Page 52 - EducationWorld January 2021

International News

UNITED STATES The results suggest that the fears of worsening achieve-
Closed schools fallout ment gaps at the start of the pandemic were justified. There

are enormous racial gaps in the type of instruction being
received: 70 percent of black and Hispanic children are re-
ceiving fully remote education, compared with 50 percent
of white pupils. Parents with the means to do so appear to
be pulling their children out of public education altogether.
There are 31,000 fewer pupils in the New York City public
school system than in 2019; the roster in Austin, Texas, is
6 percent smaller. Instead, parents are hiring private tutors
to teach their children in person. That is almost certain to
widen the achievement gap.

Research partnerships cloud

S RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES HAVE TEMPERED
hopes for a Biden administration boost in their bud-
Ugets and overseas partnerships, seeing security and
Minority children in the US: worsening learning gaps political complications well beyond Donald Trump’s anti-
science and nativist antagonisms.
CLOSED SCHOOLS ARE BAD FOR ALL children, In part, according to the main grouping of US research
but especially bad for poor and disadvantaged pu- universities, this is because President Trump caused far less
pils. This basic pattern recurs wherever and when- harm to their operations than he threatened, and in part,
ever researchers look for it — in the wake of a polio epidemic such academic leaders believe, because a government led by
in America in 1916, after teachers’ strikes in Argentina in Joe Biden will still struggle to balance the need for global
the 1980s, and after a devastating earthquake in Pakistani- teamwork with the need for national security. “This is go-
controlled Kashmir in 2005. ing to be a continual fight,” Tobin Smith, vice president for
Most experiments in school disruption come after iso- policy at the Association of American Universities, says of
lated natural disasters. However, the Covid-19 pandemic is the quest for clear, consistent and balanced guidelines for
leading to a simultaneous global experiment. In America, US scientists seeking partners from abroad.
where schools have been significantly disrupted for the bet- President-elect Biden’s friendlier attitude toward for-
ter part of a year, the first batches of reliable data are being eigners, by itself, won’t be enough to overcome real con-
gathered to assess how bad the damage has actually been. cerns within US intelligence and law-enforcement com-
Sorting through them shows that America hasn’t defied munities about the threat they see from China and other
gloomy predictions. potentially hostile nations, says Smith. Regardless of the
A recent analysis of standardised tests carried out by administration, federal security officials tend to seek broad
McKinsey, a consulting firm, found that pupils examined restrictions, sometimes covering entire fields of study.
in the autumn had learned 33 percent less maths and 13 That can harm the development of US capabilities in
percent less reading than expected. For schools that are ma- fields such as artificial intelligence because other countries
jority non-white, learning losses are much steeper: pupils in — including China — may have reached breakthroughs that
them learned 41 percent less maths and 23 percent less read- US scientists haven’t yet achieved. “The more we put walls
ing. NWEA, a producer and administrator of standardised around broader things in our country, the more walls we put
exams used in primary and secondary schools, published its up around that knowledge in other countries,” says Smith.
own review of autumn scores that is less worrisome. Pupils And President Biden’s approach to China, in particular,
slid back substantially in maths, but not reading, with few may not be significantly softer, explains Smith, given seri-
detectable differences along racial or socio-economic lines. ous concerns within the Democratic Party about China’s
But a substantial share of students, disproportionately poor record on human rights and democracy. This situation, he
and non-white, simply did not take the tests this year — says, should serve as a warning to US universities — which
which may have flattered the results. have grown to depend heavily on Chinese students and
Researchers from Brown and Harvard universities ex- researchers — that the time to find a more diverse set of
amining data from Zearn, an online maths-teaching plat- options is approaching. “We have to rethink everything go-
form, found that pupils in high-income schools are actually ing forward in terms of finding students and scientists. We
performing 12 percent better in their coursework than in would be naive to think that it was going to continue for-
January 2020. But for low-income schools, scores fell by ever,” he says of the current high levels of Chinese student
17 percent. interest.

52 EDUCATIONWORLD JANUARY 2021