COVID-19 Policy Update #139
COVID-19 Policy Update
FRIDAY 10/30
TOP THREE
Let’s Fight About the Future of Public Education: Piece by Instruction Partners CEO Emily Freitag. Read the whole piece but some highlights:
"A tight set of rules governs school design as we know it — everything from content standards and testing to attendance policies, schedule requirements, funding formulas, school choice, and teaching certification requirements. Long before the pandemic, these rules were not serving all students well. Now we have a rare opportunity to fundamentally reevaluate and redesign schooling, to ask ourselves what rules we keep and what rules we change."
"After COVID, should 16-year-olds go back to in-person schooling five full days a week, or should a school system allow students to keep half of their classes remote forever?"
"Can parents who want to turn a learning pod into a microschool receive public funding to do so? What regulations will microschools have to follow?"
"How do we make sure every 6-year-old who spent this year out of the building catches up by the end of elementary school? What foundational knowledge and skills are most important?"
"The problem is, debates require us to keep talking to each other, even when we disagree. Researchers have found that we are carrying stronger moral convictions about a growing number of issues, and when we approach issues with a high degree of moral conviction, we are less curious about other views, less open to evidence, and less able to imagine trustworthy decision-making processes. If we have the option of an out, why stay in moral combat. The only way I see us staying in the debate is if we make productive discourse a core value we want to model."
Can Public Education Return to Normal After the COVID-19 Pandemic? Over at Brookings, Paul T. Hill and Ashley Jochim explore what could emerge from the disruptions created by COVID.
"Forward-looking districts are using this moment to develop creative new possibilities, such as expanding access to their most-effective teachers via remote learning, building new learning communities to serve small groups of students in person, and expanding access to services like tutoring, mentoring, counseling, and enrichment."
"Some families, left with few options, have charted new paths by forming pods, joining microschools, and taking a much bigger role in ensuring their children have access to adequate instruction and social-emotional supports."
"Some are assembling their own combinations of in-person and online learning experiences. These efforts could supplement traditional schools or in some cases replace them."
"Local leaders who can use this moment to test new approaches to delivering instruction and build new sources of political support will be better positioned to build on these approaches after the COVID-19 crisis. Regardless of how long or short a time the current pandemic lasts, the “normal” in politics and schooling is unlikely to return anytime soon."
Learning Loss: Article exploring how districts and states are thinking through assessments:
“We’re in this data black hole,” said Kyle Rosenkrans, executive director of the New Jersey Children’s Foundation
"New Jersey Sen. M. Teresa Ruiz, a Democrat who co-sponsored a bill to require testing to assess academic and social-emotional needs and to require the state to analyze the results."
"Several states that recommend testing this fall, such as California and Ohio, provided lists of approved assessments, with a focus on diagnostic tests that deliver quick, student-specific results that teachers can use to tailor their lessons and target students who need extra help."
FEDERAL
Phase 4:
Speaker Pelosi said the details of the economic relief package could change after the election.
Sen. McConnell said the Senate will not do the economic relief package during the lame duck session but instead stake it up at the start of 2021. He said “We could target it particularly at small businesses that are struggling, and hospitals that are now dealing with the second wave of the coronavirus, and of course the challenges for education, both K-12 and college.”
HHS: NPR published a leak document from HHS which highlights trends in hospitalizations and identifies cities nearing full hospital capacity. It's puzzling why some of this data isn't public. I'm more on the side of DJ Patil - by default all data should be public, open, and machine readable.
COVID-19 RESEARCH
How COVID Spreads: There was an article widely shared yesterday with some powerful visualizations of how COVID-19 spreads in rooms, a bar, and a classroom. I hesitated on sharing it due to concerns raised by some epidemiologists (see here and here). So I'm sharing it today with the links to both arguments. But it also serves as a cautionary tale for our desire to gravitate to compelling visualizations versus complex, messy research.
Effect of Age on Transmission: New literature review that found susceptibility to infection for children aged under 10 yrs old to be lower. "There is some evidence that given limited control measures, SARS-CoV-2 may spread robustly in secondary/high schools, and to a lesser degree in primary schools, with class size possibly affecting that spread. There is also evidence of more limited spread in schools when some mitigation measures are implemented."
Vaccine Testing: ARC Clinical Research in Austin, TX announced that it's looking to enroll children 12-17 years old in Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial.
STATE
Oklahoma: Oklahoma’s Bridge the Gap initiative to provide low income families grants to purchase supplies for students. The Bridge the Gap Digital Wallet initiative will allocate $8 million from the CARES Act GEER Fund to provide 5,000 low income families with $1,500 grants to purchase materials for students.
Utah: Gov. Herbert tweeted how serious the situation is in Utah right now:
INTERNATIONAL
The Poorest Children Have Lost 4 Months Of Schooling: New report from UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank which found the return to school has been much slower in the world's poorer countries. Researchers looked at nearly 150 countries and found:
Schoolchildren in low- and lower-middle-income countries have lost almost four months of learning since the start of the pandemic, compared to six weeks of learning loss in high-income countries.
One in 4 countries, most of which are low- and lower-middle-income, have either missed their planned reopening date or not yet set a date for reopening.
Almost all countries have offered some form of remote learning during closures, whether online, by broadcast (radio or TV) or through paper packets. However, while 3 out of 4 countries overall count remote learning days as school days, only 1 in 5 low-income countries do so, in recognition of how few children are actually able to access these resources.
9 in 10 countries facilitated access to online learning, most frequently through mobile phones or offering internet access at subsidized or no cost, but the coverage of this access was extremely varied.
Half of low-income countries reported not having enough money to pay for things like handwashing facilities and protective equipment for students and teachers. Only 5% of high-income countries said the same.
EU: NYT on how Europe is imposing new lockdowns but keeping schools open. "Medical experts point to many things they now know that were unknown back in the spring: with proper precautions, the rate of coronavirus transmission in schools is relatively low, especially among the youngest students; children who do get infected tend to have mild symptoms; and measures like mask-wearing, social distancing and air circulation are more effective than they had predicted."
Ireland: The Northern Ireland Executive has agreed that all schools will reopen on Monday.
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
The Future Doesn’t Care How You Became an Expert: Great post from Degreed founder David Blake announcing Degreed Skill Certification - a credential to certify all skills at any level, in a universal, up-to-date and accurate way. To get certified you submit evidence of your skill mastery, then have your evidence endorsed and verified, and following it will be anonymously peer and expert reviewed.
Perks Companies Are Offering to Get Workers Back Into The Office: NYT, which includes this: "Workers can even bring their children into the office for remote schooling, to be supervised by tutors paid by the company."
RESOURCES
Teachers Improvise to Make Hybrid Learning Work: Great photo essay from the AP:
Healing Our Nation: State-Based Solutions For Connecting People to Mental Health Care and Addiction Recovery Services: Resource from United States of Care with state frameworks and promising practices including recommendations for the education sector.
Teachers Are Leaving Schools. Will They Come to Startups Next?: Via TechCrunch: "The startups all have different versions of the same pitch: they can offer teachers more money, and flexibility, than the status quo." Education technology services have created a teacher gig economy over the past few years. Learning platforms, with unprecedented demand, must attract teachers to their service with one of two deal sweeteners: higher wages or more flexible hours.
Udemy: Online education startup Udemy is reportedly in talks to raise $100 million in funding. Earlier this year, the company raised $50 million in a Series E round at a valuation of $2 billion.
Hungry Hippos: Nothing better than a baby hippo eating a pumpkin ahead of Halloween.