When to re-open schools? How about never?

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A commenter asked for my views on re-opening schools this fall.

If “re-open schools” means trying to go back to schooling as it existed before the virus with various rules added in an effort to reduce contagion, then I don’t think you can count me in the re-open camp.

With or without a virus, I want schooling to be reinvented. If it were up to me, I would try to use the virus crisis as an opportunity to be more aggressively experimental. Many of these experiments would enable education to take place with less risk of contagion, but that would not be the main purpose of the experiments.

I want children to learn to read. If the child is already a good reader, or if the parents are likely to teach the child to read, then school may be optional for a child aged 5 to 8. But otherwise, I think that failing to provide the child with school could be tragic.

For the child aged 5 to 8 whose parents are not as capable of teaching reading as the school, I want to see about 2-3 hours a day of school, focused on reading and arithmetic. The school could provide additional hours of day care, mostly in the form of music, art, and outdoor recess, to enable parents to work. Note Bryan Caplan’s rant about the day care issue.

If schools won’t provide daycare, why on Earth should taxpayers continue to pay over $10,000 per year per child? Every taxpayer in Fairfax County now has an ironclad reason to say, “I want my money back.”

The older the child, the less I want to see traditional schooling and the more I want to see a blend of online learning, project-based learning, computer gaming, and some ordinary classroom learning. I want to see much more physical exercise and much less sitting. The online learning would come from specialized companies, not from regular teachers.

Assuming that these ideas work for children near the center of the emotional and cognitive bell curve, you still have children who are far from that center. Those children will require programs suited to their particular traits.

Back to the present. Is it not odd that, because of the way they have lined up on Trump and the virus, that the Right is now pro-school and the Left is now anti-school? I find this amusing.

Also, my guess is that the surge in home schooling is particularly pronounced among progressive parents. I see interesting potential there.

22 thoughts on “When to re-open schools? How about never?”

  1. Amen.

    Public schools are not demonstrating success in teaching reading. Only 35 percent of the 2019 NAEP 4th grade reading test takers scored above basic and 34 percent scored below basic. Reason enough to shut down the public schools.

    Somehow I doubt all the new progressive homeschoolers are using the Ron Paul homeschooling curriculum.

    The Republicans wanting the schools to open seem more about moral indignation at more money for nothing for the teachers unions. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin exemplified this attitude yesterday when he blocked a bill to give federal employees yet another paid holiday.

    “I object to the fact that by naming it [“Juneteenth “] a national holiday, what they’re leaving out of their argument, the main impact of that is it gives federal workers a paid day off that the rest of Americans have to pay for,” said Johnson.
    Johnson is a hero in my book.

    The Democrats seem all on board with Biden’s plan to triple Title I funding from $16 billion to $48 billion. Throwing billions at poorly administered schools where teachers never learned how to teach reading and in which debunked education dogmas hold sway has never worked in the past, but maybe it will this time. Once Joe abolishes charter schools they will need to come up with new barbarians to fight which will be homeschoolers. The notorious Bartholet article lays the groundwork for criminalizing homeschooling. Mandatory pre-school will be another step to removing children from parental influence. Then, who knows, but multi billion dollar programs to fund sex change operations on children cannot be far off.

  2. We’re in Montgomery County, MD, and had been sending our five kids (ages range from 3 – 10) to a private school around here. If the private schools also decide to follow suit and merely replace traditional school at a distance (although I can see their business model cutting against that), then Bryan Caplan’s rant is doubly true…

    As parents who are now having to contemplate homeschooling and some non-traditional approaches, if you have any more specifics about how you’d approach teaching and what you’d teach, would very much appreciate any further specifics you might be noodling, online courses or programs you’ve come across, etc.

    I also think the market for young, private tutors, especially college-age ones, is going to get fairly hot.

  3. “Back to the present. Is it not odd that, because of the way they have lined up on Trump and the virus, that the Right is now pro-school and the Left is now anti-school? I find this amusing.”

