Thread by @TracyNovick

ok, back at listening to the #MAedu Board of Ed and I tweeted out that earlier thread before I got to the part where the Commissioner talked about the spike in mental health issues among young people--still haven't seen data on that--and (here's the real puzzler)

related that to the state collecting time on learning (effectively) data for all districts "to make sure" schools are connecting adults with students "so that we can try to mitigate some of this depression and isolation among children"

whoa
There's just a whole lot going on.

First, data can of course be used in many ways, but as this was outlined to superintendents, this was to give a standard set of information across districts on which to draw to frame what is really happening in and across districts.

That's pretty standard #MAEdu stuff.

(One of my boilerplate comments to new school committee members: DESE collects a LOT of data. They share most of it back to us, often in ways that are neatly organized and very useful.)

Second, this again repeats the notion that remote students are suffering *more* due to the pandemic.

Now, I don't think I'd dispute that, though not for the reason you'd think.

Last I checked (which was late last week), the seven largest urban districts in Massachusetts had just the handfuls of students in Boston attending classes in person.

Remember: Boston, Worcester, and Springfield all by themselves are 1/10th of the student population in the Commonwealth. This is a LOT of kids.

What do we know about the students in those districts?

They are majority low income (the state just flipped to over 50% high needs students this year; it's only 36.6% low income).

They are most of the students of color in the state.
They are most of the English learners in the state.

And what do we know about who has most been hit by the pandemic?

Those of low (and lower) income
Populations of color
Immigrant groups

aka: there's a BIG overlap between the most stressed populations and districts that are fully remote

(Speaking as a school committee member in one of those districts: that isn't coincidence)

Oh, anyway, back to the point:
Districts were not told that this is how the data would be used, but to argue (again without basis) that F2F time needs to be increased due to mental health (can’t you see that one coming?) is going to come crashing into a lot of what else we know.

And also: this goes back to how everything is schools, right?
If you are between the ages of say 4-18, schools get pointed to as your source of mental health.

From a societal point of view, that’s a fairly large concession.