Bits and bytes

A few items of interest have come up recently that don’t merit an entire post, but are worth a quick review.
 
Almost half of all US public school students were full-time remote in January
Education Week reports that the first large-scale federal government survey shows, as of January:

• 43 percent of 4th graders were learning full time from home

• 48 percent of 8th graders were learning full time from home

• 75 percent of schools offered at least some in-person instruction

Another way to look at these data is that 25% of schools were offering only remote instruction, but 43-48% of students were learning remotely. Therefore, a non-trivial percentage of families were choosing full-time remote learning even when they had a full-time onsite or hybrid learning opportunity available.

These numbers represent a one-time snapshot at a time when many more schools were open for in-person learning than in the fall of 2020. More schools, of course, are back to being open now. But the fact that just under 50% of students were full-time remote in January, nearly a year after the initial shift to remote learning, is one key data point demonstrating how long-lasting widespread remote learning has been.

“Nearly One-Third Of Parents May Stick With Remote Learning”
Many media accounts have suggested that students and families have had a poor experience with remote learning, but NPR reports significant interest in continuing with online learning in a recent survey:

“…fully 29% of parents told us they were likely to stick with remote learning indefinitely. That included about half of the parents who are currently enrolled in remote learning.”

Of course, it can be true that both 29% of parents are likely to stick with remote learning and that the majority of parents have had a bad experience with it. Maybe the bottom line is that, unlike pre-pandemic, now just about everyone has an opinion.

“Significant Increase in Homeschooling Rates in Fall 2020”
School districts have experienced enrollment declines in the past year, leading to the question of where students have gone. The US Census Bureau has part of the answer: homeschooling has increased.

“the first data source to offer both a national and state-level look at the impact of COVID-19 on homeschooling rates, shows a substantial increase from last spring — when the pandemic took hold — to the start of the 2020-2021 school year.”

How much of an increase? Three data points answer that question:

• Pre-pandemic homeschool rate: 3.3% (and relatively steady for many years prior)

• Spring 2020 rate (April-May): 5.4%

• Fall 2020 rate: 11.1%

The biggest increase has been among Black families, with 16.1% engaged in homeschooling in the fall.

The Census attempted to ensure that families of students learning remotely while enrolled in school did not select that they were homeschooling.

Post-secondary online enrollment numbers continue to increase, slowly
We keep an eye on post-secondary online enrollment numbers because they help inform what is happening, and may happen, in K-12 education. Our main source is Phil Hill’s excellent blog; his primary source is the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. The latest numbers are from fall 2019. As Phil notes in a recent post, these are “significant in that it is the last pre-pandemic data set to be released.”

The top line numbers:

• 37.2% of post-secondary students took at least one online course during academic year 2018-19, a year-over-year increase of 1.7%. Back in 2016 – 2017, by comparison, the proportion of students taking at least one course online was 31.4%.

• 15% of undergraduates were full-time online. These students are included in the 37.2% who took at least one course online.

• Note that the exact category is “distance education” so there may be a very small percentage who were learning remotely by means other than online.

These numbers for post-secondary are much higher than the equivalent numbers for K-12 education. It’s also notable that these increases were occurring against a decrease in overall post-secondary enrollment numbers.
 
We believe that online and hybrid opportunities should be available to all K-12 students. One increasingly important argument for that view is that students who have online learning experience will be better positioned to learn in college for all sorts of reasons, including that there is a one in three chance they will take an online course in college.
 
Have you seen any data points that we should share with our readers? Let us know with an email to info@evergreenedgroup.com!