Nashville schools to start academic year remotely for all students

All Metro Nashville Public Schools students will start the academic year remotely as coronavirus cases continue to mount, Director of Schools Adrienne Battle announced Thursday.

Instead of allowing families to choose from either in-person or remote learning options, all 86,000 students will start the school year learning from home on Aug. 4.

"Our school district does not operate in isolation and we should not and cannot make the decision about reopening schools in isolation," Battle said during a Thursday news conference. "Our nation has not prioritized the steps to reduce the spread of COVID-19. We have not had our national priorities focused on that goal."

Virtual instruction is expected to last until at least Labor Day. When students and teachers do return to school buildings, families will still have the option to keep their children at home and do remote learning.

Battle attributed the delay of reopening schools to the rising number of coronavirus cases in the community and the nation's inability to halt the spread of the virus. Nashville reported 688 news cases on Thursday, of which 172 dated to early June.

Mayor John Cooper called Thursday the city's "worst day" since the outbreak began.

Battle said the district must put the health and safety of its students and employees first and all the information she has seen, combined with feedback from experts, community members and families, led her to the conclusion that it is not safe to reopen schools before Labor Day.

Metro Nashville Public Schools Director Adrienne Battle speaks at a schools board meeting on March 12, 2020, in Nashville.
Many of the city's charter schools are also following Metro Schools' lead. All members of the Nashville Charter Collaborative will open virtually for at least the first month of the 2020-21 school year, according to a statement Thursday.

The collaborative includes 12 charter organizations and their schools, including KIPP, LEAD Public Schools, Nashville Classical, Republic Schools, Rocketship Public Schools, Valor Collegiate Academies and others.

What learning will look like for students
Though students won't physically start the year in the classroom, they will be assigned to a class and a teacher at the same school they would have attended in person, whether a zoned school, a magnet or another choice school.

Learning will look much different than it did in the spring, when grades were not assigned and attendance was not required after initial school closures, Battle told teachers Thursday morning.

“In this virtual learning environment (this fall), there will be increased expectations," she said, according to a recording obtained by The Tennessean. "We will be assessing. There will be accountability. Attendance will be required. We will be providing grades."

Students will receive at least two hours of real-time instruction each day, but the bulk of learning will be done at each student’s own pace, according to Battle's presentation to teachers and staff prior to the news conference, portions of which were obtained by The Tennessean.

Learning time will vary based on the age of students and the content, she later clarified. On average, up to at least six and a half hours of content and instruction will be available to students through the virtual learning platform per day and students will have access to all course content 24/7.

The district is proposing to utilize the curriculum and platform used by Florida Virtual School, which already includes more than 190 courses so teachers will not have to develop their own lessons and materials in a short time frame.

High schools will also adopt a semester model, with students taking four classes per semester, which district officials said is more manageable in a virtual environment.

Students will still be able to earn the same amount of credits as they would through a traditional block, or AB, schedule.

"We will be utilizing a standard curriculum to be used across the district in all schools, and this is very necessary because we need to provide a continuity of learning plan for consistency for our students," Battle said during a call with teachers and staff Thursday morning. "We should fully expect that there might be ebbs and flows, times when we are in face-to-face or not, that we might be virtual or having hybrid opportunities for our students given our local context with COVID-19. We need to be able to pivot no matter what situation we are in."

The district has previously used the Florida Virtual School curriculum on a smaller scale and said most of the courses MNPS offers are already available through the platform, including honors and advanced courses and even career and technical education courses.

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Parents struggle with the possibility of online classes this fall

Parents and teachers are struggling to prepare for the possibility that school will be online this fall.

“I’m terrified, honestly,” Kristienne, a mother of three from North Carolina, told the Washington Examiner. “I know my daughter’s friend’s mom is a single parent, an essential employee, and was coming home every day and spending hours every night helping two children with no other parental help.”

The fear of online classes this fall is keeping one stay-at-home mom from rejoining the workforce. “I was planning on going back in some capacity, but it's really not realistic if I will have to put my younger two into a day care during the day,” Katie, a 37-year-old mother of three, told the Washington Examiner. Anonymity was granted to parents and teachers who commented for this article.

