@NJWrestlingmom We are in Texas but remote West Texas. I think this plan is fluid, my guess is, the choice will be taken away of in person teaching by the time they are going back March 30th.
@NJWrestlingmom , I posted too soon. our local news just reported 2 confirmed cases in our county that were travel related. So I bet there will be NO in person school.
Havenât heard of any out North Texas school district giving optionsâŠa few that had their spring breaks last week and announced closures early on have already started online instruction. Our school district is expected to let us know within the next week what online instruction is going to look like for us.
Before Amazon shuts down delivery I jumped on today and ordered AP Exam prep books for my boys for their subjectsâŠif anything it will at least keep them occupied because this Mama is going to make them still adhere to their school schedulesâŠIâm going to lose my mind otherwise lol. S21 is already being so melodramatic about not being able to go out with his friends.
@sherimba03 I hope your son feels better soon. I had a bad head cold a week or two ago, which turned out not to be not that serious. Hopefully the same will be true for him.
I suspect that admissions outcomes next year will be very unpredictable, given reduction in standardized test availability, cancelation of ECs, the widespread shift to new forms of remote learning, and the economic downturn. Fewer people are likely to opt for ED because they canât tour campuses. People may value their local options more because of affordability or familiarity.
In this moment, however, where my D21 ends up going to college feels really unimportant. I say this not to judge anybody here; this is, after all a college forum. However, I canât muster up much energy to care right now. I am more concerned about the people most vulnerable to the virus and am hoping that flattening the curve will give them a fighting chance. I fear losing people near and dear to me. Itâs overwhelming.
Take good care yâall.
My HS kids are really frustrated. Their schoolâs e learning is robust. They are working and working hard - easily the equivalent of an in person school day.
Then the email came from school - because the state closed the schools and because they are calling the missed days âActs of Godâ, they will not have to be made up and NO grades earned during these days will be recorded in the grade book.
So, they could do the work or not do the work - its all the same unless there is an addendum to the executive order. Of course they are going to do the work, and of course there is more to school than grades, but I completely understand their frustration.
My daughter knew going in no grades were counting from this 2 weeks of e learning. Now talk is it will be more than 2 weeks and they are going to adjust marking period end dates and grades will count if this goes longer than 2 weeks (which seems inevitable at this point).
Sheâs stressing over what might happen with AP exams, which isnât a big issue to me at this point. Whatâs driving her nuts is the social media postings of kids who clearly arenât âsocial distancingâ themselves. She wants this done and things back to normal!
I can understand the frustration, @3kids2dogs, but it is what it is. I have always assumed that whatever grades kids had going into this shutdown (which I am certain will extend for the rest of this school year) will act as a âfloorâ for final grades. Should be possible for kids to improve, but no one is going to be dinged on the basis of some jerry-rigged online learning platform that was literally thrown together in a week or two.
Schoolâs out kids! That is my message to my own.
@3kids2dogs wow. That stinks. D21 working hard here too. They will get grades for their work.
Iâm betting that, if school does go back in the fall, ACT and SAT will add extra tests. They wonât want to give up the revenue. Plus, if thereâs a whole college admissions year that doesnât take testing into account and that goes ok, that would be really bad news for ACT and SAT. Iâm sure they will sit kids for these tests asap with multiple options.
Social distancing is an issue here too. Our kids are on board but I saw 20 kids playing basketball at the park across the street from our house today. They looked like college kids older than S19. I so wanted to tell them to go home. If I still see kids out in few days, I might become the old crotchety lady who yells at the kids at the park.
AndâŠKansas just announced K-12 is remote through the end of the school year. I think we all need to brace ourselves. Iâm guessing this is going to happen everywhere. D21 is devastated. One day of home school has been fine and even kind of fun but not sure contentment with it is sustainable for nine more weeks. Actually, I know itâs not sustainable.
I am thinking that school is just going to close for the rest of the yr and no online learning will be happening since itâs too difficult to get all the kids online.
My kidâs school began online learning this week and they are being held accountable and assigned real work - problem sets, reading and writing, foreign language assignments. I think the main challenge will be to stay on task. Right now it has novelty value; that will soon wear off. I predict that there will be no more in person classes through the end of this academic year, despite the current hope of a return to the classroom by mid April. A lot of self discipline will be required.
And, yes, I have seen kids socializing outside of school as I drive around searching for toilet paper!
