Education Week - March 11, 2020 - 6

If Virus Shutters
Schools, Can
Learning Go On?

WHAT THE

RESEARCH
SAYS

Can Black Teachers Draw More
Students to Advanced Classes?
"An Honors Teacher Like Me: Effects of Access to Same-Race
Teachers on Black Students' Advanced-Track Enrollment
and Performance"

Black students are more likely to enroll in advanced
coursework-honors classes, Advanced Placement
courses, or International Baccalaureate classes-when a
black teacher is among the educators teaching that course,
according to a study of North Carolina students.
The study found that having a black teacher meant that
the percentage of black students in advanced courses rose
from 27 percent to 29 percent. Black students were not
more likely to pass a class if they had a black teacher, but
the overall advanced-coursework passing rate for black
students did increase by a modest 1.5 percentage points.
Students of other races and ethnicities were also more
likely to enroll in advanced courses if one of the teachers
was black-and the impact for them was about as strong
as it was on black students. Study author Cassandra M.D.
Hart, an associate professor of educational policy at the
University of California, Davis, noted that other research
has shown that adolescents view Latino and black teachers
more favorably than they do white teachers. Hart's study
drew on student data collected between 2007 and 2013, a
sample that included nearly 266,000 black students.

-CHRISTINA A. SAMUELS

Disabilities More Common in
Rural Areas
"Prevalence of Children With Developmental Disabilities, by
Urbanicity"

Children in rural areas are more likely to have
developmental disabilities and are less likely to receive
special education or early-intervention services than
children living in urban areas, says a new report from the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study from the center's National Center for Health
Statistics found that almost 20 percent of children ages 3
to 17 in rural areas qualified for a developmental-disability
diagnosis, compared with 17 percent of children in urban
areas.
-COREY MITCHELL

Cyberattacks Rise in Schools
Of the 348 publicly disclosed school cyber attack
incidents in 2019, 60 percent were data breaches or
other unauthorized disclosures, says a new report.

8
13
60%

Denial of Service
Phishing
Unauthorized Disclosure/Breach

Ransomware
Other incident

SOURCE: K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center

6 | EDUCATION WEEK | March 11, 2020 | www.edweek.org

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

temporary shutdown of schools in China, Japan, and
Italy, affecting nearly 300 million students, according
to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Many Districts Don't Provide Devices
The virus, which has spread globally in the past two
months after originating in China's Wuhan province, has
begun to take hold in the United States. According to figures
late last week from the Johns Hopkins University's Center
for Systems Science and Engineering, 19 states reported
at least one case, and 14 people have died from the virus,
with more than 200 cases currently confirmed and more expected. News about the virus and its impacts are unspooling
at a rapid rate, as are recommendations for frequent handwashing and limiting contact with others when you're sick.
CDC officials began urging U.S. schools to make plans for
a possible short- or long-term shutdown. But other public
health experts have cautioned that closing school too early
or for too long could cause harmful ripple effects, even
though research of pandemics over the last century showed
major benefits to preemptive closure of schools. District
leaders across the country are huddling this week to determine how to proceed.
Many students across the country are equipped with tablets and computers provided by their schools. More than half
of 300 school IT leaders who responded to a 2019 Consortium of School Networking (CoSN) survey said their districts
have at least begun moving towards 1:1 programs in which
each student has a device to complete assignments during
the school day and at home.
But that leaves out many school districts where such devices aren't provided, as well as many students, particularly
in rural areas and from low-income backgrounds, for whom
home access to the internet or a personal digital device is
out of reach.
Some school leaders haven't yet figured out how they
would maintain the flow of learning if school needs to close
for an extended period of time. Sal Pascarella, the superintendent of Danbury Public Schools in Connecticut, is resigned to accept that students won't be able to access new
concepts or learning materials if they're stuck at home for
more than a few days.
"Our school district would not be able to sustain in a
meaningful way substantive teaching in the content area on
a platform like teleteaching," Pascarella said.
Of the district's 12,000 students, 52 percent are eligible
for free and reduced-price lunch, and school resources are
tight, Pascarella said. Some of the district's high schools have
begun developing e-learning capabilities more generally, he
said, but elementary and middle schools are further behind.
Developing bilingual programs for the district's substantial
population of English-language learners has also been a
challenge, he said.
"The teachers start looking at learning that they want to
reinforce or extend their work, but not what I would call
moving the curriculum forward, just reinforcing," he said.
Alaska's Sitka School District is in a similar situation, with
a learning management system in place for secondary, but
not elementary schools. An existing homeschool program
could provide elementary resources, but Superintendent
Mary Wegner said her team has "a lot of work to do to figure
out what we would do if we had to close."
She'd like to see the Federal Communications Commission expand broadband access to more households. For now,
her district remains focused on prevention efforts.
"Nobody's thinking we're going to be zero cases forever,"
Wegner said. "We now have a window of time to prepare."
Having resources for e-learning isn't the same as being
able to pull it off successfully, said Keith Krueger, the CEO
of CoSN, a nonprofit membership organization for K-12 tech
leaders.
"Those districts that are trying to do this on the fly, don't