School closures during the pandemic affected 55.1 million students and caused panic among parents and teachers, who had to reorder their lives to handle the sudden change.

Students weren't the only ones sent home. Millions of people lost their jobs during the coronavirus. Parents had to struggle to pay the bills while trying to help their children with schoolwork.

“I saw many other parents struggling, both with technology issues such as internet connectivity or not having the equipment they needed, as well as actually finding the time to teach the material to their kids,” said Rachelle, a substitute teacher from Texas.

“Parents were stressed,” said Karen, a 51-year-old kindergarten teacher from North Carolina. “I know kids were shuffled around so that parents could work.”

President Trump is urging schools to reopen this fall, but parents and teachers are still debating how to handle the virus.

New York City public schools have announced that they are not fully reopening this fall, Mayor Bill de Blasio has said, although the final arrangement is subject to the direction of state Gov. Andrew Cuomo. In the announced plan, school would be a mix of online and in-class learning. Classrooms would have no more than 12 people in the room. The plan would still leave parents struggling to help their children with online lessons or to find child care while they are at work.

Kristienne was able to get help from her mother to juggle her kids' schooling. Kristienne's mom took one of her daughters, who was doing relatively well with online learning, and Kristienne worked with her other daughter, who has a learning disability. "There was one week my mom attempted to take both girls just to see if she could do it. It was too much," she said.

Some days, Kristienne or her mother would spend the majority of the day helping the girls with their education. With "the girls starting their work at 9 a.m. and breaking only for lunch and bathroom and my mom sitting at the table with them the whole time, it was taking 10 hours," Kristienne said.

It was hard to keep up with lesson plans for the children and hard on the grandparents, Kristienne said. “They’re supposed to be able to enjoy the grandchildren without that sort of responsibility. Not to mention, I’m working 40 hours a week again and have even less time to help and make lesson plans.”

A child's short attention span makes at-home learning difficult for many. “Online schooling is not for everyone,” Katie said. “I’m very concerned with it for elementary-age kids, many will just not be successful.”

Katie's husband has an irregular work schedule. It is impossible for Katie to go back to the workforce this year like she hoped, and she is planning on pulling her youngest out of public school if it implements hybrid learning.

Katie said that is is very hard to "juggle" her youngest as "he is more needy and hands-on than the other two, who are older and can do things on their own." The youngest would distract her older children from their work, which is one reason why she won't pull her older kids out of school.

In the pandemic, thousands of teachers have been forced online with no prior training. Although there was a struggle switching online for some teachers, they were able to help their students with the switch and with homework.

“It wasn't very hard for us, but we are a very tech-savvy family,” said Rachelle, the Texas substitute teacher. Rachelle was able to help her own children along with some of her friends’ children with homework.

“It took quite a bit of balancing our schedules, my husband and I are teachers, after the initial adjustment that home and school were the same place,” Jamie, a mother of three from Pennsylvania, told the Washington Examiner.

Although teachers might have had an easier time adjusting with their own children this spring, they recognize that many parents were struggling during this time and need to plan ahead for the fall.

“Parents ... it's hard because if they work, they need to find someone to take care of the kids AND make sure they are doing their work. It's a lot of pressure on parents, but they have time to prepare as they all know it is a possibility,” Karen said.

During the wave of shutdowns in the spring, 60% of parents did not have any help caring for their children, according to a survey from the Boston Consulting Group. It is going to be hard for many to find help for the fall, regardless of the time they have to prepare right now.

Parents need now to discuss plans for the fall if online learning is offered again, Rachelle said. “I do think that the schools could be preparing teachers and parents better ahead of time, but honestly, I don't know how that would or should work,” she said.

Older siblings need to help their parents out with their younger siblings, Karen said. “Parents of younger kids have a tough job ... especially if they work. Someone has to help them online with work and meetups,” she said.

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Warding off International Students Will Destroy US Jobs

An ongoing lawsuit filed by the American labor union, The Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, or “Washtech,” is threatening to increase unemployment and damage the ability of the US to attract highly-skilled foreign talent. The target of the lawsuit is Optional Practical Training (OPT), which allows international students to remain in the US for a limited period of time post-graduation.

