COVID-19 Policy Update #153
COVID-19 Policy Update
THURSDAY 11/19
TOP THREE
Parents Are Watching Like Never Before. 'Trust Us' Isn't Enough: Great piece by Sonja Brookins Santelises, the CEO of the Baltimore public schools.
"But if we focus all our attention outward, we educators will miss the real opportunity of our new reality: a once-in-a-generation chance to turn our attention aggressively inward, using the crisis upon us to accelerate the unfinished work of repairing the flaws and deep systemic inequities of the “old normal” in American education."
"At a time when nearly everything is on the table, we can choose to address head-on our tendency to disproportionately assign our teachers still honing their craft to our students who need expert instruction. We can attend to the uneven quality and rigor of assignments across classrooms and schools. We can replace excessively rigid formulas for everything from class size to bell schedules with more nuanced approaches that vary according to student needs and staff expertise."
"For the first time ever, parents can see what exactly we’re giving their children— and what we’re not. They are hearing how we talk to students. They are coming to know, through all that we do, what we believe about their children.
"We leaders have a choice. We can seize this moment to take a hard, honest look at our policies and practices and our rate of speed in dismantling long-standing systemic inequities—and use it as a catalyst for change. Or we can sit on our hands and pretend they are tied by forces beyond our control."
Schools Attempt to Find Ways Through the Crisis: Article in Science:
“I think schools should close last,” says Michael Wagner, a microbial ecologist at the University of Vienna who is part of a consortium studying the prevalence of the virus in Austria’s school"
"Many experts lament that although health officials often tout low school case numbers, record keeping is inconsistent, as is transparency, particularly on outbreak investigations. “Show us the data,” says Amy Greer, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Guelph"
"Rather than dive into calculations for every indoor space, scientists like Linden are embracing a simple alternative: high-quality carbon dioxide (CO2) monitors, which cost as little as $100. Because CO2 is exhaled as people breathe, it can serve as a proxy for how much exhaled air, and possible virus, has accumulated."
"When Trump Was Right and Many Democrats Wrong:" Nicholas Kristof:
"So Democrats helped preside over school closures that have devastated millions of families and damaged children’s futures. Cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., have closed schools while allowing restaurants to operate."
"Much of Europe pursued the opposite route, closing pubs and restaurants but doing everything possible to keep schools operating — and the evidence suggests that Europe has the smarter approach."
"America’s education system already transmits advantage and disadvantage from one generation to the next: Rich kids attend rich schools that propel them forward, and low-income children attend struggling schools that hold them back."
"School closures magnify these inequities, as many private schools remain open and affluent parents are better able to help kids adjust to remote learning. At the same time, low-income children fall even further behind."
COVID-19 RESEARCH
IHME Weekly Briefing: Here.
Daily deaths in the last week increased to 1,170 per day on average, compared to 1,00 the week before. This makes COVID-19 the number 2 cause of death in the US this week.
Their reference scenario, which represents what IHME thinks is most likely to happen, projects 471,000 cumulative deaths on March 1, 2021. IHME expects daily deaths to reach a peak of over 2,500 a day in mid-January.
STATE
Seven Governors Stress In-Person Learning: Via EdWeek. Governors' statement is here.
"Governors of seven Northeastern states released a statement in support of in-person learning with "appropriate protections" Thursday as schools around the country confront climbing coronavirus rates in their communities."
"Medical research as well as the data from Northeastern states, from across the country, and from around the world make clear that in-person learning is safe when the appropriate protections are in place, even in communities with high transmission rates," said the governors' statement. "In-person learning is the best possible scenario for children, especially those with special needs and from low-income families. There is also growing evidence that the more time children spend outside of school increases the risk of mental health harm and affects their ability to truly learn."
California: A series of short profiles of families and their experience with distance learning.
Kentucky: The Governor ordered K-12 schools across the state to return to virtual-only classes starting Monday and not hold any in-person classes through the end of the current semester.
Maryland: More than one million have subscribed to MD COVID Alert exposure notifications.
New York:
New York public schools have tested more than 140,000 students and staff and had a positivity rate of 0.23% as of Monday.
It's reported that top City health officials disagreed with the 3% school closure threshold.
The UFT has resisted calls to reassess the 3% threshold. A UFT spokesman said that the union could go to court if the city doesn't adhere to its plan.
The New York City Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee issued a statement praising the decision to return to online learning and called for other schools to follow.
Long Island officials say schools are not contributing to the second wave of COVID spread.
Archdiocese: Catholic schools to remain open, despite closure of NYC public schools
INTERNATIONAL
United Nations Assessment: In releasing its first comprehensive assessment of the pandemic's effects on children, the United Nations agency said "there is strong evidence that, with basic safety measures in place, the net benefits of keeping schools open outweigh the costs of closing them."
"Children and schools are not the main drivers of the epidemic across countries. Evidence shows that the net benefits of keeping schools open outweigh the costs of closing them. Data from 191 countries show no consistent association between school reopening status and COVID-19 infection rates."
"Children’s and adolescents’ mental health has suffered during the pandemic."
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Training for Gaming Jobs: Unity Technologies is working to prepare 80,000 people for game jobs over three years with an education initiative aimed at helping people learn how to program and develop games.
Infrastructure Playbook: Accelerator for America, WSP USA, The U.S. Conference of Mayors, Meridiam NA, Mastercard’s City Possible team, the ACEC Research Institute, and HNTB launched the New Partnership on Infrastructure to deliver specific and actionable recommendations to improve how infrastructure is funded and delivered to the public through an Infrastructure Playbook. Includes recommendations for broadband. And good to see EV incentives in this too!
