Technology provides us an opportunity to help students overcome the closure of their schools, but remote learning is not a sufficient remedy unless all students have access to the tools they need to participate fully and equally.
Unfortunately, the same inequalities that plague education under normal cirucmstances also apply to the remote learning many West Virginia schools have adopted since the COVID-19 emergency began. Students from low-income families, students of color, students with disabilities, and students who lack permanent housing will all struggle to receive the same education as their more privileged peers, now more than ever.
Furthermore, students must not be required to surrender their privacy or consent to being spied upon as a condition of receiving a remote education during the COVID-19 crisis.
The unsafe and inequitable manner in which West Virginia is providing remote learning to public school students isn’t just unacceptable; it’s also unlawful, ACLU-WV told Gov. Jim Justice in an open letter today.
Specifically, ACLU-WV is calling on the governor to 1) ensure that all students have equal access to the various technologies that make remote learning possible and 2) ensure that adequate and uniform privacy protections are in place to protect students when they are engaged in remote learning.
“While the challenges facing our state and nation during the COVID-19 crisis are significant, they do not relieve the government, at the federal, state, or local level, of its legal obligations,” ACLU-WV Executive Director Joseph Cohen wrote in the letter. “In the education context, those obligations are clear: As the United States Supreme Court wrote in Brown v. Board of Education, ‘[I]t is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.’”
Read the full letter: