The Kids Are Online

Virtual pre-K is here to stay, whether it works for children or not.

- By Kiera Butler

BACK IN JULY 2019, the New York Times ran a story on an education nonprofit, Waterford.org, that had a novel idea: online preschool. I did a little digging and found that the organization was urging school districts to pick up its virtual program, Waterford Upstart. This seemed unlikely to fly. Surely no reasonable superintendent (let alone most parents) would choose screen time over circle time-much less spend precious public education funds on a dubious product. Right?

Never could I have predicted that about a year later my 4-year-old son would begin virtual public pre-K (though not through Waterford) in the form of two half-hour sessions a day. It did not go well. His teachers were warm and energetic, but overwhelmed. The internet connection at the school, where the teachers dialed in from, was unreliable. No one could figure out how to mute the kid whose house sounded like a wind tunnel. My son, bored and confused, took to announcing, "I HAVE TO POOP," and whiling away the rest of the Zoom session in the bathroom.

Our frustrating experience wasn't unique. Rutgers University's National Institute for Early Education Research surveyed parents during the first year of the pandemic and found that among those whose children attended preschool in person, 80 percent said they were "very satisfied"compared with just 42 percent of parents whose children attended virtual programs.