Pandemic pods are inequitable and inevitable — and a dream come true for the school choice movement

• As students and parents prepare for an uncertain back-to-school season, the concept of pandemic pods has risen in popularity, and in practice.
• But these pods are likely to exacerbate preexisting inequality, and intensify the loaded debate over "school choice," which has a complex history when it comes to race and class.
• School choice, in its simplest form, it is an ideology that calls for parents to have the freedom to choose where their children go to school — whether that's public, private, or charter school.
• Already, governors in South Carolina and Oklahoma have moved to allocate federal funding to private schools, and two senators have introduced the "School Choice Now Act," which would provide money for scholarship-granting organizations to give families direct educational assistance — which could be used for private schools and homeschooling.
• Jennifer Berkshire, co-host of the education podcast "Have You Heard" and author of the upcoming book "A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School," told Business Insider that "this could really usher in the end of a public education system."
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In the fall of 2019, around 50 million kids attended public school and almost 6 million were in private schools. In 2017, the most recent data available indicates that around 3 million students were in charter schools.

But by the spring of 2020, the idea of a physical classroom was a thing of the past, scrambling all of these categories.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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• 'Pod'-style learning benefits affluent kids and exacerbates education inequality — but it does address 3 key issues. Here's how to solve those problems equitably.

SEE ALSO: 'Pod'-style learning benefits affluent kids and exacerbates education inequality — but it does address 3 key issues. Here's how to solve those problems equitably.

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