BUFFALO, N.Y. — This story began in April with a handful of simple questions: How many Buffalo school students are participating in distance learning? How many hours a day are they engaged in learning? And how much are they really learning?
They were obvious and reasonable questions. So we posed them to the folks who run the school system. Their response: hysterics and stonewalling.
We then turned to teachers, who, in often heartfelt terms, described their experiences working with students since schools shut their doors in the middle of March because of the pandemic. Their experiences varied, but on balance they said distance learning didn’t work very well.