This past summer, New York City parents attended hourslong Zoom meetings to weigh in on how the city should handle next year’s admissions to selective, high-achieving public middle schools. COVID-19 had wrecked spring testing and attendance, the usual metrics.

Tuning in from living rooms and bedrooms, in 90-second intervals punctuated by tech glitches and children’s voices in the background, a stream of parents pleaded with administrators: Don’t tweak the screening standards. To increase diversity in top schools, scrap screening altogether.

In July, after years of surgical residency, months of studying, and more than $1,000 in test fees, Fernando Angarita sat down in his Toronto, Canada, living room to take the American general surgery board exam. Others taking the test had booked hotel rooms for privacy and stable internet.

COVID-19 had already pushed back the exam and canceled in-person testing. As Angarita’s test time came and went, he learned on Twitter that technical difficulties would delay it again. This time, the problem was ProctorTrack, the company hired to administer the test.

On a gloomy December morning, Allen Thomas led his choir students into a courtyard outside their high school in Standish, Maine. The students wore masks and stood 14 feet apart while singing in 30-degree weather. He said he encourages students to wear hats and gloves: “I’m a polar bear so I don’t mind it outside.”

In Harbor Springs, Mich., Craig Currier prepared for the first day of school by pulling tables out of his second grade classroom and replacing them with rows of desks, arranged to keep students apart. During phonics lessons, he tells students to feel their tongues touch the roofs of their mouths as they say the letter T. He talks slowly and repeats himself to make up for the mask covering half his face.

The state of Maryland on Nov. 24 blasted Baltimore public schools’ computer network for not guarding personal information, saying “significant risks” threatened its security.

At Ekklesia, a Baptist church in Philadelphia, 10 students from two private and three public schools take online classes under a full-time supervisor and rotating parent volunteers. Monday through Friday, the students sit 6 feet apart at tables in the small sanctuary with class schedules posted over their laptops. On breaks, they catch snakes and snails or play house in the empty lot next door.

In August, Rachel Carothers posted a back-to-school photo of her three children under a tree outside their home in McKinney, Texas, barefoot and holding laptops, with the caption, “No shoes necessary!” Earlier this summer, Carothers decided to switch her ninth-grade son Cai and sixth-grade daughter Adair from their local public school to an online charter school called iUniversity Prep. Now, Carothers devotes most of her time to homeschooling her youngest daughter Larkin, grade one, and checking in daily with Cai and Adair.