Anti-School Choice Advocates Aren't Letting COVID-19 Go To Waste
Now that we’re in the second month of distance learning/district-mandated homeschooling, we’re seeing a lot of flaws in the system. School systems are struggling to make it possible for distance learning to happen, and there are a lot of reasons why it can’t happen with any sort of fidelity.
Families who live near or below the poverty level can’t always afford a home computer and/or Internet access, especially if they’ve been let go because businesses can’t operate in this environment. Likewise, teachers who aren’t paid exceptionally well at times, are also struggling because they have to revamp their lesson plans, adapt them for online learning, and do many extra things in order to ensure that they are giving their kids everything they can to help cover the material they didn’t get to.
School districts are bloated with administrative costs at the expense of resources desperately needed to operate classrooms regularly, much less through forced online learning. There might be money in wealthier districts to rent out working laptops and Internet hotspots to students who need them, but districts in impoverished areas don’t have the resources to provide all students with equal access to technology in their own classrooms.
Jim Geraghty points out at National Review that schools weren’t prepared for this and that this experiment is, at best, going to provide generally poor results. Bethany Mandel, a parent who has homeschooled and worked on homeschooling curricula, makes a valid point at The Atlantic: School systems need to work more on providing tools to allow parents to be able to help their children, not alienate them from each other.
One of the biggest criticisms of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) is that they encourage the idea that only schools can help students. That’s not entirely true, as standards don’t dictate curriculum or how something is taught (rather, they provide the framework for the skills your child needs). But, the curricula that get written around the CCSS are written by people who are inherently anti-school choice. They write material that can only be translated by teachers who have undergone pedagogical training and that isn’t something you can’t really explain to students or their parents during a parent-teacher conference. What’s more, there are many teachers across the country who were never properly trained to implement standards in their classrooms.
But, the struggles at home have not stopped the anti-school choice advocates from using this opportunity. They point to the failures of distance learning as proof that parents and private entities can’t do this and that public education is the only way this happens.
Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet wrote an article recently calling for a ban of homeschooling. Other activists have made similar calls, especially with all our students at home and learning on their own with whatever help parents can give. Bartholet’s primary concern seems to be that Christian conservatives are at home, teaching their kids. Nevermind that religious-based homeschooling only accounts for about two-thirds of homeschooled families and not all of them are conservative Christians.
Unfortunately, people do not want to let a crisis go to waste. What we are seeing now more than ever is that school choice is incredibly necessary. If your school or district cannot provide for your student the resources they need to be successful, you should be allowed to find another school. If your district does not prioritize resources for the classrooms instead of for administrators in district offices who aren’t held accountable by student results, then find a different district.
Homestyle Podcast: Let’s Make Some Cookies
On this week’s episode of Homestyle, Leigh Guidry and I talk about the art of cookie decorating with Caitlin Jacob, the digital director at The Daily Advertiser. As someone who loves to cook, I struggle with the baking aspect of the kitchen, because baking is so precise. But luckily, sugar cookies are easy and today’s episode is all about putting icing on top of the cookies. We talk about royal icing, flooding, piping, and how not terribly expensive it all is. As always, you can find us on Instagram and join our Facebook group.
Recipe of the Week: Miso Soup
One of my favorite comfort foods, although it might seem like a weird one, is miso soup. There are so many delicate flavors involved that the right bowl and bring you a sense of emotional warmth that is otherwise hard to get outside of a Hallmark moment.
Of course, the key to a good miso soup is to get the dashi - a simple Japanese broth that nonetheless has as much versitility as chicken broth here in America - just right. To make the dashi and miso, you’ll have to go to a specialty grocery store, Whole Foods, or order your ingredients from Amazon. But it’s really worth it.
For the dashi:
1/2 ounce kombu (dried kelp)
8 cups water
About 3 cups lightly packed bonito (dried fish) flakes
Gently wipe the kombu with a damp paper towel (don’t scrape off the white stuff).
Combine water and kombu and bring it just below a simmer (about 10-12 minutes over medium heat).
Removed the kombu and add the bonito, letting them steep for about 2 minutes.
Pour the dashi into a large bowl through a strainer lined with cheesecloth. Use immediately or freeze the broth up to three months.
For the miso soup:
4 cups dashi
1/4 cup miso paste (any color is fine, though the darker the saltier, generally)
1/2 cup drained tofu
1 tbsp. sliced green onion
2 tbsp. wakame seaweed
Bring the dashi to a simmer in a small pot. A light simmer is best so you don’t alter the rich taste of the broth.
Spoon the miso into your soup bowl, and add a half cup of the hot dashi, stirring to break up the clumps. Add the wakame and green onions while stirring.
Dice the tofu and scoop it into the soup.
Enjoy.
Final Thoughts…
Take this time that you’re at home and enjoy your family. The stress of being at home all the time, out of work and school, and being with each other every minute of the day is tough, but now more than ever it’s important to value family and value being face to face. One of the things I hope comes out of this is a resurgence in coming together and break bread at the table with others. Hopefully, we can get there again. Society needs it.