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A school board in South Carolina has launched a pilot program to get rid of snow days and instead have students work from home when the weather turns treacherous. Beyond depriving schoolkids of the joys of weather-enforced truancy, the plan will exacerbate the region's digital divide for student who don't have internet access at home.
Anderson County School District Five will be the first region to participate in the pilot program this upcoming school year. In the past, Anderson County had makeup days tacked on to the end of the school year in lieu of days missed due to bad weather, but most kids ended up just skipping them, according to a local news report.
Students from grades 3 through 12 in the school board are already given Chromebooks to use at home, so in the event of a snow day or other inclement weather that causes a shutdown, kids will be expected to log on from home, communicate with teachers, and complete assignments.
Source: MotherBoard
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 06 2018, @02:37PM
"My future" is a dirt nap, sooner or later. Kids around will not change that and there are enough people younger than me that I don't feel the need to worry about new babies being made. So no, they're not worth "my future."
They may be worth the future of the species, but first show me why I should care about that, either.
But even were I interested in the future of humanity or thought my own personal future relied on people getting it on in 2018, that does not stop me from seeing that lots of tech companies get big payouts for selling schools that every kid should be given a computing platform at no cost to them. And that the "learning" that goes on in such environments in markedly poorer compared to paying a teacher to come up with lesson plans and actually teach students using a dumb whiteboard and paper handouts. (Especially as opposed to being a hand-holder and slave to a state-mandated core curriculum set and not going past that.)
The point is... will engaging in the process actually get students to learn more and better by taking snow days away and replacing them with online lessons? Is the number of days tacked on that the kids missed actually vital instructional time that was missed? Or is this just a way to fatten up the masses and result in a higher tax return for no meaningful educational return?
I now return to my self-introspected naval gazing.