A much larger problem that school systems do not have an answer for is that some students are not even logging in. As opposed to doing incomplete work or work that is of poor quality, these students are literally not signing in to their online classes or assignments. In fact at least 10,000 Boston Public School students have not signed into their classes in the month of May. In a sense, these students could be considered virtual dropouts whose education was paused three months ago when schools closed to slow the spread of COVID-19.
More than 20% of Boston’s students have not logged on to any of the main academic platforms since May 4, 2020. This means thousands of these students have not attended online classes or picked up any homework assignments. 22% of students never logged into Google Classroom. There is a large gap between the number of students who teachers are marking “present” each day for engaging in “some or all remote learning opportunities” (an average of 84%) and the smaller number of students who have logged into Google Classroom even once.
School systems don’t know how to solve this problem. Do you?