As the authors of this piece are both international students from the UK, Patrick a graduate student at George Mason University, and Alice currently finishing her OPT year working at a university-based research center, the subject hits close to home. We promise we’re not trying to steal your jobs.

The current COVID-19 pandemic has already been used as a justification for curtailing immigration, and could add more fuel to the fire given concerns over high US unemployment. However, ending or limiting OPT will have a detrimental effect on US citizens both now and in the future.

OPT is a period of work authorization for international students in F1-visa status following the completion of a degree in the US The work must be related to the student’s field of study and generally lasts for 12 months, but may be extended an additional 24 months for students in STEM fields. The OPT program plays a key role in attracting international students to US universities.

The “Washtech” lawsuit challenges DHS authority in the initial ruling, and questions whether appropriate rulemaking procedures were followed in 2008 and 2016. Restricting the OPT program has also been on the Trump administration’s regulatory agenda for the last four years, and a target date of August 2020 has been set to enact amendments.

“Washtech” claims that the OPT program leads to reduced employment opportunities for US citizens. However, a team of scholars at the National Foundation for American Policy found that the OPT program had no effect on US employment, and that there was actually a negative relationship between unemployment and the number of OPT applicants between 2008 and 2016. Similarly, Business Roundtable modeled a scenario in which new immigration policy led to a 60 percent decline in OPT participation. They found that this would cause real US GDP to decline by about 0.25 percentage points by 2028, and lead to the loss of 255,000 jobs held by native-born workers.

In July 2019, several large business associations successfully petitioned to become party to the lawsuit in order to defend OPT suggesting that they are fearful of how changes could affect their bottom line. In November 2019, over 100 US colleges, ranging from Ivy League schools to state university systems, signed on to an amicus brief opposing the lawsuit.

Restricting OPT will stifle economic growth by creating persistent gaps in the labor market. It will disable businesses’ ability to acquire foreign talent based on market needs and scarcity of domestic workers. Research undertaken after the 2009 recession shows that this could be particularly advantageous during downturns.

Over the past few years, burdensome visa rules have influenced international students to choose countries with a more liberal stance on immigration, leading to a decrease in enrollment for U.S institutions. In Canada, for instance, foreign students automatically qualify for work permits upon graduation. If OPT were to be limited or ended, US universities would likely continue to see significant drops in the enrollment of foreign students.

During the 2018-19 academic year, international students contributed $39 billion to the US economy, and supported 455,622 American jobs. The Trump administration and “Washtech” claim to want to protect US jobs, but creating an unfriendly environment for international students will lead to the destruction of the very jobs that they support.

In addition, foreign students contribute to US exports when they spend money on university tuition, housing, dining, or other expenses while present in the US The Trump administration pledged to reduce the US “trade deficit,” but restricting the flow of foreign students will reduce America’s fifth largest export and widen the deficit further.

The possibility of working in the US attracts some of the world’s brightest young minds to its universities which drives innovation and economic growth. Studies have shown that international students are highly entrepreneurial and are far more likely to found startups and file patents than their American counterparts. A Mercatus Center study demonstrated that for every foreign worker hired in an industry, 5 to 7.5 domestic jobs are created for Americans in the same industry. In the 2019 edition of their Fortune 500 report, the New American Economy Research Fund showed that 45 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants.

Innovation and entrepreneurial spirit create jobs and promote prosperity. Limiting or abolishing the OPT program will redirect the next generation of entrepreneurs toward countries with a more liberal stance on immigration, and deprive the US of future innovation and the job creation that would come with it.

“Washtech” and the Trump administration’s baseless claim that restricting the OPT program will reduce “foreign competition” is a fallacy. In the short term, US unemployment will increase as international student enrollment declines, while in the longer term, US innovation will lag inflicting serious collateral damage on us all.

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Explosive College Recruiting Video on BLM Shows Why 'Wokey McWokeface' Needs Not Apply

Well, what do you know? A college that is as tired as you about how America’s colleges and universities have become literal factories for cranking out offended-nistas.

