Education Secretary Betsy DeVos urged schools to reopen fully for in-person classes this fall despite an uptick in coronavirus cases across the country.
DeVos said Tuesday that schools must be “fully operational” in the fall because students have already missed out on many learning opportunities by missing the final half of the spring semester earlier this year.
“Ultimately, it’s not a matter of if schools need to open. It’s a matter of how,” she said on a call with governors. “School must reopen. They must be fully operational. And how that happens is best left to education and community leaders.”
DeVos argued that having part-time instruction to allow for fewer students in the classroom is not an acceptable alternative. She stressed that students should return to school full-time even if the virus is still circulating in September.
“A choice of two days per week in the classroom is not a choice at all,” she said.
The secretary claimed that distancing learning was a “disaster” and said that school districts did not do enough to maintain the quality of their instruction. She said that schools did “next to nothing” to try to serve students during the shutdown and that they failed to “figure out how to serve students or … just gave up and didn’t try” when courses moved online.
“Students across the country have already fallen behind. We need to make sure that they catch up,” DeVos said. “It’s expected that it will look different depending on where you are, but what’s clear is that students and their families need more options.”
President Trump has been urging schools to reopen in the fall, even as many states are experiencing a surge in new coronavirus cases.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that schools plan their return in the fall with the “goal” of being physically present in schools full time. The academy noted that students receive important developmental education from in-person lessons and from mingling with their peers. They said that children, who have a low risk of experiencing serious symptoms from COVID-19, need to return to school to get a holistic education.
“The AAP strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school. The importance of in-person learning is well-documented, and there is already evidence of the negative impacts on children because of school closures in the spring of 2020,” the academy wrote.
