By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
“It has been tough!” lament many teachers and school administrators. Before 2020, the numbers of college students pursuing K–12 teaching credentials was already falling, and shortages were growing in science, special education—and in some geographic regions—all fields of teaching. Now only the more affluent schools have been able to maintain qualified teachers.
Many teachers faced a double workload, with up to half their students in face-to-face classes while also providing “equivalent” online coursework to other students at home. Many feel overworked and exhausted from having to teach in constrained classroom conditions and with ineffective media.
Although each state uses unique assessments, most measures show student learning loss in language arts of about 40 percent; in math, 60 percent. No recognition is given to the unique traits of different disciplines. Many students advanced their reading while at home because there is a variety of interesting material available—the “Harry Potter” effect. But mathematics requires day-by-day discipline to gradually nibble more difficult math problems. Meanwhile science is meaningless without hands-on labs.
Great emphasis has been placed on social-emotional learning (SEL), ignoring that students (and the public in general) would have far less distress if they had received a far better science education.
Education Week, the newspaper of record for K–12 education, has detailed studies showing the loss of education, as well as teacher commentaries indicating their exhaustion with double-teaching and with administrators who are not listening to them. Next to the printed research are advertisements from the Ed-Tech Industrial Complex bragging about how successful distance learning was and how the old-school Luddite teachers have now been forced to use modern technology. Therefore, the U.S. is likely to be one of the few places where extensive use of disastrous media will continue.
The massive shift to online learning has been good for the video-game business. According to the Washington Post, spending on video-games rose 22 percent this last year. In addition, chat platforms dedicated to gamers saw a doubling to 140 million users. Over the prior two decades, roughly 15 percent of male students have dropped out of the academic pipeline due to video-game addiction due to their greater susceptibility (only 3 percent of females are addicted). This was already contributing to the increased proportion of female students in higher education worldwide that already exceeds 60 percent. The significantly higher dropout of males from community colleges over the last two years may be one result of increased video-game addiction and may likely contribute to ongoing declines. As video-games become the dominant form of youth culture, academics is declining further.
Early parent protests centered around babysitting. With younger students staying home, this constrained parents going to work, and especially mothers who gave up far more jobs. The shutdown of school sports and competition likewise revealed the American obsession with sports.
K–12 school boards, normally routine non-partisan management meetings, became highly politicized events requiring police presence with occasional arrests of unruly protesters. Early disputes centered on masking requirements and COVID mitigation, but soon moved to curriculum issues concerning baseless allegations about teaching critical race theory, sex and gender education, and anything that would make their little child “uncomfortable.” Censorship of classroom and library books and media surged. Some citizens also hope the Supreme Court will permit state tax funding to go to religious schools.
Many states have seen an increase in state tax revenues. On average, half of state taxes go toward funding K–12 education. Although extra federal funding has paid for time-limited extra needs during this pandemic, few states have taken any actions to increase teacher salaries and some are looking to cut tax rates. Today, American schools have our highest number of unqualified faculty in the classroom.
The one possible good from this last year of pandemic realities has been the need for some administrators to return to the classroom as the number of teacher absences increased and exceeded available substitute teachers. While classes were often outside of the principal’s teaching field and added to the “babysitting” effect, many teachers reported how it did result in the administrators finally getting realistic when they found themselves in their teachers' shoes.
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John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities in 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.