The Stolen Year by Anya Kamenetz

I am surprised and disappointed at the initial very negative tone in THE STOLEN YEAR by Anya Kamenetz, a former education correspondent for NPR.  Although she subtitled the book “How COVID Changed Children's Lives, and Where We Go Now,” she argues that the impact of COVID was that the “the 150-year-old social contract of public schooling in America – you must show up, we must educate you – was broken.” This feels like a well-known tale of woe (lost food service, no routine, limited social interaction) and only sporadic acknowledgement of what was accomplished (Zoom … “went from hosting ten million people daily in December 2019 to two hundred million in March 2020”). Kamenetz writes more about the 1930s Works Progress Administration than she does about state boards of education and local administrators, making little effort to hold them accountable even though they are the ones who kept moving goalposts (class length and daily schedules), who reduced rigor for millions of students (no grades and flexible deadlines) and did not do enough to actively encourage attendance (e.g., Los Angeles school district reported that on an average Spring day in 2020 “only about 36 percent of middle and high school students participated in online learning”). I have vivid memories of spending inordinate amounts of time tracking down students who simply did not do the work and who seemed to have no incentive to create a make-up plan. Teachers were expected to add this task to an already overflowing to do list where learning more effective and engaging use of new technology could have been a priority.

Kamenetz does describe events chronologically and that, along with the first person narratives she includes, will be helpful to future scholars (as will the notes section that comprises roughly twenty percent of the text). Citing alarming statistics from the APA, she also devotes an entire chapter to mental health, a critical aspect that continues to impact students. Again, there was very little central coordination – with over $200 billion allocated to schools from the Trump and Biden administrations, it seems like exemplary programs could have been identified and scaled up. In her concluding chapter, Kamenetz mentions some broader examples: MIT’s Justin Reich highlighting themes of “healing, community, and humanity;” Oakland Reach and its community activism; Guilford County, North Carolina’s increased graduation rate. She stresses patterns of strong relationships and student agency – elements of choice – in the curriculum. Ultimately, Kamenetz advocates for “the need to put children at the center of our decision making in a way we never have before in this country.” A laudable goal that requires a significant mindset shift. If we repeatedly could not put students first during the height of the pandemic, why think we are capable of doing so now?