LA Examiner

Tag: Students

  • New Products Help to Provide Substantial Aid to Students

    New Products Help to Provide Substantial Aid to Students

    Image credit: Unsplash

    The back-to-school season can be an anxiety-inducing time for children and parents alike. On the one hand, it’s the beginning of a new school year full of seemingly boundless potential. On the other hand, children want the year to get off to a great start as they meet a whole new host of students, teachers, and friends, while parents are arguably even more concerned about the health and well-being of their child as they enter this new world. 

    Fortunately, some of the latest and most innovative back-to-school products are ones that not only support learning but also promote emotional wellness, safety, and sustainability. These are three key areas that modern parents and educators are prioritizing, and there are several tools that can help them ensure these standards are met for children as they return to school.

    Tools for Safer Digital Habits

    As kids head back to school with more tech in hand than ever before, tools that help families manage screen time and digital safety are essential. One notable solution comes from Bark Technologies, which offers a range of products, from smartwatches to a safer smartphone for kids, that monitor online activity while respecting privacy.

    As Titania Jordan from Bark Technologies says, “One of the most powerful things about Bark is that it helps strengthen the bond between parent and child. Kids want independence, and parents want peace of mind. By alerting parents only to potential dangers instead of handing over every single text or post, Bark gives families a way to stay safer online without unnecessary snooping. That balance of safety and respect is what builds trust, and trust is the foundation of every healthy parent-child relationship.”

    Making Math Fun in Early Grades

    Hands-on, engaging learning experiences can build confidence in subjects like math from an early age. That’s the philosophy behind Centers in a Snap by Lucky Learning with Molly, a set of printable and physical math games designed for K–2 learners.

    “You know, I see it all the time… the kids who are struggling the most are the ones who love playing math games,” says Molly Lynch from Lucky Learning with Molly. “And so playing math games, I found the other big benefit is the development of their social-emotional learning.”

    Sustainable and Skill-Building Toys

    Parents looking for eco-conscious, educational toys will appreciate the new Montessori-inspired line from PlanToys. These wooden toys emphasize motor skills and cognitive development, while also being built to last and easy to resell, an appealing feature in today’s growing secondhand market.

    This line will focus on skill-building through the use of durable, resellable, eco-friendly options amid rising secondhand shopping trends. Additionally, the company is introducing a farm-to-table series expanding its kitchen line, which emphasizes healthy eating habits through play. Through these initiatives, the company aims to evolve its marketing approach: more playful, differentiated from standard toy narratives. 

    As one leader details, “Instilling these habits in children through play is the most effective way… teaching them how to cook and grow food through pretend play.”

    Back-to-School Essentials

    Whether it’s digital safety, foundational learning, or sustainable play, these products show how parents can make thoughtful back-to-school choices that support their children’s holistic development. The back-to-school season doesn’t need to conjure feelings of dread alongside the palpable excitement. With these unique products, parents can send their children back to school with renewed confidence and feel good about the work they are doing to set themselves and their children up for success.

  • California Students and Schools Still Struggle to Recover From the Pandemic

    California Students and Schools Still Struggle to Recover From the Pandemic

    Image credits: Unsplash

    It has been almost exactly five years since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic shut down schools across California. Yet, schools and their students continue to recover slowly despite increased funding from state and federal governments.

    According to researchers at Harvard and Stanford, California students continue to underperform on standardized tests compared to pre-pandemic scores. Math scores are equivalent to being 31% of a grade level behind, while reading scores are 40% of a grade level behind. 

    What the average scores mask, however, is wider disparities in scores between schools serving affluent districts and schools serving low-income districts—a gap that Sean Reardon, faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford, has called “a pernicious inequality.”

    The Deeper Impact of the Pandemic

    Standardized scores also fail to capture the deeper impact that a year in isolation has had on California’s youth: their mental health, socialization, communication skills, study habits, and resilience. William C. Overfelt High serves 1,400 Hispanic and Vietnamese American students in East San Jose, mostly from low-income households. 

    Principal Vito Chiala shares this about the impact: “We tend to overlook the longer-term effects of the delay in socialization and self-discipline—things that schools nurtured in young people.” 

    Overfelt High’s teachers and staff focused primarily on school-related behavior, self-regulation, and communication skills during students’ first year back from virtual learning. 

    “Students who had spent over a year saying whatever they wanted on social media had to face people in person,” Chiala recalls, “and that was super-uncomfortable sometimes. Now it’s much more about endurance, being willing and able to do hard academic work for longer periods of time.”

    Overfelt High isn’t alone in that experience. In 2021-22, 87% of public schools indicated that the pandemic had delayed students’ socioemotional development, with 56% reporting more frequent cases of classes disrupted by student misconduct, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

    Chronic Absenteeism

    Meanwhile, chronic absenteeism (defined as missing 10% of school days or more) tripled in California from its pre-pandemic level of 12% (in the 2018-19 school year) to 30% in the 2021-22 school year. By 2023-24, the chronic absenteeism rate dropped to 20%, still well above the earlier 12%. 

    Just as with standardized test scores, the gap is wider for disadvantaged communities, with Black students, homeless students, and students in foster families seeing chronic absenteeism at roughly double the rate of white middle-class students. 

    While only 2% of schools serving the most affluent districts reported high or extreme levels of chronic absenteeism, 72% of schools at which over three-quarters of the student population come from low-income households reported frequent absences.

    Heady Chang, founder of Attendance Works, suggests, “If you want to reduce chronic absence, you need to solve the root causes that result in kids not showing up to school in the first place. The barriers—poor transportation, homelessness, and food insecurity—are huge, and these issues are hard to solve.”

    Students With (and Without) Computers

    One thing that may have left many students behind during the COVID-19 pandemic was the lack of access to computers for virtual learning. In June 2020, three months after schools closed their classrooms, the state Department of Education estimated that 700,000 students lived in households without a home computer. This prompted California’s Bridge the Divide Fund, which tapped $18.4 million in philanthropic support to provide 45,000 Chromebooks and over 100,000 internet hot spots.

    In fact, in the past three years, per-student spending by the state of California has grown by 50%, thanks to such initiatives and federal pandemic relief. However, if standardized test scores and absenteeism rates are any indication, California schools and their students still have a long recovery ahead.