U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was in Garland on Thursday, learning how some schools are teaching through COVID-19. She found positives in a year of negatives.
DeVos said she found several silver linings to the deadly pandemic that鈥檚 now killed more than 200,000 people in the U.S., even as flare-ups persist.
"I believe that one of the silver linings to this pandemic is going to be the much more rapid adoption of technology," DeVos said.
After COVID-19 shut schools down in March, online-learning took over, along with lots of problems. Teachers, students and families not only struggled with technology itself, but with long-distance learning.
DeVos also applauded variations on classrooms that maintain in-person learning.
"We鈥檙e seeing families across the country who are electing to start small home schools,鈥 DeVos said, 鈥渙r micro-schools or pods or some other definition of small schools with few students. And I think we鈥檒l see a lot more of that."
Critics see those small-school options available mostly to families with money. Devos said they should be equally accessible to low-income families, but she didn鈥檛 mention a way to make that happen.
Got a tip? Email Reporter Bill Zeeble at bzeeble@kera.org. You can follow him on Twitter .
四虎影院 is made possible through the generosity of our members. If you find this reporting valuable, consider today. Thank you.