Parents can take some responsibility here
In a perfect world, yes. Unfortunately, there are many parents who have no idea to lead academic learning in the home, usually because it was never modeled for them when they were children. Add that to the fact that many parents are being forced to leave children home alone, and you have a supremely challenging learning situation. (And that's ignoring the obvious safety issues!)
In short, just because something is a good idea does not mean that lower income families have the tools, resources, flexibility, or talent to make at-home learning a priority right now. The truly sad thing is that this current crisis will
further cause the gap between the haves and the have-nots to grow even wider.
The NY Times had a great opinion piece on the
inequities in digital learning being exposed by the COVID-19 crisis.
Some additional background: I spent the bulk of my career at Apple leading teams that sold technology to schools, both K12 and HiEd. I'm hearing from my former colleagues that this crisis has ignited a round of panic buying within the K12 community as they scramble to meet the demands for the tools to deliver curriculum remotely. I have friends at Google who started the EDU Chromebook initiatives there years ago, and they are seeing the same behavior. The #1 problem they are addressing with schools is the fact that (wait for it!)
not everyone has internet access at home. You can place a device in a student's hands, but the device will not allow access to the same tools, curriculum, and experience that other students may be enjoying at their homes.
HiEd is a bit different. Public HiEd institutions have been delivering courses remotely for years, so the new reality is just a matter of increased scale for them. Counterintuitively, wealthier private universities are in a different situation, as the personalized, face-to-face approach has long been part of their overall value proposition. They're all scrambling right now to adjust to this new online, remote reality.
One more thing to consider about HiEd: both public and private institutions have shifted an inordinate burden of teaching onto the shoulders of low-paid associate faculty in recent years. Many of these are contract-based, part-time employees who lack many of the benefits extended to full-time staff. Chief among these benefits is access to things as simple as internet access, which further compounds the problems.