North Coastal News

A school district in the Houston area has a solution for students who are struggling with online learning: bring them back to the classroom.

In the Friendswood Independent School District, about 28% of online high school students and 18% in junior high are failing a class or have 10 or unexcused absences, KPRC reported.

By contrast the failure rate students attending in-person instruction was 8.5% for high school and 5.3% for junior high, according to school system documents.

The district board of trustees voted to require students who are failing online to return to in-person instruction, the story said.

“If you’re failing classes or if you have more than 10 days of unexcused absences we want you to return to class unless you have a medical need,” board president Tony Hopkins told KPRC.

Students interviewed by the station described what they perceive as the shortcomings of online instruction.

“Some days you get to talk to the teacher,” senior Julian Montejano told KPRC. “But then on other days you are left to your own devices.”

The requirement for failing students to return to the classroom won’t go into effect until next semester but educators already are asking some struggling students to return to class now.

Educators worry that COVID-19 will have a long-term negative impact on student learning.

“There’s studies out there after [Hurricane] Katrina it took six years for those students to regain what they had lost,” Hopkins said. “And there are studies out there right now and this is worldwide. And it’s one of the un-talked about issues with this pandemic.”

Safety protocols for in-person learning have been successful in keeping COVID-19 cases low, the school system said.

“Tracing thus far shows that cases are not coming from spread within the school but from contacts outside of school,” the system said.