The best thing you will read about reopening schools

With temperatures running high over reopening schools in the United States, I highly recommend David Dayen’s piece today for The American Prospect. It gets to the heart of what I’d charitably call a disconnect in the public dialogue on the issue:

If you ask parents whether they want to return their kids to in-person instruction, you see a significant disparity cut by race and class. In general terms, whiter, richer parents are more likely to want to return their kids to school; poorer parents and parents of color do not.

How should we square that with the growing academic consensus that virtual learning has a disproportionately negative effect on students in poorer communities? Shouldn’t their parents be the ones clamoring to get kids back to in-person learning?

The reality is that poorer parents have justifiable concerns about opening the schools in their districts safely. They don’t have faith their schools can implement the mitigation measures seen as necessary to prevent Covid-19 transmission. Moreover, relative to wealthier families, people in these communities lack the resources to deal with fallout from contracting the virus.

In other words, returning to face-to-face schooling in some areas just trades one set of parents’ frustrations for another.