D21 is disappointed that her dual credit classes are going online, because she really enjoys her professors. As homeschoolers, both my daughters have had plenty of (rigorous and worthwhile) online courses through middle school and the early high school years (D23 is still a freshman, so she is still mostly online). Online courses that have been carefully set up with live sessions and/or 24/7 teacher/TA support can be just as effective or more effective than live in-person classes. My oldest, after years of online learning (for grades) and plenty of in-person enrichment classes (for fun) was well-prepared for her dual credit college courses this year â her first time in a classroom (for grades) was a 300-level Spanish course at our local state university last semester, and she got a 97 as a final gradeâŠall her previous Spanish instruction, through AP, had been done online through various providersâŠso even foreign language courses online can be done very well provided there is plenty of weekly live support and class sessions via Skype/Zoom/etc. Same goes with science lab courses if you have a home lab kit, excellent weekly materials and outstanding teacher/TAs who give near-immediate feedback, active discussion boards, and understanding parents (there is permanent damage to my kitchen floor from AP Chem labs two years ago).
HOWEVER, all that is very different from teachers and professors who arenât used to teaching via an online platform having to suddenly get all their course material transferred to a new format in the middle of the semester, and during a time of great stress and fear at that. One of D21âs professors is computer-savvy and transferred his class to an online situation fairly easily. One professor seems a bit of a Luddite and there has been no word from him at all nor has he set up anything online. The third professor (Spanish) set up live sessions which begin todayâŠthe class will continue as always same days and times but via Zoom instead of in-person. But I feel for all those teachers, professors, and students who are struggling to adjust. Itâs a big change for those who arenât used to it, and there isnât much time for a learning curve.
Both my teens are extremely bummed -but understanding - about everything else shutting down too. They have a couple extracurriculars/projects they can still do as they are outside and can be done solo instead of with others, but they miss their friends and their volunteer work and their jobs and their other extracurriculars which include competitive sports and a lot of other things that put them among a lot of people on an near-daily basis. There are also a couple of award ceremonies that got cancelled. D23 hopes like mad that her summer camp wonât be cancelled. D21 has an independent outdoor project in mind for summer, collaborating with people (but the collaboration bits can be done virtually), so her plans wonât be affected even if we get a shelter-in-place order (which is doubtful since we live in the sticks).
As for college visits â we started that early, when D21 was a freshman, for fun, so we are fortunate in that department. We travel so much (one advantage of online classes, when there isnât a pandemic, is flexibilityâŠyou can do a ton of work in the car) that it was easy to visit a ton of colleges early. We are all over the Northeast on a monthly basis and we go through the Mid-Atlantic states a couple times a year. I wanted my girls to start to think about college early, but in a non-stressful way, and start to visit when there wasnât any pressure on them yet. We looked at it as them auditioning the colleges and not worrying about whether or not theyâd get in (at that time). We probably did around 40 info sessions and tours over freshman and sophomore years (which were almost all on our way to someplace we had to go anyway, it was just scheduling in a few extra hours here and there), had fun sampling the cafeteria food and the local pizza places, and D21âs impressions from those first visits hasnât changed much. Now she has already visited each school she liked from that first round at least twice (and two favorites three times), except for one in CO which she has visited once (requires a flight while all others are within ten hours of driving, the vast majority within only two or three hours of driving). She has a healthy mix of safeties she really likes, matches, and reaches. She is firm with her list and she has her favorites, now trying to figure out an ED strategy. We had interview visits scheduled for the next couple months which now of course are cancelled, but she did get three interviews in before everything shut down. So the tricky part for us is making sure she gets interview slots at the remaining schools. Though all of her high school courses have been outsourced (I have not been her teacher for years) and she will have over 54 college credits by the time she graduates, she is technically considered homeschooled and nearly all colleges to which she is applying require homeschoolers to interview.
She was able to test last Saturday for the SATâŠthis was her second time. The first time she got reading/writing scores that work well for the colleges on her list, but she needed to get her math score up a bit. Fingers crossed. She has one SAT2 score under her belt and she needs one more. We had that scheduled for May butâŠhopefully she wonât need to test again for the SAT and we can switch her existing June SAT date (for the third try) to an SAT2 sitting instead. Fingers crossed she got her math score up. Sheâs in AP Cal BC right now and doing well, but didnât review the SAT math well enough the first time around. Hoping she did this time.
I am grateful for being divorcedâŠmy ex has rented a small house half an hour away from us in the country, and my two will visit him there instead of at his Boston-area property like they usually do. My ex has confined himself to his main residence (not Boston-area) for a couple of weeks now, working online, and will only go from there to this house rental. My girls will only go from my home to that rental. So we are all self-quarantining (except for when we are outside but away from other people) in a way that our girls can still have a change of scenery each week. Five days with me and two days in this rental with their dad. Thatâs good for everyoneâs mental health. (They may be âhomeschoolersâ but even with online classes they are rarely home for more than a few hours at a time during normal life).
Well, that was a lot. Hope this didnât put anyone to sleep. Stay well, everyone. And I agree that the admissions folks will be very understanding of the 2021 applicants with lower grades this semester because of interruptions and online issues etc., and less-than-perfect ECs because of everything being cancelled, etc. Everyoneâs in the same boat in that department.
