Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a leading candidate to be the next mayor of New York City, said during a forum about the city’s budget that remote learning could be used to teach hundreds of students at home using a single teacher, a claim many will find inexplicable given the past years’ experience with remote learning during the pandemic.
The forum took place back in February, but a short clip of Adams’ discussion was recently posted online by YouTube personality Matt Skidmore, who openly supports Adams’ opponent Andrew Yang. In the clip, Adams tells the Citizens Budget Commission about his plan to open school year-round. When asked how much it will cost, Adams responded that it could be cost-effective using remote technology.
“By using the new technology of remote learning, you don’t need school children to be in a school building with a number of teachers. It’s just the opposite. You could have one great teacher that’s in one of our specialized high schools to teach 300-400 students who are struggling with math with the skillful way that they’re able to teach,” Adams said.
NYC Mayoral Frontrunner Eric Adams: “With new technology you don’t need school children to be in a school building with a number of teachers. It’s just the opposite. You could have one teacher teach 300-400 students.” pic.twitter.com/elaChcS1oV
— The Matt Skidmore Show (@ZachandMattShow) June 11, 2021
Adams prefaced this by saying he wanted to move to year-round school in order to keep kids engaged, pointing out that “80% of the men and women at Rikers Island don’t have a high school diploma or equivalency diploma.”
Elsewhere in Adams’ response, he discusses city taxes on social media companies and Netflix, but let’s focus on the remote learning.
As The Daily Wire has repeatedly reported – and as numerous parents have pointed out online – remote learning during the coronavirus pandemic was a disaster. Last November, The Daily Wire’s Hank Berrien reported on a study in Virginia showing remote learning was damaging students’ education. From the study:
Based on the findings of the analyses presented here, there is reason for concern about the performance of some middle and high school students based on their Q1 marks from this school year. Results indicate a widening gap between students who were previously performing satisfactorily and those performing unsatisfactorily. In other words, students who performed well previously primarily performed slightly better than expected during Q1 of this year. In contrast, students who were previously not performing well, performed considerably less well. A greater proportion of low-performing students received failing grades during Q1 than would have been expected based on patterns of marks in prior years.
Students at the middle school level had a notable increase in the percentage of failures, while at the high school level the increase also existed but was considerably smaller. The pattern was pervasive across all student groups, grade levels, and content areas examined in this report. The trend of more failing marks is concerning across the board but is especially concerning for the groups that showed the biggest unpredicted increases in receiving multiple unsatisfactory marks, namely our English learner students and students with disabilities.
Before that, reports surfaced of students failing at many schools.
And that’s just the grades. Remote learning has also been found to increase mental health issues in children and teens. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study from March suggested “that virtual instruction might present more risks than does in-person instruction related to child and parental mental and emotional health and some health-supporting behaviors.”