    The “right” wants the free daycare that they are already paying five figures per kid for. You should be in favor of them getting something for money that we all know they aren’t getting back whether the service is provided or not.

    Also, you seem to assume homeschooling is an option for a lot of ordinary people. Not everyone has a part time/stay at home spouse or a cushy work from home job where you can provide instruction and supervision in and out as you get your work done.

    Let’s get honest. There is a 0% chance that this causes school funding to get cut, or for vouchers or homeschooling tax credits to be enacted. Maybe if Coronavirus lockdown lasts 5+ years, but even the teachers union would realize they would have to cave before that.

    This should be an easy sell to someone like me, who already thinks a lot about homeschooling and I’m intensely scared of what indoctrination my kids might get at school. But the tone here is all off, you don’t seem to care about why parents care about this question.

    I think the question was meant seriously by someone who really needs public school to meet their families needs and is massively inconvenience by this. Giving them a speech about homeschooling you already had lined up from before the pandemic doesn’t really acknowledge the issue. It just makes libertarianism seem out of touch.

  4. “I want children to learn to read. If the child is already a good reader, or if the parents are likely to teach the child to read, then school may be optional for a child aged 5 to 8. ”

    I gotta say, anyone who makes school suggestions without even acknowledging the fact that their policy would result in lawsuits, really ought not to comment. (I wrote four pieces on Bryan Caplan saying exactly that–he’s far worse than Arnold.)

    Next, it’s amusing as hell that Arnold or anyone else thinks that schools aren’t teaching kids how to read, or that mandating school for the kids who Arnold or the schools deem have parents who are incapable of teaching kids how to read would improve results. I mean, seriously.

    “Hey, I know! Let’s teach kids how to read! I never thought of that before!” said not a single teacher, ever.

    “The older the child, the less I want to see traditional schooling and the more I want to see a blend of online learning, project-based learning, computer gaming, and some ordinary classroom learning. ”

    “Hey, I know! Let me do online learning, project-based learning, and computer gaming because we all know that kids learn best if they play games on computers!” said no kid who didn’t learn how to read at 3 without parents or teacher, ever.

    The problem with most smart people who don’t teach getting involved in education policy is that they have absolutely no idea what it’s like to work with kids who aren’t intellectual, have no idea that they are, actually, learning in school, although probably not as much as they could–and that it doesn’t matter if they aren’t, because they definitely wouldn’t learn more in other ways.

    The reason schools aren’t opening up has nothing to do with the teacher union opposition (not saying Arnold is saying this, but many commenters are).

    • “According to the US Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy, the following statistics outline the state of literacy in the United States.

      1. 32 million adults can not read in the United States equal to 14% of the population.
      2. 21% of US adults read below the 5th grade level.
      3. 19% of high school graduates can not read.
      4. 85% of juveniles who interact with the juvenile court system are considered functionally illiterate.
      5. 70% of inmates in America’s prisons can not read above the fourth grade level.”

      Source: https://brandongaille.com/us-literacy-rate-and-illiteracy-statistics/

      Heck of a job.

    • The teachers unions are surely at least a big reason why we’re going to keep paying teachers the same salaries (or much higher salaries for states that have games the unemployment system si the teachers can collect most of their salaries plus unemployment plus only work 4 days a week) for a year while providing much less in way of services to their customers. I know the retort is “but teaching remotely actually harder and more time consuming than normal teaching.” I do t believe it, but even if I did, why is the government the only institution that still subscribers to the labor theory of value?

      Absent the unions we might at least have saved some money by furloughing redundant staff.

      • The private schools around here are opening in person full time. They seem to think there is a way. But of course they don’t get paid if they don’t open.

  5. I wonder where this would lead, especially for cities.

    If education is to be done mostly by essentially just sitting around and watching TV, and work is mostly to be done by futzing around in a studio/bunker, then who will need cities (as those are currently understood) any longer? No, what everyone will need is a huge suburban or rural house with multiple A/V/Internet studios – one for each person – plus a nice expensive multi-gbit Net connection to support it all. As I noted once before, maybe this is in part why NYC mayor Bill DeBlasio hesitated over the lockdowns – to whatever extent that they actually made any sense overall, the City of the Future perhaps does not exist, rendering folks like him useless.

