COVID-19 Policy Update #116
COVID-19 Policy Update
TUESDAY 9/29
TOP THREE
Phase 4: House Democrats introduced a new $2.2 trillion HEROES Act that aims to restart negotiations with the Administration and Senate Republicans. Summary and Section by Section summary. We expect the House to pass the bill along partisan lines.
Key education items include:
$12 billion to close the homework gap and $3 billion for emergency home connectivity (a number of WFF grantees were instrumental in helping to garner this support)
$2.14 billion for ETA to support job training.
$1.7 billion for Head Start
$7 billion for CCDBG and $50 billion through CCDBG for a Child Care Stabilization Fund (grants to states which then make grants to providers to ensure provider stability).
$208 billion for the Education State Fiscal Stabilization Fund
85% of this is for grants to LEAs (approximately $175 billion) with amounts determined based on Title I. SEAs administer the LEA subgrants.
13% (approximately $27 billion) is for subgrants to public IHEs based on a head count formula of Pell and non-Pell.
The remaining portion is used by the Governor for elementary, secondary and postsecondary education, including under-resources institutions, high COVID-19 burden institutions, and institutions that did not possess distance education capabilities prior to COVID-19.
Maintenance of Effort: must maintain spending for K12 and post sec in 2019 in 2020, 2021 and 2022 (have to maintain or exceed per pupil spending as well on K12).
$5 billion for an Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Facilities Aid program to allow for school repair, inspection testing maintenance related to COVID-19 virus transmission.
$11.9 billion for Higher Education, of which $3.5 billion for HBCUs, HSIs and other minority serving institutions, and $8.4 billion for private nonprofit IHEs.
State/Local stabilization funding was reduced from $900 billion in the original bill to $436 billion (which is closer to NGA's original ask of $500 billion).
White House and Reopening Schools: Here is the much discussed and widely shared article from the NYT. I should say upfront that there could very well have been officials within the White House pressuring the CDC. But that's not my take reading some of the email excerpts. Two agencies - the CDC and HHS's SAMHSA - had differing views on the risks and how to present those risks. That's not unusual. When I served in DPC nearly all of my time was spent resolving disagreements within the administration and among agencies who had differing interpretations of data or differing perspectives in how to respond. That seems to be what happened here and if anything, the examples cited by the NYT seem to indicate that the process worked - suggestions were offered, were considered and then not included in the final guidance. Finally, a number of people are pointing out problems with the NYT's own reporting. This Zeynep Tufekci thread details some of the issues with the story, here is Alexander Russo, and here is David Zweig.
Vaccine Skepticism: Via Axios:
Barely two in 10 Americans would take a first-generation coronavirus vaccine if President Trump alone told them it was safe according to a new Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index.
Given eight scenarios, respondents said they'd be most inclined if their doctor vouched for its safety (62%), followed by insurance covering the full cost (56%) or the FDA saying it's safe (54%).
When asked "how likely, if at all, are you to get the first generation COVID-19 vaccine, as soon as it’s available?" - only 37% said likely and 63% said unlikely.
STATE
Arkansas: Teachers are refusing in-person classes due to fears of COVID. In Little Rock, Arkansas, more than a hundred teachers didn't show up for class on Monday.
California: State-wide online Zoom-out to protest distance learning in an effort to get kids back in school. The effort is organized by parents through a Facebook group called Reopen California Schools that has more than 6,000 members.
DC: Some students will be allowed to do in-person learning as early as this week throughout October to receive additional support during their virtual learning.
Florida: A USA TODAY analysis shows the state’s positive case count among kids ages 5 to 17 declined through late September after a peak in July. Among the counties seeing surges in overall cases, it’s college-age adults – not schoolchildren – driving the trend.
Illinois: Chicago's mayor says the district is not yet ready to reopen.
New York: NYC's positivity rate has climbed to 3.25% - a jump from 1.92% on Monday and the highest since June. Public elementary classrooms reopened today, but that could change since city guidelines have schools closing if a seven day positivity rate stays above 3%.
New Hampshire: Some school districts report increased enrollments.
Texas: KHOU filed a public records request for Clear Creek ISD, Conroe ISD, Cy-Fair ISD, Humble ISD, Katy ISD, Klein ISD, Lamar CISD, Pasadena ISD, Spring ISD and Spring Branch ISD representing approximately 550,000 students. Overall 51% of students were learning in person and 49% were learning online. But lower-income students were more likely to be learning online than higher income students (53% vs 47%).
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Career Impact Bonds: Blue Meridian, Schmidt Futures back ‘career impact bonds’ via Social Finance’s UP Fund. These are a kind of income-share agreement used to support General Assembly’s accelerated tech education program and Acuitus’ IT education program, which targets veterans. Social Finance’s new UP Fund will provide up-front capital to up to a dozen programs training underserved adults and students for high-growth sectors like IT, healthcare and the green economy. Students repay the training costs after they get well-paying work; UP Fund’s investors get repaid based on the success of the training program in helping place graduates in such jobs.
A Calculation of the Social Returns to Innovation: Excellent NBER paper from Benjamin Jones and Larry Summers who tackle the challenge of "measuring the social returns to scientific and technological advancement." They find:
"The average social returns to innovation investments appear very large. If formal R&D and new venture creation drive the bulk of productivity gains, then the social returns to these investments appear enormous. If a much broader set of investments, including capital embodiment, are needed to fulfill these productivity gains, then the social returns to these broader activities still appear large. Even under very conservative assumptions, it is difficult to find an average return below $4 per $1 spent. Accounting for health benefits, inflation bias, or international spillovers can bring the social returns to over $20 per $1 spent, with internal rates of return approaching 100%. The implication is that policies to support further innovation investment are broadly well motivated. Innovation investments can credibly raise economic growth rates and extend lives, paying for their costs many times over. And because the social returns exceed the private returns, public policy has a central role, and opportunity, in unleashing these gains."
Support for Safety Net Programs During COVID: NBER paper reporting on a survey of 2,516 Americans regarding their preferences for both short- and long-term expansions to government-provided healthcare and unemployment insurance programs. The results suggest that real or perceived exposure to COVID-19’s consequences has influenced support for expansions to the U.S. safety-net system.
RESOURCES
Risk to Children: CDC study that finds teenagers are twice as likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than younger children. The new study focuses on 277,285 infections among school-age children between March 1 and mid-September. The majority, 63%, were over age 12, compared with just 37% between the ages of 5 and 11.
Studying COVID and Children: The Indiana State Department of Health and IUPUI's Fairbanks School of Public Health are studying the infection prevalence rate in children across the state.
The Students Left Behind From Remote Learning: Long piece but worth the read, if only for some of the stories of students struggling to succeed with the realities of remote learning.
A School Ran a Simulation of the Pandemic—Before the Pandemic: The “pandemic” was the culmination of a two-week course at a charter school called Sarasota Military Academy Prep. Todd Brown, the school’s outreach director, had created the pandemic simulation in 2016 as a way to teach a lesson in governance.
Teach to One: Great NYT profile on Teach to One. "We’ve seen an embrace of technology that was rapidly accelerated by Covid,” said Bob Hughes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. AFT's Randi Weingarten: “Innovations like this can help educators meet students where they are and address their individual needs.”
Black Voices for Black Justice Fund: Launched today with Wes Moore (Robin Hood), Kerry Washington, John King, and Shavar Jeffries among others.
SEL: EdTrust released a new report: Social, Emotional, and Academic Development Through an Equity Lens.
Educator Views on Privacy During COVID-19: CDT post on the results of several focus groups.
Baby Yoda: Fights fires in Oregon. And has his own Facebook page. This is the way.