Coronavirus remote learning: Good, bad and 'a totally different set of problems'

For a parent in Jackson, remote learning has meant hours and hours of navigating software programs for her kids. For a mother of three in Paterson, it's meant printing out a packet of assignments and having them write out answers.

In Lakewood and Asbury Park, it's finding the money to hand out laptops to students so they can get online — provided they have internet access in the first place.

At a private Catholic school, remote learning has become routine — almost normal.

"There are two completely different sides to the story," said Kimberly Smith, executive director of the League of Innovative Schools at Digital Promise, a nonprofit that spurs innovation in education. "You have districts that are fully capable, with internet access and professional development for teachers; with online tools and platforms that are usable in this environment.

"And then you have the district around the corner." 

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When Gov. Phil Murphy ordered schools closed in March amid the coronavirus pandemic, school administrators, teachers, parents and students quickly had to learn how to learn outside of shuttered school buildings. They learned this month that remote learning would continue through the end of the school year.

What that will mean to students — besides missed proms, in-person graduation ceremonies and the like — in terms of instruction is a mixed bag, based on what has been a wide variation in remote learning offerings across the state and country. 

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The stark contrast often occurs among socioeconomic lines, Smith said. In affluent, even middle-class communities, the transition to remote learning has been easier. In past years, administrators have been able to increase technological offerings. And when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, they shifted even more funding toward technology. 

That doesn't mean it's been easy: In some states, such as Texas, Georgia and Washington, D.C., requirements for minimum instruction time were even waived, allowing districts to end the school year weeks early so school officials could find solutions to ease the transition to remote learning. 

“The first two weeks or so, the days were hours and hours long trying to figure it all out and get a routine down,” said Jackson resident Kelly Simon, who spent the first two weeks figuring out how to log three different children into three different accounts on three different devices. 

“I expected it to be pretty difficult, but I expected it to be temporary,” she said. “And now, I’m honestly grateful they’re going to keep them closed.”

But in low-income districts, that's not always possible. There may not be enough laptops to go around, for example, but the district must also ensure that "basic needs" are met, Smith said. 

In Asbury Park, students are largely completing their assignments in the form of packets, said John Napolitani, president of the Asbury Park Education Association, the district’s teachers’ union.

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Teachers will go online to meet with students, especially those in special education programs.

But reliable internet access isn't always a given, Napolitani said.

“You’re dealing with people who may not necessarily have the ability to get online, just being able to get on there and do what they have to do,” he said. “They’re grasping as much as they can, at this point. It’s not an easy thing. You’re dealing with a totally different set of problems.”

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According to the Pew Research Center, just 54% of Americans who make less than $30,000 per year said they had a desktop or laptop computer available. And 26% of them said they relied on their smartphones for going online.

"There are a lot of tradeoffs that happen in those districts, when you think about the basic needs of families and the technology that supports remote learning," Smith said. "The basic needs are going to win every time — and they should." 

'Learning is without walls'

At St. John Vianney High School, remote learning is routine.

The school began using digital classroom offerings in 2014, as a way to teach students when the school was unable to open due to snow days or other emergency cancellations.

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So when it became clear that remote learning would be the norm for the foreseeable future, students and teachers took it in stride, said assistant principal Margaret Kane.

“They were well-prepared, when this all started, to take everything beyond the walls of the classroom and extend it into the students’ homes,” said Kane, who will take over as principal on July 1. “The school is a building, but learning is without walls.”

But 30 miles away in Lakewood, remote learning is still a work in progress — at best. 

Participation in the district’s online instruction has varied, from 100% in some classes to as low as 46% in others, especially at the high school level, school board attorney and district spokesman Michael Inzelbuch said.

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Teachers send two videos a day to students, which includes assignments for the day, Inzelbuch said. And the district also uses Google Classroom for students to ask questions, as well as Google counseling to help students dealing with emotional or personal problems.

Teachers and students are still working out the kinks of completing assignments online. While attendance in Lakewood High School math teacher Henny Yoffe’s class hovers between 90% and 100%, work completion is a little more difficult to measure.

“I would say that 70% get completed properly,” she told Inzelbuch during a district-wide broadcast featuring teachers’ lessons.

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Education equity activists have encouraged districts to offer both pre-recorded lessons and live interaction with teachers.

Relying solely on pre-recorded lessons makes it harder for teachers to provide feedback and “support students in setting goals in managing their time.”

But synchronous learning — such as a live videochat or lecture with a teacher — requires reliable internet access, “which may be challenging, given students' family and home contexts,” according to a guide published by the Education Trust and Digital Promise last week.

"That’s an optimal situation, where a student can see their peers, be engaged with their peers and their teacher is facilitating and guiding instruction,” said Smith, the innovative school director for Digital Promise.

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But giving students time for “exploration, to go offline and take time and spend time in content and curriculum” is just as important, she said.

“The ultimate blend is to bring that real world engagement and the learning really close,” Smith said. 

Consider a school like St. John Vianney. Students take four classes each day — two pre-recorded lessons, and two live meetings with teachers. Jessica Gadaleta, the school's lead English teacher, called it a "flipped classroom." 

Essentially: Homework comes first.

"They get the content from the Canvas (an online learning management platform) lessons, and then they come into the (video) conference and apply what they learned," Gadaleta said. "They collaborate. They problem solve." 

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But St. John Vianney, with an annual tuition of $14,000, stands in stark contrast to a public school district like Paterson, where 28% of residents live on the poverty line and two-thirds of students don't have a device or Internet access — even after the school acquired and handed out nearly 9,000 laptops.

Even after the district handed out 7,000 laptops to high school students — and reapportioned budget funds to pay for 1,667 more — about two-thirds of the student body is still without a device or internet access, according to the district.

To bridge the gap, the district sent take-home packets to students to complete and return to school for grading. But that system was quickly overwhelmed, with assignments piling up in boxes and volunteers sorting them by school, grade-level and checking names off by hand.

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“There has been no structure,” said Carrie Gonzalez, who has two children in city schools and another in college. “Packets aren’t being picked up. I tried to deliver them and they wouldn’t take them.”

While Paterson students are also able to download school assignments online, that presents its own problems to the Gonzalez family.

“I have three kids on one computer," Gonzalez said.

And she's also working from home.

The Record reporter Hannan Adely contributed to this report. 

Mike Davis has spent the last decade covering New Jersey local news, marijuana legalization, transportation and basically whatever else is going on at any given moment. Contact him at mdavis@gannettnj.com or @byMikeDavis on Twitter.