Many schools noticing worse grades with distance learning

"Experts have warned since the beginning of the pandemic, and the unexpected national experiment in online learning, that remote schooling would take a serious academic toll on children," Hannah Natanson reports for The Washington Post. "Now, evidence of poor achievement in virtual classrooms is beginning to emerge nationwide." Many districts in the Post story were urban or suburban, but all signs point to an across-the-board drop in performance (which could be investigated by journalists anywhere). 

The pandemic has accentuated the rural-urban broadband gap, especially on tribal lands, The Associated Press reports. It's also drawn attention disparities such as teacher shortages, infrastructure weaknesses, and a disconnect with state and federal legislators, Phyllis Coulter reports for Illinois Farmer Today.

Jack Schneider, a public-school testing expert and associate education professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, told the Post that the pandemic has reached a "tipping point," and that schoolchildren with scarce resources are likely to be so far behind that the nation should make everyone repeat their current grade next year. "The default should be, once we’re in-person again, everybody could go back to the grade they were in March of 2020," Schneider told the Post. "We need to slow the pace down in the name of equity."