NYC DOE doesn’t know how many students are being live taught at home amid lockdown

The city Department of Education doesn’t know how many of its students are actually being live taught at home during the coronavirus lockdown, officials conceded Wednesday.

Asked if they were keeping track of live lesson provision in the wake of the closure of schools in March, a top DOE official had no answers at a City Council meeting Wednesday.

“We don’t have exact data on how many students are receiving it or for how long,” said chief academic officer Linda Chen.

As first reported by The Post, parents across the city have complained that their kids were not receiving any live instruction — with some not hearing directly from their teachers for weeks at a time.

Those parents said they were provided worksheets via email and ended up providing more instruction to their kids than DOE staffers.

While many city teachers have gamely managed to retain live teaching through video apps, many have opted out of the practice.

Instructors have relayed a raft of challenges associated with remote teaching, from uneven tech resources among students and cybersecurity concerns to haphazard administrative direction and shoddy training.

The effort was also complicated by the DOE’s ban on the use of video app Zoom and subsequent about-face.

Teachers union chief Michael Mulgrew called remote learning a “success” overall Wednesday and said many teachers have embraced live teaching under extreme duress.

Citing the variety of hurdles teachers face to recreate their classrooms from afar, the United Federation of Teachers has told members they are not obligated to practice it even if administrators demand it.

“Every teacher in every school community and administrative staff in New York City had to learn how to go to remote learning,” Mulgrew said Wednesday. “There was no plan in place, there was no support system in place, there was no training in place. Every school had to figure it out on their own.”

While he voiced concerns over the uneven provision of live teaching, Councilman Mark Treyger urged city residents to empathize with the position city educators have been placed in.

“I remind folks that educators are also human beings, they have experienced loss of colleagues, they have experienced loss in their families,” he said. “They are in many cases the primary caretakers for families at home.”

The DOE stressed that it tracks daily remote involvement of city kids to monitor “attendance” – although each school has a different threshold for what it considers engagement.

“There is no one-size fits all approach, and teachers are structuring their day to best meet the needs of their students and families,” said DOE spokeswoman Danielle Filson. “Teachers have been using tools and techniques to engage students, mixing live and self-paced instruction to accommodate other responsibilities faced by students and employees during these times.”

Filson said live teaching has “value” and that the DOE was facilitating it “when possible.”