In less than two months, K-12 principals, counselors, parents and students will begin the process of selecting courses for the 2021-22 school year.
With vaccine development on track and getting results that are better than anyone dared expect, it’s possible that the beginning of school in August 2021 will look normal in many ways.
But there may be some profound changes under the surface next August, some of them prompted by the stresses that parents, students, counselors and teachers have been subjected to because of the pandemic. Will counselors be less willing to advise students into challenging courses like chemistry, physics, calculus and computer science than they were before the pandemic? Will parents want their high school-aged children to keep the academic stress level low in 2021-22? Will there be fewer teachers of chemistry, physics, calculus and computer science next school year?
And I haven’t even mentioned the impact that budget pressures will have on schools in 2021-22.
Will all of this mean that fewer Florida high school students take chemistry, physics, calculus and computer science in 2021-22? If so, then fewer students will arrive on Florida college campuses in the years afterward well-prepared to choose majors in fields like engineering, computer science and physics that lead to the most economically robust career paths.
The only constant in this pandemic has been how unpredictable its effects have been. Will parents and counselors push kids harder to prepare for a state economy that will certainly be tougher for years to come because of the contraction of the tourism and hospitality sectors? Or will they back off because the students have been under so much COVID-induced stress? We will only know at the time those decisions are made.
Will there be fewer chemistry, physics, math and computer science teachers in the high schools? A trickle of news about high school physics teachers has arrived in my email and twitter accounts. One physics teacher left a traditional high school to teach in a virtual school. Another physics teacher left a traditional high school to join the faculty at a charter school. Yet another left a private school to join a traditional high school.
There is no way yet to know yet how this year’s experience affected individuals who were considering teaching careers. The employment prospects for new bachelor’s degree graduates in science and math outside of the teaching profession in the spring of 2021 may be largely unaffected by the pandemic and may look a great deal like the healthy job market that existed in the spring of 2019, making it more difficult to recruit these new graduates into teaching. But perhaps the increased starting salaries for Florida teachers will sweeten the pot enough to attract these individuals into the teacher corps.
Budget pressures may eventually cause schools to deemphasize upper level science and math classes. Back in August, the CFO of Sarasota County Schools said that her district would not be filling teaching positions in “non-tested” subjects – such subjects would include chemistry, physics and upper level math courses.
Even in normal times, Florida’s students took chemistry, physics and calculus at rates well below the national rates – and therefore arrived at college less prepared for the most economically robust majors like engineering, physics and computer science. In Florida’s post-pandemic public schools, that situation may become much worse. Or maybe that situation will not get worse. Maybe it will even improve because parents, counselors and teachers realize that Florida’s tourism-heavy economy – the economy that students are preparing for – is going to be reeling for years to come and their students will have to be prepared for a much tougher job market.
Only time will tell.
Bridge to Tomorrow 