Online Learning in Las Vegas: A Problematic Future
Bo Brusco | December 19, 2020
The sources interviewed for this piece are still currently employed as teachers by CCSD and have requested to remain anonymous accordingly. Their aliases are Ms. Anderson, 26, a fourth-year Freshman teacher, and Mr. Brown, 28, a second-year Senior teacher.
Virtual learning has been a challenging experience for students, teachers, and families this year. But two high school teachers from the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada, warn that we will feel the consequences of the 2020 school year throughout the next decade.
An empty Elementary School in Las Vegas—Photo by Bo Brusco
A State of Constant Turmoil
It is no secret that students have been struggling with online learning, as edsource.org details in their recent article about the state of students’ mental health. But this school year has also taken a significant toll on the teachers on the other side of the screen, many of whom are deeply concerned that their students will have permanently fallen behind in their educational progress.
“Chaos” is how Ms. Anderson describes her online teaching experience, “I am in a state of constant turmoil.” Another teacher, Mr. Brown, describes virtual learning as a “sham,” explaining how new policies and procedures “undercut the objective of kids actually learning things,” and how the flaws in distance learning are “undermining the whole institution of education.”
It seemed as though no one knew what to expect from Vegas’s 2020 school year. It took the Clark County Board of Trustees more than three hours to decide how schools would proceed amidst the pandemic, according to FOX5. But after a two-week delay at the beginning of the school year, students and teachers began to work in a “distance learning” online environment on August 24th. Now that class has been in session for almost four months, teachers are starting to voice their concerns.
Ms. Anderson and Mr. Brown admit that teaching virtually has not been a pleasant experience for them as educators; Ms. Anderson even conceding that she has been “prescribed anti-anxiety medication because of this school year.” Despite their struggles, though, they are more anxious for the future of their students.
“Trying to administer a secure test virtually has just been pure madness,” says Ms. Anderson, “There’s tech issues, there’s kids not taking the test at all.” In addition to being virtual teachers, they are also required to play the role of private investigators responsible for diagnosing each of their 230 students’ various problems. “And then there’s the issue of just making sure that kids with IEPs (Individualized Education Plan)—that all their accommodations are being met,” she continues, “when you can’t physically be there with them, and then you’re just hunting the kids down because you’re pretty much told that you can’t fail students.”
While the additional tasks of teaching online have admittedly been taxing for her, Ms. Anderson is also cognizant that many of her students are going through a mental health crisis because of the pandemic and the fact that people are dying left and right, “all while trying to give [the students] some sense of structure and stability,” says Ms. Anderson.
Mr. Brown is concerned that new policies and procedures designed to help the students are actually coddling them and crippling their educational progress instead. “We just had a virtual meeting today with our principal where basically the principal said [they don’t] want to fail any student that has been ‘participating,’” according to Mr. Brown. The new qualification of “participation” in the virtual setting is doing anything that manifests a pulse in the class. “They only need to show up to pass,” he explains. Within Mr. Brown’s teacher cohort, he estimates that only 60% of students consistently turn in their assignments.
CCSD Offices—Photo by The Las Vegas Review Journal
Student performance
Mr. Brown brushed through his grade book today and noted that he has double the amount of failing students this year compared to 2019, and that is with the added measures to help boost students’ grades. “In the senior class, there are 240 students who are failing a senior class and will not be able to graduate this year,” Mr. Brown reports. Ms. Anderson, who doesn’t teach seniors, says that 20% of her students are failing this semester, which might not sound alarming, but she notes that “last year [she] only had about 5% of students failing [her] class.”
When asked whether or not their students would be ready for the next grade or graduation by the end of the school year, Mr. Brown replied, “Definitely not for graduation. I have kids who struggle to write one-page essays—definitely not ready for college, in my opinion, from an English standpoint. I mean, I have kids who can’t capitalize their I’s, for example.” While he chalks a lot of it up to be laziness on behalf of his students, he believes that “the fact that they’re not even trying tells me that they’re not ready for a college environment.”
Ms. Anderson also believes her kids are not ready for the next grade, but that it’s mainly due to a lack of time. “We only see our kids for 45 minutes twice a week,” referring to classes being held virtually via Zoom, Skype, or Google Hangout, “so going from getting to see them for 45 minutes five times a week down to two a week, you really have to cut down your curriculum,” she says. Ms. Anderson explains how with such a small amount of time allotted to them, it is nearly impossible to equip students with the knowledge they will need for the next step. “Not only do you have to pick and choose what you’re going to teach, but because of the stressors of the pandemic, you have to go at a much slower pace. So there’s no way to teach them all that they need for the next school year,” she concludes, “there’s just not enough time.”
The Future Fallout
When asked about the future implications of the struggles they’re experiencing this school year, Ms. Anderson said, “It’s going to be a huge, huge problem in the future. Every grade level is having to condense what they learn, and there are already so many kids behind. So this whole generation at every single level is going to be negatively impacted,” she warns, “We are probably going to see the effects of this for the next ten years.”
Agreeing with Ms. Anderson, Mr. Brown says, “the only comfort I take in this is that it is going to be a worldwide problem, and so everyone is going to be knocked back.” Hopefully, if Mr. Brown is right, we will see a worldwide solution to this setback as well.
The issues teachers and students are facing in Las Vegas are complicated and extensive. After just two weeks of virtual learning, The Nevada Current detailed several kinks in the system in an article titled “Distance learning has multiple cracks, and students are falling through them.” One of the most significant struggles was trying to contact students virtually. By the second week of class, Connecting Kids Nevada reported that only 86% of students had responded to a CCSD survey, totaling 43,653 unresponsive students. The Nevada Current reports that the reasons for the unresponsive students could range from a lack of familial support to technological issues. Perhaps the most significant revelation, however, came from a heat map detailing the survey’s response rates. The Nevada Current article notes that the map “does suggest a correlation between household median income and low rates of response,” potentially implying that the students who need the most help are the ones least able to receive it.
Heat map of CCSD’s Roll Call—Graphic from nevadacurrent.com
What Can Be Done?
When asked what changes could have an immediate and positive impact on public education’s effectiveness, Ms. Anderson said smaller class sizes, and Mr. Brown suggested that more money be given to schools, resources, and of course, teachers. What is interesting is that both of these suggestions could happen despite a worldwide pandemic. These changes could have been made years ago, and teachers, students, and families would arguably be better off because of it.
Additionally, these problems are not unique to Las Vegas, nor are they necessarily specific to the current pandemic. In 2018, weareteachers.com released an article titled “Teachers Are Leaving the Profession Because of Large Class Sizes, and It’s Changing the Face of Education,” with the subhead reading “We’re losing good teachers every day.” The article cites the significant challenges of teachers with class sizes of 40+ students. As far back as 2016, The Washington Post published an article titled “Think Teachers Aren’t Getting Paid Enough? It’s Worse Than You Think,” citing problematically low salaries. Fast forward two years, and now we read headlines about more teachers resigning in states like Arizona and Utah due to Coronavirus concerns. Mr. Brown and Ms. Anderson both believe that the pandemic has only exposed the pre-existing flaws in the public education system, and hope to see positive changes in the future for both the profession and the rising generation.
