ABSS officials this week confessed to school board members what parents have known for months if not the past two years: remote instruction didn’t work out very well.
Students simply did not understand the material conveyed through online courses – or they just didn’t do the work.
Now the test results are in, and they’re: (a) dismal, (b) pitiful, (c) awful, actually the correct answer is (d) all of the above.
What’s probably equally troubling, however, is that ABSS officials have had access to this data for six months and only brought it to the school board this week.
Commendations to several school board members, who have repeatedly pressed to get a presentation on these findings.
Well, they finally got the results, or at least part of them.
School board vice chairman Patsy Simpson is to be commended for pressing even further this week that the statistics need to be made available by school, something officials could have provided – and should have anticipated board members wanting to know.
In fact, didn’t they want to know?
They should have – in order to target remedial responses.
Instead, central office administrators have dilly-dallied for six months when they, or school board members, could have been formulating an effective strategy for improvement.
Instead, they’re at least six months behind in doing anything.
As Simpson has also pointed out, central office administrators seem to be particularly creative and adept at explaining away all manner of failure in ABSS schools.
Simpson is also correct that the damage from this failure contributes to a “lost generation,” students who will be permanently affected by ABSS’ failures during Covid.
It’s time for improvement – not only in test scores, but also in administration.