I agree with @JanieWalker that done right online classes can work well, honestly probably better than in person classes for the right kind of kid. Our own has taken courses through Stanford Online High School, and the level and rigor have been significantly higher than at the very expensive private where our kid takes remaining classes.
Unfortunately, I also agree that it is going to be impossible for - in all honesty - the vast majority of current in person teachers and classes to transition smoothly on the fly like this. I am assuming that online classes for the rest of the school year are going to be largely filler for practically all class of 2021 members. Large states like Florida (and I think Illinois?) have already canceled all state testing and basically indicated that nothing is going to count anyway.
Just FYI, since Stanford Online has been doing this successfully for a while, they have created and are continually updating a resource âhow toâ page on online teaching methods that teachers and parents might find useful:
Thank you State of Illinois for changing your guidance. This was in our daily updates:
âAdjustment in student grades
As youâre seeing in your personal and professional life, the implications of COVID-19 are fluid, with frequent updates every day. We have received a new mandate from the Illinois State Board of Education regarding student grading. Beginning March 19, grades may be issued to students, but only if they improve studentsâ grades. This shift reinforces the importance of studentsâ continued effort, being engaged and completing assignments. For details, review our Academic Hot Topics Related to E-Learning.â
@3kids2dogs now Iâm confused. We just got an email from the district saying the state of Illinois told them they canât grade during this time at all. The teachers will continue to grade assignments but only for parents to see how kids are doing and they wonât be counted. Said they will have to get back on what end of semester grades will look like.
Of course they cannot just give kids the grades they currently have in their classes since the semester still has ten weeks left. That would be insane. If they really canât count these next ten weeks of online grades, they are going to have to just give pass/fail for this semester.
I told D that she needs to stay on top of the AP classes since it looks like the tests still might happen somehow. And she needs to learn the precalc because she will need to know it for next year. And yearbook class keeps chugging since they have deadlines.
We received an email today from the district superintendent, and among other things he discussed the grading consistent with what @2kids2dogs saidâŠthe act of god day grades can count if it improves the grade. This week is the end of our Q3, then a week spring break, then start up with Q4.
I think itâs possible all second semester grades will ultimately be pass/fail. Or maybe we will have the choice, grades vs. P/F
Edited to add: The only class I am worried about for S21 is precalcâŠheâs had no instruction all week, just a take home test. No new material. He is taking AP Calc next year, so not quite sure how the teacher plans on teaching new concepts the rest of the semester. Sigh.
@homerdog - they changed the guidance in the last day.
You can see it on the Illinois State Board of Education website under Updates and Guidance.
On the 16th, the ISBE guidance outlined:
"How will days be counted during the mandated closure? (Updated 3/16/2020)
All days that a school is closed pursuant to the Governorâs Executive Order 2020-05 will be counted Act of God Days. Emergency Days will not be used. At this time, these Act of God Days do not need to be made up at the end of the school year. School districts are strongly encouraged to provide instruction to students during these Act of God Days through whatever means possible. Student work completed during the mandated statewide school closure March 17-30 must not count toward student grades or otherwise impact a studentâs academic standing, as these are Act of God Days and not Instructional Days."
Then on the 17th, the State Superintendent wrote:
"Another question we received frequently today was about grading student work during the closure. We wish to clarify that:
Student work completed during the mandated statewide school closure must not negatively impact a studentâs grades or otherwise impact a studentâs academic standing. As we do not yet know the full extent of the closure and want to minimize any negative effects on students, schools may allow student work to count during the closure only to increase a studentâs academic standing.
Our students may be experiencing varying mental and physical health challenges at this time and may have very different access to supports and technology at home. Our goal is that no student is negatively impacted by the closure and that no school districtâs policies or procedures should widen the equity gap."
All of this is only relevant until March 30th. I think what happens next will depend upon whether the State continues to mandate school closure past that date or whether it leaves the decision up to individual districts, and if it does continue to mandate closure, whether it continues to characterize the closure as an âAct of Godâ.
Yeah our superintendent is quoting the âMay allowâ grades to count from the most recent directions and saying sheâs decided they wonât. She told me she might change that if this goes on past spring break.
Well, that was fast! I just posted yesterday (post #3432 above in this thread) that any supposed grades from here on out will only be allowed to help, rather than hurt, students. Now that Illinois has made it official, I really think this will be at least the de facto policy at 99% of schools across the US, public or private.
I feel better about the advice I gave to my high school junior about a week ago, who is fine gradewise right now: âSchoolâs. Out. For. Summer!â (I loved that Alice Cooper song way back in grade schoolâŠ)