.
I teach mostly seniors at Molalla High School, primarily in Advanced Placement courses and dual-credit courses through Clackamas Community College. In both instances, these are classes for which students can earn college credit. While College Board, which administers the AP exams, is already moving forward with plans to provide modified exams this spring to the nearly 1.25 million students who will take roughly 4 million exams,and the community college is already moving forward with digital classes for its students, my students are being left behind as a result of the state’s overly-cautious approach.
It is likely that some of my students have not yet considered the possible implications of waiting. Some may be thinking that the current closure means they get a free pass for the remainder of high school and a six-month long summer vacation. Others, however, recognize what they stand to lose the longer we all wait. I know this because I began receiving emails from students as early as last Saturday, two days after Gov. Kate Brown’s initial closure order, asking me for material they could work on in the meantime. These students realize the opportunity to earn college credit for these classes in which they have worked hard could be slipping away. If I were among these students, or if I were a parent of any of these students, I would be disillusioned and angry at the continued direction to just wait. Oregon’s students deserve better.
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March 25, 2020 at 09:00PM
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Opinion: State sends message of ‘wait’ to students who don’t have time - oregonlive.com
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