Despite pulling her daughter out of virtual learning in favor of home schooling a month into the school year, Ashley Zimmerman still believes public education is good.
But, is Zimmerman ready to send her first-grader back to Ann Arbor Public Schools whenever the district deems it safe to return to in-person classes?
“I am afraid that they are going to need to rebuild trust,” Zimmerman said, adding that her daughter’s reading skills have made marked progress under her home teaching.
“I need to see them adjusting to what has happened in our children in this crisis of education that the virtual learning platform has created. I need to see that they’re doing a good job with the education gap having widened and many of the equity issues that have only become worse.”
Zimmerman isn’t alone in weighing whether her child will return to public school when it’s safe to do so.
Michigan schools have lost around 53,200 students this fall, according to enrollment figures verified by the Center for Education and Performance Information. The number of registered and approved home schools, however, has grown from 290 in 2019-20 to 622 this year.
“Many parents have chosen to homeschool their children rather than use virtual or remote learning through a local school district or public school academy,” State Superintendent Michael Rice said. “Some feel that, since they themselves may be home with their children, this is an opportunity for them to connect additionally with their children. Some believe that they can offer a stronger, more consistent experience than schools can at this moment at a distance.”
Saline Area Schools, a district of around 5,000 students, saw 225 students exit since the COVID-19 pandemic ended in-person school in March, Superintendent Scot Graden said. The families of 74 of those students said they planned to home school their children, with the pandemic cited as the reason for their decision.
Graden anticipates some of those students will return. But right now, it’s too early to speculate if and when, based on how uncertain the current education landscape is, he said.
“It feels like we’re going to have to be in some version of post-pandemic in order for us to get a good sense for how people are going to feel about it,” Graden said.
Will they come back?
Virtual learning couldn’t be more different for Amber Stanczak’s two children. Her son, a seventh-grader, has excelled learning online with live daily instruction through Lakeshore Public Schools, going from an A and B student to getting straight A’s, she said.
Her fourth-grade daughter, however, struggled with learning behind a screen, causing Stanczak to begin home schooling her last month. Stanczak said she saw little learning time devoted to interacting with her daughter throughout the day – a major departure from what she saw last spring when in-person classes were shut down.
“It was conducted like a classroom,” Stanczak said of her daughter’s learning experience in the spring. “This virtual setting is not a classroom. This was pretty much go learn it on your own, watch a video and if you can remember your questions, come back and ask me later.”
So, while her son will stay in their local school district, Stanczak said her daughter will likely continue home schooling through eighth grade.
“Because I’m working from home, we’re afforded the opportunity to help her get caught up in a way that wouldn’t happen in a school setting,” she said. “I haven’t decided if I want to pursue (home schooling) beyond eighth grade yet. A lot of it will depend on her and how much she’s progressed and is she at (the appropriate) grade level, or is she still considered behind?”
Parent Angel Niederkohr also had flexibility in working from home in the spring when Wayne State University sent its faculty and staff home for the remainder of the year. She and her husband used that time to develop their own learning schedule for their two daughters, who are in first and second grades.
Their schedule was broken up by Anchor Bay School District’s virtual learning platforms and Zoom classrooms, Niederkohr said. So they decided to home school instead.
“We had developed a schedule that was working, so the need to adapt to something that was online was kind of an added frustration for my household,” she said. “If they have that look of confusion, it’s harder for a teacher to see that on the Zoom screen when there are 20 other kids. I just felt overall, I wanted my kids to enjoy education and to learn to stay focused, but in a way that is realistic for their age.”
Niederkohr has kept tabs on how Anchor Bay has adjusted to going in and out of having some form of in-person classes through the first few months of the school year. She ultimately wants her children to return, but only when there’s assurance they won’t need to revert back to virtual learning due to a spike in COVID-19 cases.
“For me, it was about not wanting to have to deal with the back and forth,” Niederkohr said. “Kids need assurance to know what to expect from week to week.”
When the dust settles
The coronavirus pandemic has seen Farmington’s Renaissance Homeschool Group enroll about 120 new students this year among the approximately 400 students in the program.
The group, which has offered classes for both hybrid in-person learning and live online classes, has been able to accommodate the increase due to a comparable number of students no longer being enrolled in the program, Renaissance Director Kim Dennis said. Parents of those students indicated they wanted to take a more hands-on role in their children’s education.
New families have benefited from attending in-person classes with smaller class sizes for the first nine weeks of the year, until the home school network was forced to move operations online due to the increase in COVID-19 cases, Dennis said.
“We had families from both ends,” Dennis said. “Either they really wanted their kids to be in-person, or they didn’t like the virtual option the school was offering.”
Dennis sees families of those new students struggling with how their children will be educated post-pandemic, noting that some aren’t certain whether they’ll continue to home school or send their children back to public schools when it’s safe to do so full-time.
“I think for those parents, it’s really hard because they’re trying to keep a foot in both worlds,” Dennis said.
Graden expects to begin reengaging with families who left the district after spring break in hopes of reenrolling them.
Regardless if it’s a student returning to the district after being home schooled, or simply currently enrolled students who have primarily been in remote learning, Graden expects some remediation to occur.
“We do anticipate that we’ll see a larger-than-normal number of students who want to reclassify,” he said. “Some families who have home schooled have indicated they want (their child) to return to the same grade level that they left.”
While some families will choose to continue home schooling after the pandemic, Rice said many will send their children back to public schools. Some reasons for their expected return, he said, include parents returning to work at a work site; recognition of the value of in-person schooling; the value of in-school socialization and recognizing their children’s desire to return to school.
Because state law does not require home school registration, Rice is concerned Michigan won’t be able to count children who aren’t being educated at all during the pandemic.
“As a result, we can’t distinguish between children who are being home schooled at the present time and children who aren’t being educated at all,” Rice said. “This gap needs to be addressed with a change in state law to help us identify and serve children who aren’t in public, private, parochial, or homeschool environments at the present time.”
To help you navigate this complicated fall, we’re pleased to offer you a simpler way to get all of your education news: Our new Michigan Schools: Education in the COVID Era newsletter delivered right to your inbox. To receive this newsletter, simply click here to sign up.
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