A recent survey of school districts in Southern California showed that students from low-income families most struggled with online learning during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a Thursday report.
The survey, conducted by the Los Angeles Times, looked at 45 school districts in the region. It revealed a sharp digital divide between high-income and low-income communities in their ability to adapt to online learning after schools close their campuses.
A gate is locked at the closed Ranchito Elementary School in the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles.
(AP)
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Districts from more affluent communities, such as the Las Viergenes Unified School District, for example, were able to make the transition with relative ease. After she closed on a Friday, the school ran virtually, learning lessons online, less than a week later, the Times reported.
But districts from poorer communities – where Blacks and Latinos make up a large proportion of students – are struggling to make that transition. In Coachella Valley Unified School District, many students did not have a computer or Internet access.
Many are concerned that these differences in public education will result in long-term harm to a generation of children.
“The longer this lasts, the longer the pendulum swings to where this could be a generation that has really lagged behind,” Beth Tarasawa, of the non-profit education research group NWEA, told the Times.
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Some districts sought to close the digital divide by providing computers and Internet hotspots to families. But the outburst was far from smooth.
At Lynwood Unified, a low-income district, officials had ordered computers for nearly all of its 13,000 students, but many failed to arrive on schedule, leaving many students behind in their lessons, according to the Times survey. The province’s education bureau also could not find internet hotspots for sale.
And with the new school year approaching, California officials say students still need more than a million computers and hotspots.
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At a recent panel on school reopening, UCLA education professor Tyrone Howard said the pandemic “has pulled the plug on the gross inequalities that exist in our society.”
“While they are not new,” Howard said, “I think in this really difficult moment, it has created the realities about inequality, even more front and center in all of our daily lives.
