Fort Worth schools have a new plan for virtual learning. It isn’t like last year.
Last week, Fort Worth school officials rolled out a plan for a virtual learning option for students who can’t safely come back to school during the pandemic.
The plan comes after school officials spent months promoting the return to in-person classes for all students and at a time when evidence of the academic effects of remote learning is piling up.
But Fort Worth school officials say their virtual learning option this year is different from the one it offered last year in several key ways. And an expert in remote learning says there are several steps that school districts and families can take to ensure students who can’t go back to school in person have a positive learning experience this year.
Fort Worth’s remote learning plan differs from last year
Texas education officials say last year’s state testing results laid bare the academic damage students suffered during virtual learning. Districts where fewer than 25% of students were in virtual learning saw a 9% decline in math scores on the spring 2021 State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, compared to 2019. Meanwhile, districts in which more than 75% of students were in virtual learning saw a 32% decline in math scores during the same period.
During a board meeting Tuesday, district officials announced plans for a temporary virtual learning option for students in kindergarten through sixth grade who can’t safely return to school in person due to COVID-19. The district will offer seats in the virtual learning program to 2,000 students. It will distribute those seats by lottery, using a method similar to the one it uses for its schools of choice.
The district’s plan for its virtual option has several key differences from the remote learning program it offered last year.
Karen Molinar, the district’s deputy superintendent, told the district’s Board of Trustees last week that unlike last year, the district’s plan won’t require Fort Worth teachers to juggle in-person and remote students at once — something that left many teachers feeling exhausted, dispirited and less able to do their jobs effectively last year.
Rather than asking its own teachers to handle remote classes, the district is working with the Austin-based online education firm Proximity Learning, Molinar said. Proximity Learning has worked with other large districts, including Dallas and Chicago, she said. Students in remote learning will work with teachers who are certified to teach in Texas, but aren’t Fort Worth district employees, she said.
Also unlike last year, this year’s virtual learning option will be all-synchronous, meaning students will be required to log in and participate at specific times, Molinar said. Last year, the district offered both a synchronous and an asynchronous option, which only required students to read and watch class materials, then complete and submit assignments on their own time. Teachers said the district’s asynchronous model made it harder to hold students accountable when they didn’t participate or turn in work.
Another key difference between this year and last year is access to high-speed Internet service. At the beginning of the 2020-21 school year, the district scrambled to get thousands of wifi hotspots and Internet-enabled devices to students who didn’t have broadband Internet service or devices at home. But some families struggled to get the hotspots to work, and others said the service wasn’t strong enough to support two or three siblings doing remote learning at once.
Over the summer, the district completed work on the first phase of a plan to bring free public wifi to underserved parts of the city. Crews built wifi towers serving the Morningside, Eastern Hills, Rosemont and Stop Six neighborhoods. District officials plan to begin work on the second phase of the plan in December. The project dovetails with a city of Fort Worth effort to expand free public wifi in the Stop Six, Ash Crescent, North Side, Como and Rosemont neighborhoods.
Families can help students succeed in remote learning
Peggy Semingson, a professor in the University of Texas at Arlington’s Department of Linguistics and TESOL, said the public wifi service is a step up for families in those neighborhoods who will rely on it for distance learning. Making sure families have access to wifi is one of the most important things school districts can do to make sure their students succeed in distance learning, said Semingson, who specializes in distance learning and best practices for online teaching. District leaders should check in on their remote students frequently to make sure their hardware is working as it should, she said.
There are also a number of things families can do to make sure their kids do well in virtual learning, Semingson said. It’s important for parents to set up spaces at home for their children to do school, she said.
Parents also need to help their kids establish routines during the school day. Routines can help keep kids calm during a stressful time and give them a sense of order in their day, she said. That sense of structure is particularly important for students with special needs, she said. Parents also need to be prepared to take an active role in their kids’ education during remote learning, Semingson said.
Last year, many remote students failed because they didn’t turn in their assignments, she said. This year, parents with children in remote learning need to make sure their children turn their work in on time. They also need to be prepared to enrich the curriculum themselves by reading with their kids and using online educational resources like the Khan Academy, she said.
While students are learning from home, parents also need to help them maintain social connections, Semingson said.
One option could be to form quarantine pods with other families. Parents could also reach out to other families with children in remote learning and set up virtual hangouts, she said.
Plan will prioritize students with medical conditions
During Tuesday’s meeting, Molinar said students with a documented medical condition preventing them from coming to school in person will be the district’s highest priority for the virtual option, she said. After that, the district will use a tiered order of priority: students who live with a sibling with a verifiable medical condition will come next, then those who live with any other family member with a verifiable medical condition, followed by any student who isn’t yet eligible to receive the vaccine.
Molinar said district officials think the 2,000 seats it has available will be enough to cover every student who needs the program. If not, she said, the district will work with Proximity Learning to see how many more students they can accommodate.
Alex Vorse, whose daughter goes to Daggett Montessori School, said he was impressed with the presentation. Vorse, who has called on the district for weeks to make an online option available, said district leaders provided a great deal of information during the briefing.
Vorse’s daughter has an underlying medical condition that would put her at increased risk if she caught COVID-19. She’s 10 years old, making her ineligible to receive the vaccine. She was in remote learning all of last year and hasn’t yet returned to school in person this year. Vorse said he’d prefer to send his daughter to school in person this year, but without an indoor mask mandate, he doesn’t feel safe doing so.
For the past several weeks, Vorse and a group of parents have pushed district leaders to institute an indoor mask mandate and offer a virtual learning option to students who can’t safely go to school in person.
On Aug. 14, two days before Fort Worth students returned to school, protesters gathered outside Board of Trustees President Tobi Jackson’s home, calling on her to call a special meeting to consider an indoor mask requirement. Then, on August 21, dozens of parents and students marched through downtown Fort Worth, again calling on Jackson to call for a vote on a mask requirement and other safety measures.
Vorse said he plans to continue pushing the district to adopt a mask mandate. If that doesn’t happen, he said the virtual learning option could be a good alternative for his daughter. But he’s concerned the district has dissuaded parents from applying for the option by emphasizing that students with documented medical conditions are the highest priority. That could lead some families to think incorrectly that their children aren’t eligible for a virtual seat, he said.
Fort Worth isn’t the first school district in North Texas to offer a virtual learning option. The Dallas school district launched a virtual academy for about 1,500 students on August 24. The Arlington school district began a virtual learning program on on August 25.