At this college there are no trigger warnings, safe spaces or boys in the girls’ showers.

Indeed, New St. Andrews College, a small school of about 200 students in Moscow, Idaho, is becoming known for its outspoken student recruitment videos, some of which are hilariously in your face in promising no coddling and no safe-spaces – just “clarity of thought.”

Though it’s gotten blowback for its recruiting videos recently, including for one called “Boys Will Be Boys,” about the politics of bathrooms, New St. Andrews College promises parents and incoming students only that it offers a traditional liberal arts education based on Christian values, using “dead teachers,” in a “riot-free” atmosphere.

Students and teachers are also are meeting in person this fall “free of masks, plastic wrap, Zoom classes, government money, and ‘safe’ spaces.”

But nothing is quite as in your face as this latest New St. Andrew’s (NSA) recruitment video, which features a discussion of Black Lives Matter, woke-ness, white supremacy and the sacredness of life.

No “Wokey McWokefaces” need apply. Indeed, they might be triggered by simply watching the video “Why Black Lives Matter” (see it below).

The video begins with a discussion of George Floyd and how his life mattered as well as the lives of millions of other black children who were killed in the womb.

The two-minute and 16-second video uses photos of the victims of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, who killed babies after they were born and has been sentenced to life in prison for it.

We know this black life matters, but why doesn’t this one? We believe that all these black lives mattered. And (showing baby from Dr. Gosnell photos) tens of millions of others did too.

We believe that each and every human life matters, because regardless of culture or color, we’re made in the sacred image of almighty God, which is the only possible reason why any life could matter at all.

But there’s a lot more. Showing still photos of President Woodrow Wilson, abortion advocate Margaret Sanger, Andrew Carnegie and more, the video delves into why some black lives don’t matter to population-control zealots.

We believe that secular progressive white supremacists have been running a vile, genocidal, population control campaign in America that has straddled centuries. Trying to keep them from life, from adulthood, from power. From stable families and communities. And that matters.

We believe that the organization, Black Lives Matter, registered trademark, is a Marxist front that doesn’t care about black lives even half as much as an average white, pro-life, fly-over, Trump-voting, evangelical.

Every single black life matters, from conception to the grave and beyond into eternity.

That is God’s truth. And it’s a helluva lot more than BLM can say.

One must appreciate the guts it takes to be in the education space, filled with wokeness, gender “studies” and other “progressive” fields of study, and be unabashedly traditional in scope and Christian philosophy and then shout it from the rooftops.

NSA President Benjamin Merkle told PJMedia that the response “has been largely very positive. A lot of people feel like we are saying what they think but what no one else will say.”

It’s true. Imagine Harvard putting out a video like this one. Don’t bother trying, it never would. It’s even hard to imagine the schools in the Christian College Consortium producing anything this bold in standing up for their beliefs out of abject fear of offending anyone and hurting their bottom line.

While those places are staying in their self-made bounds of propriety, NSA is going in the other direction.

Merkle said that this video and the others like it aren’t only about recruitment, but empowerment for other colleges and those who would unthinkingly bend a knee “to Baal”:

“The college campus is what has been broken in America for some time, and nobody has been willing to notice or address the problem,” said Merkle. “That is why we are currently looking at a generation of students that have not been trained to think clearly and can so easily be swept up by Marxist ideology. We wanted to show that there was at least one knee out there that has not bowed to Baal.”

“If Christian colleges aren’t ready to be bold in this moment, there isn’t much of a future for them as distinctively Christian schools,” he warned.

I asked him if he’s getting more interested students and he said web traffic has been up but that won’t necessarily translate into new students. Mainly, the full-throated message he’s sending is to stand up to the rage mob and tell the truth. That hasn’t always gone over well.

“We’ve had a lot of people get upset,” he explained. “We had the mayor of our city also write an editorial in our local paper denouncing us. But I’ve seen a bunch of our alumni be really supportive. And my board is very behind us as well.”

And if the rioters come calling? “I’m not worried about physical safety.”

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