What does the coronavirus mean for your child's education? (2 Minute Read)

Amid all of the chaos and news stories, many parents are seeing the doors of their children’s schools close for several weeks. Some schools have even closed off their campuses for the remainder of the year. What does this mean for your child’s academic performance? Are they going to experience huge gaps in their learning due to this? In this blog, I’ll explain the data around missing school, and the true downstream impact. I’ll also go into detail of how to mitigate as many of the loss as possible. We’re allowing comments on this blog as well, just in case any readers have questions. Until further notice, all of our remote tutoring options are being offered at 30% off to accommodate students unable to meet in their schools.

First of all, there is a huge impact to missing school. Regardless of grade level, the correlation between academic performance and attendance is extremely strong. Studies in metropolitan areas show that chronic absenteeism typically has long-lasting downstream impacts on the ability of students to achieve academically, while also impacting their ability to succeed in subsequent academic transitions (middle school to high school for instance). Making sure your students stay in class, whether real or virtual, should be the highest priority.

However, there is an easy solution to this. We’ve found remote tutoring, or online sessions, to be just as effective for students when taught but experienced professionals. The issue with remote sessions, is that it’s more difficult to properly engage students, and inexperienced teachers struggle to perform in this setting. We’ve found that extensive training for our team, plus individualization, seem to mitigate these issues and hold similar results to in-person learning. A focus on making instructors verbally immediate helped bridge gaps found in other virtual learning classrooms.

In order to help the local educational climate during this difficult time, we’re offering all of our highest quality remote options at a hugely discounted rate. Our goal is to help parents ensure that their students are prepared for the future, regardless of what that looks like. We know that the dust from the coronavirus outbreak has yet to settle, but focusing on what we can control will ensure the fewest gaps in academic performance.

Feel free to ask any questions by adding a quick comment onto this blog or give us a call if you’d prefer to speak in-person.

-Mark Wilson, Director of Curriculum Development and Design