The corona virus pandemic has been horrible news, most of them because all the deaths and suffering that has created.
In the education space we can find a silver lining in to the dark. We believe that the virus pressured on Americas Government school monopoly. Since the pandemic started we have seen many people switching from public schools to online homeschooling.
Matthew Hennessey, wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal, explaining how the coronavirus may produce a permanent expansion of homeschooling:
Most students will return to traditional classrooms when the crisis passes. But some families—perhaps many—will…decide that homeschooling is not only a plausible option, but a superior one. …An economy of high-quality online educational materials has sprouted in the past decade. All you need is a laptop, headphones and a quiet corner of the house, and your kid can study everything from calculus to ancient Greek. …Education has managed to stave off innovation for a variety of reasons. Inertia is one—most people have a hard time reimagining something as basic as school. …Teachers unions are politically strong and uninterested in anything that threatens their power. But now the pandemic…can shake up the established order… If more Americans come to see the viability and value of home education, it could be a silver lining in a very dark cloud. Private schools also provide a superior alternative to the government’s monopoly system.
We think that wat he wrote was true before the pandemic and it is even more true today.
In a report from the New York Times we found out that:
Public schools plan to open not at all or just a few days a week, while many neighboring private and charter schools are opening full time. …the ways in which private schools are reopening show it can be done with creative ideas…reopening plans are just another way the pandemic has widened gaps in education. Private and charter schools are able to offer much more robust online learning than public schools.
We also researched a nationally representative survey conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs and found out that private and charter schools are substantially more likely to continue providing students with meaningful education services during the lockdown than traditional public schools. …Private and charter schools are about 20 percent more likely to introduce new content to their students during the lockdown. …Parents of children in private and charter schools were at least 50 percent more likely to report being “very satisfied” with the instruction provided during the lockdown than parents of children in traditional public schools. …