    The transition to such a city-free world will be fantastically expensive and take some time. And of course, even to make sure everyone has at minimum a cramped one-room apartment is too controversial to do. So the political arguments over the extremely expensive and sprawling living quarters required to do everything from home will make for a popcorn-worthy show.

    • I think this is a great example of “assume no friction” thinking. You’re certainly right that there will be a trend towards people moving away from dense urban areas and needing space for multiple home-office setups and greater demand for network infrastructure.

      But these are trends that will hold for either months or years or maybe but probably not a decade or two. They’re also trends that will be most pronounced among certain segments of the populations. Specifically, those Mr. Kling identifies as “working with symbols.”

  6. “Is it not odd that, because of the way they have lined up on Trump and the virus, that the Right is now pro-school and the Left is now anti-school?”

    I don’t think this one has anything to do with Trump. The alternative to “re-opening” schools right now is not the reform that Kling wants. Rather, it’s Lockdown Socialism: public school unionized teachers continue to receive their paychecks without actually having to go to work. Not surprisingly, if teachers can receive their paychecks without having to report to schools, they prefer that over actually having to report to schools for the same pay.

    The natural solution to accommodate teachers that don’t want in-person instruction for health reasons would be school choice vouchers. That way, students could attend whichever (possibly private) schools do open, staffed by teachers willing to work and perhaps experimenting with some of the reforms that Kling advocates. Meanwhile, that would alleviate the need to reopen government schools at which teachers are reluctant to return. If every closed public school were to issue vouchers to their students, however, I think teachers unions would suddenly want to see the schools re-opened.

  7. Great post.

    As a parent of a 12 and 10 year old, what you want is what I want. “A blend of online learning, project-based learning, computer gaming, and some ordinary classroom learning….much more physical exercise and much less sitting.”

    As a professional, I’m currently advising 2 micro school networks and 2 online tutoring providers. Some serving middle class and some serving poorer families. Demand is insane. But open question what this looks like Sept 2021, hopefully post-Covid.

    And yes, it’s interesting to see progressive moms called “White Supremacists” in NYT op-eds…for the sin of organizing a few neighborhood moms to band together this fall instead of “full solitude quarantine” like in April/May.

    • I’m not so sure “it’s interesting to see progressive moms called “White Supremacists” in NYT op-eds.” I have a sneaking suspicion some journalists as the New York Times have the following daily workflow:

      1) Wake up.
      1a) Hair of the dog.
      2) “Pwn” someone on Twitter.
      3) Drink.
      4) “Pwn” someone on Twitter.
      5) Scroll through recent tweets, identify something someone recently “pwned.”
      6) Write 700 words on why the identified thing is white supremacist.
      7) “Pwn” someone on Twitter.
      8) Submit 700 word article to editor.
      8) “Pwn” someone on Twitter.
      9) Mean-spirited gossip about coworkers..
      10) Drink.
      11) No, seriously, drink.

      I would dismiss criticism that this is totally wrong as steps 1a, 9 and 11 are clearly recognizable as journalism.

  8. My roofer came in today – left his 10 year old in the car with the a/c on. He’s been doing this for quite some time. I love the home schooling idea, but it’s not going to work for everyone.

  9. Well, whether your suggestion is productive or not, I fear it is dead-on-arrival. As a silver lining, though, the current shortened school year and alternate make-shift arrangements should provide some strong empirical evidence regarding your “null hypothesis” for education. If supporters are right, we should see serious repercussions for students enrolled in public schools last year.

    • The null hypothesis in education doesn’t say things can’t get worse. It says that compared to the usual situation, there will be no scalable change that will result in consistent, lasting improvement.

      • +1

        I expect a bunch of working parents being suddenly thrust into homeschooling against their will with no plan and no private options or even ability to safely let kids socialize with other kids could have a negative effect, but that wouldn’t say anything about educational policies effectiveness.

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