"I don't think [Madison public school] teachers are qualified to give online instruction, and my experience in the spring would confirm that."

Said a man identified only as Mike, who "was initially considering forming a learning pod with a small group of neighbors and hiring a teacher to help with virtual learning" but is now "renting a house in Columbia County where he can send his children to in-person classes before returning to Madison next June."

Quoted in "Expert cautions learning pods could worsen Madison's achievement gap" (Wisconsin State Journal).

You can see from the headline that public school officials and proponents are worried about the least-privileged children falling behind, but every parent is going to be most concerned about his or her own children, and this isn't even a situation where taking less for your child will leave more for someone else's child. Why would anyone be deterred from setting up a learning pod for the benefit of their own child? What good could it do to hold more children back?

How privileged are learning pods anyway? What if someone with almost no money to spend wanted a great learning pod for his or her child? How is that done? Googling, I did not find it easy to see how to set up a learning pod without spending much money. I assume the experts in education want to keep people focused on public schools, not on showing that it's easy to set up an alternative.

The schools themselves are working on their alternative — on line instruction by public school teachers. But if you've got parents like Mike who are seriously unsatisfied with that option, then I would expect the "learning pods" alternative to be something the public school proponents would want to make hard to figure out.

But if it's hard to figure out, then the least privileged families — the ones the experts are supposedly so concerned about — will be impaired in doing what they might be able to do on their own to close the achievement gap. The experts are working hard to drive home the message that you can't do it, that your kids are losing out, that you need the public schools, and that those other people over there — the privileged people — are taking advantage again and their advantage is your disadvantage.

IN THE COMMENTS: ellie said:

I am a homeschool mom who normally utilizes a cooperative. We cannot meet in our building this year due to covid. I've set up a "pod" in my home. It was easy. All the moms got together and talked over what our kids needed for the year, then we divided the classes. Each mom took what they were good at or could reasonably handle. No money involved at all for us. We set a schedule for 2 days a week, and the other days, work is assigned for home.