Thread by @ehaspel

THREAD: With so many major school districts going virtual, there's a ton of concern about the impacts on student learning. Now that the ship has largely sailed, I think it's worth taking a long-run view with a more structural idea: temporarily adding a fifth year of high school.

Importantly, the fifth year would only apply for students currently in 8th grade and below; the current cohort of high schoolers would graduate as normal. This is important for a few reasons: one, the need for 'catch-up' is gong to be highest among the younger students, & two...

...we've seen during the pandemic just how ill-equipped our large public education system is to move nimbly in new directions (this is somewhat by design). Giving districts four years to plan - and government bodies time to budget for it - is a reasonable time horizon.

There is no magic reason why high school is four years; from time to time, proposals arise to lengthen it to five or shorten it to three. Four is just sort of a legacy number that goes back to European traditions. Extending it to five years for a while is simply a policy choice.

Now, why do this? Because we know that the pandemic is going to exacerbate existing inequities. We know remote learning doesn't work well for young kids or for many populations. Even with the best intentions, this is going to be a disaster for many, many students.

You can address this two ways, in terms of big swings needed to deal with the scope of the problem. One is that you can have everyone just sort of repeat the grade they're in now. @MichaelPetrilli proposed this a while back, and it's reasonable! But...

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…

...it runs into two fatal problems. First is that polling shows parents HATE the idea of repeating, and second is that it mean you have to deal with two simultaneous cohorts of Kindergarten kids moving through the system. Adding a fifth high school year veers around these by...

...letting current students continue to be promoted at their usual pace, as one cohort, and again provides plenty of time to find physical space to hold the fifth year if current buildings don't allow. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to give years-long runway in ed.

The other critical thing it does it lets you spread out learning standards **across the curriculum, K-to-now-13** so that each grade level is expected to cover fewer topics. This builds in space for needed remediation due to pandemic learning losses. Also space for enrichment!

Now, there are plenty of criticisms and detail ?s, no doubt. But philosophically, it comes down to this: The current cohort of school-aged kids is basically losing a year of their education through no fault of their own. The fairest response is to give them an extra year back.