have a ubiquitous environment, don't have their staff
trained, are not likely to be able to turn on a dime and do
this," he said.
He's urging districts to take this current period of time-
with heightened concerns about potential shutdowns but
relatively few actual closures-to get creative. "I would definitely call in the virtual learning experts in your community,
in your school district, to think through what are the things
that you're already doing that will work, what do you need to
beef up in terms of training," Krueger said.
Leaders of larger districts "don't have a really good sense
of what they have in-house," says John Watson, founder
of the Evergreen Education Group, which runs the Digital
Learning Collaborative. A state- or district-run online school
can provide a learning management system and teachers
with online teaching capabilities, he said.
As for devices, he recommends striking up partnerships
with local libraries, coffee shops, and other businesses that
can supplement schools' device supply. The collaborative's
2019 e-learning report offers additional resources, including
insights from some of the 12 states that already have policies
allowing e-learning days to count toward required instructional time.
Kevin Schwartz, the chief technology officer of the Austin
Independent School District, in Texas, has been thinking
about trying to enlist local businesses and community centers that have Wi-Fi and other resources, for students who
lack reliable internet connectivity at home.
Schwartz said it's likely the district could "quickly marshal the forces to solve the technical pieces" of delivering
online work from teachers to students through Canvas, the
80,000-student district's learning management system.
The broader challenge, he said, would be building recognition that many of the lessons delivered in traditional
classrooms would have to be completely rethought. When
schools are forced to close, "everyone's mind goes to, how
do you still keep doing the same things you're doing in the
classroom, at home?" said Schwartz.
In fact, "the challenge is how do you practically do this in
a different way?" he said. "Because you're not going to get
25 kids together in a room and teach them. It's going to be
different. It's rethinking the approach, not just from a tools
perspective, but from a pedagogy perspective."
Wegner, the superintendent of the Sitka School District in
Alaska, doesn't believe online learning is inherently inferior
to in-class instruction. "We in public education have this
concept that if you're sitting in a chair in front of a teacher,
learning is occurring," she said. "But really learning is occurring when students are interacting with the content in
a meaningful way. That can happen in an online environment."
Mountain Brook Schools in Alabama started developing an emergency e-learning strategy while preparing for
the H1N1 virus in 2009. Schools ended up not needing to
close for that event, but the district still developed an "eDay
program" and learned some valuable lessons, according to
Donna Williamson, who retired last year as the district's
chief technology officer.
Online assignments need to be flexible enough to accommodate all operating systems-asking students to "open a
word processor" or "type" an essay rather than instructing
students to "open Microsoft Word," which they might not
have. Williamson said widely accessible or cloud-based resources, like Google Docs, work best.
Parents in Williamson's school district are now fully aware
of what would be expected from students during closure. But
other districts that are further behind should remain flexible,
she said. The first time Mountain Brook had an eDay, the
district told parents "if you can't do this because we were
not fully prepared, students have two weeks to make up the
work," Williamson said.

Equity Is an Issue
Districts scrambling to develop e-learning resources won't
be alone in their efforts. The State Educational Technology
Directors Association later this month plans to unveil a
"Coalition of E-Learning" portal with "resources, policies,
and company support for states, districts, and schools," according to Candice Dodson, the organization's executive
director. Several U.S. technology companies, including K12
Inc., have signaled willingness to partner with districts at a
reduced rate or even for free; similar partnerships have been
in effect in China for weeks.
Individual districts could lift each other up as well. After

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Education Week - March 11, 2020

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