VR Job Training: TRANSFR VR, an immersive learning startup pioneering the application of virtual reality to simulate on-the-job training, today announced $12 million in Series A funding. From the press release,"Through a new statewide partnership called JumpstartAL, job-seekers across the state can access simulation-based training to prepare for roles in fast-growing industries such as automotive manufacturing, construction, and other skilled trades."
Struggling Small Businesses: A new survey by the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce says half of all businesses couldn't afford to pay full rent in November.
A Procurement Path to Equity Strategies for Government and the Business Ecosystem: From the Aspen Institute.
Bill Gates: Reflecting on how COVID has changed habits and behaviors: “My prediction would be that over 50 percent of business travel and over 30 percent of days in the office will go away.”
The Dynamism Divide: Examining the 2020 Election Through the Lenses of Population Growth, Jobs, and Business Formation: From EIG:
The number of people in counties won by Biden grew by an average of 3.1% from 2010 to 2019, while the counties won by President Trump averaged an increase of just 0.6%.
Biden counties also accounted for a remarkable 82.5% of new businesses added to the economy and 72.8% of employment growth since 2010, underscoring the economic dominance that has accompanied their expanding populations.
LEARNING PODS
Understanding the Learning Pods Landscape: Great post from CRPE on some initial findings from 160 of school- and community-driven learning pods. They're also launching a pod tracker database. Their takeaways thus far:
"First, it is amazing to see communities step up to this crisis to serve students—despite the costs, the health risks, and the effort required. Second, it’s striking to see the diversity of learning environments that arise when communities build them from scratch. And third, these new arrangements may open up new possibilities for social-emotional learning, enrichment, and community-building to be woven more tightly into the traditional school day."
RESOURCES
Many Americans Still Don't Have Internet Access — Congress Should Help: OpEd from Communications Workers of America and The National Digital Inclusion Initiative.
The Path to Universal COVID-19 Testing in Schools: Mario Ramirez and Andrew Buher recommend:
Reallocating education and public health budgets to purchase rapid tests
Streamlining procurement systems and purchasing rapid tests on behalf of districts
Updating reopening guidance to standardize rapid testing protocols, specifically focusing on who will be tested and how often, where testing should take place, who should administer the tests and what the isolation and contact tracing protocols should be as a result.
Training local public health departments to support schools on those new rapid test protocols.
Establishing a statewide database that tracks, in real time, what rapid testing protocols are being used, with standardized reporting of infection and community spread data to better understand what role, if any, schools have in driving transmission.
Schools Are Retreating to Remote Learning as COVID-19 Surges. Do They Have To?: Via EdWeek.
"More health experts are concluding that many states and districts have been too conservative about their rules for returning to in-person schooling—and much too lax about nearly everything else, creating a perfect storm that is making in-person learning impossible for hundreds of thousands of children."
"I'm not saying schools should never close. They probably should at some point if things get really horrible. But the idea that schools should be the first casualty, before casinos, bars, and restaurants, in my mind defies logic," Dr. Ashish K. Jha, the dean of Brown University's School of Public Health"
Partisan Politics Don’t Work. It’s Time For a New Way: Charles Koch writes in Forbes. Well worth reading the entire piece, but a few education clips:
"I’ve been inspired by the SkillUp coalition (supported in part by the Charles Koch Foundation), which brings together companies and educators to train laid-off workers for better positions. It’s just getting started and already helping more than 1,000 people per day."
"The pandemic has also radically changed the education landscape for more than 60 million students. Families are proactively responding, forming learning pods and seeking out new opportunities for their kids. Teachers are becoming educational entrepreneurs and developing personalized education options once reserved only for wealthy families. Sal Khan, the innovator behind Khan Academy, has a new project (which the Charles Koch Institute has supported) that provides these options at no cost to students."
"If we can work together to find one, we can even motivate politicians to follow suit. One of the most remarkable achievements of the past four years was federal criminal justice reform, which passed with overwhelming support from politicians in both parties. It happened because Americans from all walks of life united to support it—liberals and conservatives, prosecutors and public defenders, police officers and people with criminal records. They put partisanship aside and made progress possible, all because everyday Americans showed the way. Imagine if we tried the same approach on issues like poverty, education, and equal justice."
Reinventing Ed Reform With a Focus on Opportunity and Social Capital: Bruno Manno presents a new Opportunity Framework.
"I believe a renewed coalition can be created that unites former members with fresh allies to revitalize education reform. The need for reform is still great. While some progress has been made, learning gaps between White and minority students remain, achievement trends have flattened in some domains, and the pandemic has brought on its own learning losses."
"This project should be based on an opportunity framework with a social capital perspective. Its goal is for every American, regardless of age, color, gender, etc., to develop and deepen habits of mind and of association that build their capacity to pursue opportunity and a prosperous life."
Homework Gap Resource: Originally developed and designed by EducationSuperHighway, Connect K-12 is a tool launched by Connected Nation and Funds For Learning. The project will also work with state leaders to identify and support school districts with upgrading to the 1 Mbps per student goal by 2024. Funds For Learning will manage the technology platform and ensure data in Connect K-12 is accurate and updated annually.
New Ed Trust Teacher Data and Policy Tool: Provides data and policy recommendations for increasing teacher diversity in all 50 states and shows that:
In most (27 of 33) states that make student-level data available, more than one in ten Latino students attend a school without a single same-race teacher. The same is true for Black students in 18 states.
In one-third of the states that make student-level data available (12 of 33), more than one in three students attend a school without a single teacher of color.
This Is A Hoot: A tiny owl was rescued from the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree that traveled 170 miles to NYC.