Whenever we have a moment we seem to be talking about equity in PD sessions in school this year but it always just seems to be talk. Every day we practice wildly inequitable actions in education without a second thought. IEPed students who are supposed to be given extra time aren't because of the quadmestered schedule and students without a functional learning environment at home are simply out of luck - but the grades keep rolling over them; grading for privilege isn't new but it's amplified in COVID.
During face to face instruction in this pandemic these inequities are exacerbated by a schedule that's half remote and relentlessly unsustainable as it attempts to cover 4.2 days of regular class every day, only half of it face to face and even that half isn't really face to face.
When we go fully remote we push even further in the direction of inequity, all just to keep the fiction of an academically credible public education system alive. There is so much more to public education than this cruel metric based on students attempting to chase education illusions from home.
That a it took a pandemic to highlight this house of cards is telling. Even when it's over you can't expect equity, just slightly less inequity. Meanwhile the toxic positivists are loudly declaring that some students thrive in this brave new world. If they are then they're rich and secure and able to operate without IEP needs. I'm not sure that those students need to be put on a pedestal, society will do that for them for their entire lives.
We're into the final quad-mester of the worst year of teaching I've ever experienced. I'm no longer interested in academic rigour. I'm interested in making sure all my students are able to make it to the end of this cruel and inequitable social experiment without feeling like they are being run into the ground by circumstances beyond their control.
