Thread by @rcallimachi

1/ Three million. That's the estimate of how many children have dropped out of school as a result of the pandemic. To see in slow motion what it's like when a child falls behind, @tamirbenkalifa & I spent a week with 11-year-old Jordyn as he tried to learn nytimes.com/2021/05/05/us/…

2/ Jordyn's single mom, Precious, earns $12-an-hour as a security guard at a casino in Tunica, Miss. She is just below the cutoff for government assistance, and on her salary all she can afford is a $400-a-month apartment. It has no stove, no fridge - and crucially, no internet

3/ What does that mean for Jordyn in the age of remote learning? It means that he needs to wait for his mom to get home from work in order to use her cellphone to log into his virtual class. We sat next to him on this couch as he struggled to do math class on this phone:

4/ So that she could be home to supervise him, Precious signed up to work the overnight shift at the casino. She works all night, then takes this bus home, returning to the apartment just after 9 am. But school starts before that & so Jordyn misses several periods each school day

5/ Once home, Precious tries to keep busy, sweeping and cooking on a hot plate in the kitchen - the only apartment they could afford came without a stove - so that she can keep an eye on Jordyn, who is on the couch trying to learn. She told me her eyes sting from exhaustion.

6. But the problem is now far deeper than the lack of technology. Because Jordyn has missed so much school, he's so far behind that he no longer understands what is being taught. That's especially the case in math, a cumulative subject where each skill builds on another.

7. Jordyn's math teacher explained to me that in the weeks he missed, she introduced the formula: Volume = Width x Length x Height. Jordyn missed that concept, and so he was lost during a recent class when children were asked to calculate the volume of boxes of various sizes

8. I was at his side and saw how frustrated he became, as he guessed answers to problems & got them wrong. That frustration has meant that a child that once did so well in school he got the top score in his grade is now quickly disengaging, like so many others across the country:

9. Principal Barbara Cage at Jordyn's school has tried to intervene. School officials have come to Jordyn's home. They've offered to let him come to school four days a week, when the school is only doing in-person learning two days a week. But his mom doesn't have a car.

10. The mom explained to me that she's scared to let the 11-year-old take the bus on his own in the early morning, before she gets home from her shift. The boy is failing several classes and according to the school, may need to repeat the 5th grade because of how far he's fallen:

11. Much has been written about how the poor have suffered disproportionately in this pandemic. What was clear in the week we spent with this bright & curious boy is that middle-class families have the tools to to blunt the pandemic's impact. A boy like Jordyn is fully exposed.