COVID-19’s Ultimate Cost?

The general public [continues] to expect the public schools to
generate a classless society, do away with racial prejudice,
improve table manners, make happy marriages,
reverse the national habit of smoking,
prepare trained workers for the professions,
and produce patriotic and religious citizens
who are at the same time critical independent thinkers.
–Jacques Barzun

Nearly twenty years ago, psychologist Robert Evans observed what he termed “a crisis in childrearing” that was leading our society to delegate to educational institutions what were once considered family responsibilities:  everything “from breakfast, lunch, and medical checkups to the prevention of complex social and behavioral problems” (p. 144).  Not only were we wanting our schools to fulfill Jacques Barzun’s farcical wish list; we were truly expecting them to do so, and the reason why, Evans would go on to observe, is because “for several decades now, as families’ developmental functioning has declined, we have turned to schools to pick up the slack, delegating to them responsibility for a growing array of students’ non-academic needs” (p. 144).  As Harvard education professor, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, summed the situation well:  

we have great expectations as citizens for the role our schools play in developing and educating our children and in creating a better, healthier society, a wish list that has grown longer and more ambitious over the decades, and one that has become overwhelming, and, I believe, unattainable (p. 143).

I share their collective work today because I would argue that what was once considered a “crisis” has simply in the intervening years become the “new normal.”  As the economic demands for the two-parent incomes required simply to live paycheck-to-paycheck have combined with the negative impacts of technology on interpersonal relationships (see Steiner-Adair & Turkle), families have relegated ever more responsibility for raising our children to schools.  And that is true whether we’re talking public, private, or parochial institutions:  when I started at my independent school in 1996, there were 2 people on staff dedicated to student support in the high school division; when I left in 2019, that workload required 5.

The basic reality is that we have asked all our schools to take on burdens that institutions originally conceived as primarily academic ones were never intentionally structured to handle, and in the past month, we have watched as all of these other functions have disappeared in the proverbial blink of an eye as schools everywhere have shut their doors—which has got me to pondering what might be the true cost of the pandemic on education beyond the immediate challenges of continuing to distribute breakfasts and lunches to those children still in need of them and the disruption to learning generated by the entire educational process needing to move abruptly on-line.

One possible answer, I think, can be found in a reader’s response to my recent update, “COVID-19 and the Digital Divide.”  For those who have not seen it, this reader shared three parental responses from friends with children (all of whom are in the 6^th Grade) about how this move to on-line learning has been for their child, and ala Goldilocks, their reactions fell along a spectrum.  The child with a teacher for a parent seems to be making this adjustment smoothly; while the child for whom the kinds of services mentioned above are clearly needed has been abandoned to her own devices (literally).  Finally, the third child appears to be thriving a little too well such that the parent—and I acknowledge I may reading too much into my reader’s words—is dismayed enough with the quality of this child’s on-line learning that said parent is preparing to abandon formal schooling entirely.

Hence, this anecdotal polling would suggest that the true cost of the COVID-19 to our educational systems will range from benign to frustrated to neglect.  Those children blessed with a teacher for a parent will likely get by (as will those who are simply naturally intrinsically motivated).  Those without an educator at home will struggle (as anyone who has listened to the NPR coverage of parental responses to the pandemic can attest), and among those struggling, it appears there will also be a range.  Some, such as the child playing video games all day, will fall dramatically behind their, his, or her peers—with all that that implies not just for that child’s future learning but potential lifetime economic earnings, etc.  Others, such as the child destined for home schooling, will be left with an incomplete education—since no single parent has enough areas of expertise to expose their child to as many “metaphors for making meaning” as a school can.

