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NYC DOE doesn’t know how many students are being taught at home amid lockdown
The city Department of Education doesn’t know how many of its students are actually being taught at home during the coronavirus lockdown, officials conceded Wednesday.
Asked if they were keeping track of live lesson provision in the wake of the closure of schools in March, a top DOE official had no answers at a City Council meeting Wednesday.
“We don’t have exact data on how many students are receiving it or for how long,” said Chief Academic Officer Linda Chen.
As first reported by The Post, parents across the city have complained that their kids were not receiving any live instruction – with some not hearing directly from their teachers directly for weeks at a time.
Those parents said they were provided worksheets via email and ended up providing more instruction to their kids than DOE staffers.
While many city teachers have gamely managed to retain live teaching through video apps, others have opted out of the practice.
Instructors have relayed a raft of challenges associated with remote teaching, from uneven tech resources among their students and cybersecurity concerns to haphazard administrative direction and shoddy training.
The effort was also complicated by the DOE’s ban on the use of video app Zoom and subsequent reversal.
Teachers union chief Michael Mulgrew called remote learning a “success” overall Wednesday and said that many teachers have embraced live teaching under extreme duress.
“Every teacher in every school community and administrative staff in New York City had to learn how to go to remote learning,” he said. “There was no plan in place, there was no support system in place there was no training in place. every school had to figure it out on their own.”
Citing the variety of hurdles teachers face to conduct live teaching, the United Federation of Teachers has told members that they are not obligated to practice it even if administrators demand it.
While he voiced concerns over the uneven provision of live teaching, Councilman Mark Treyger urged city residents to empathize with the position city educators have been placed in.
“I remind folks that educators are also human beings they have experienced loss of colleagues, they have experienced loss in their families,” he said. “They are in many cases the primary caretakers for families at home.”
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