Haunting Leftist Fears....The huge problem with education ‘pandemic pods’ suddenly popping up

The Washington Post has a new haunting fear:

These parents are part of a new movement of “pandemic pods,” parents hiring teachers and tutors or forming a parent cooperative to teach a small number of students at home. Some of these are parents using their financial might to supplement their children’s online education in ways that other parents cannot, and some of these parents have dis-enrolled their children from public school.

The phenomenon is so new that there is no data on how many families are pursuing this option, but it does seem to be rapidly spreading; one Bay Area pandemic pod group set up two weeks ago on Facebook already has more than 10,000 members, and the director of a national home-school association has said that interest in the last few weeks has “literally exploded.”

There's more:

Many of these parents are politically liberal, but their school choices play right into the privatization playbook of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. As we know from the fight over charter schools and vouchers, a district loses local, state and federal funding for each child who disenrolls from the public system. Combined with budget cuts and teacher hiring freezes, pandemic pods might exacerbate the defunding of traditional public schools.

While some parents argue that by withdrawing from public school they are allowing for more social distancing in school, this supposedly altruistic private learning is a further example of opportunity hoarding. These parents are avoiding the collective action necessary to make districts more supportive of all their learners.

Here’s our advice for worried parents: Stay and fight.

The same old fears...