Yet, I am going to argue that even the child who is performing well (within the limitations of on-line learning)—regardless of reasons—is still facing significant, potentially dangerous harm to his, her, or their future because of COVID-19.  Why? Because the virus threatens to compromise the entire educational system for an entire generation.  Already, the Maryland State Department of Education has waived key graduation requirement for this year for current seniors to receive their diplomas.  Normally, they must pass tests in American Government, Algebra I, and English 10 or—if they do not—they must complete individual projects overseen by a teacher to demonstrate the minimal level of mastery in these areas.  Since that project alternative was put into place precisely because so many seniors have not in the past passed one or more of the required tests, it is not unreasonable to assume that we will be sending out some members of the Class of 2020 into the world inadequately prepared for college or careers with high school diplomas that could be considered almost fraudulent.

And that is just the beginning.  In Maryland alone, we are facing nearly a $3 billion loss in tax revenue (and that’s if things start to open back up economically by June).  Our governor has frozen all future spending for the foreseeable future, essentially promising that he will veto any additional spending bills that were sent to him out of this year’s abbreviated legislative session, and that includes the one funding the educational reforms recommended by the Kirwan Commission that I have written about elsewhere (see Chapter 7 and my post, “Maybe It’s Pie After All…”).

We need those reforms—and not just for the many ethical reasons I have argued elsewhere in this project; there is some simple, naked, raw economic pragmatism and self-interest at work here.  As Duke and Columbia Universities’ professor, Stanley Litow points out, we already have a jobs skills crisis in this country threatening our economic security and future because of our underfunding of education in this country, and now because of the economic impact of the pandemic we are looking at the harsh reality of needing to cut that underfunding even further.  We know that the quality and quantity of education an individual receives correlates directly with lifetime earnings and improved economic well-being, and once we start down the path of underfunding our schools, it risks becoming a vicious circle (one Litow suggests we may already have been in even before the pandemic):  less funding for schools leads to lower quality learning leads to lower income jobs leads to less tax dollars leads to even lower funding for schools….  Where does it stop?

It is a harsh and scary picture, but I think COVID-19 has not only crippled our economy right now; it may have crippled our long-term ability to fully recover that economy by decimating—potentially for years!—the source of funding needed for the best “tool” society has to achieve this recovery in the first place:  our educational system.  That may be the ultimate cost of this pandemic, and I fear it will be unless we make some really tough choices about our social priorities moving forward.  The dinosaurs didn’t see their asteroid, just as we have not seen ours; the difference is that we have the power to control how we respond in the wake of the devastation.  Therefore, to paraphrase the question I have asked my AP students for 30 years:  what will we do with that power?

References

Bowie, L. (April 14, 2020) Maryland School Leaders Waive Some Graduation Requirements for High School Seniors.  The Baltimore Sun. https://www.baltimoresun.com/coronavirus/bs-md-graduation-requirements-waived-20200414-6kculyujdbfezfmyvwbafs2gom-story.html.

Evans, R. (2004) Family Matters: How Schools Can Cope with the Crisis in Childrearing.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Lawrence-Lightfoot, S. (2003) The Essential Conversation: What Parents and Teachers Can Learn from Each Other.  New York: Ballantine Books.

Litow, S. (March 23, 2020) America Already Had a Skills Crisis. Then the Coronavirus Hit. Barron’s. https://www.barrons.com/articles/america-already-had-a-skills-crisis-then-the-coronavirus-hit-51584990970.

NPR’s Morning Edition Education Coverage (2020) https://www.npr.org/2020/04/15/834746349/some-parents-develop-school-curriculum-for-their-children.

Steiner-Adair, C. (2013) The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age.  New York:  Harper.

Turkle, S. (2017) Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, 3^rd Edition.  New York:  Basic Books.

Wood, P. & Broadwater, L. (April 10, 2020) Maryland Gov. Hogan Announces State Budget Freeze as Coronavirus Hammers Economy, Officials Eye $2.8B Revenue Loss. The Baltimore Sun. https://www.baltimoresun.com/coronavirus/bs-md-hogan-friday-20200410-pvcgdpkbivemhhc6gtqyjaox2m-story.html.