COVID-19 Policy Update #154
COVID-19 Policy Update
FRIDAY 11/20
TOP THREE
Will The Changes Last? The Christensen Institute explores the question in their new report, "Will Schools Change Forever? Predicting How Two Pandemics Could Catalyze Lasting Innovation in Public Schools." Worth reading the whole paper including insights under the sections:
New processes change schools’ capabilities more than new resources
New processes stick around when they’re better at addressing prevailing priorities.
When new value propositions or revenue formulas take root, resources and processes follow.
Change efforts must overcome the inertia of existing organizational models.
Vaccine Prioritization: Teachers Should Get the Covid Vaccine First argue Aaron Strong and Jonathan Welburn.
"Vaccinating teachers could make it possible to open schools permanently and get these parents back to work. That would help the economy recover."
"The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has recommended a four-phase approach for allocating a vaccine. In its discussion draft, high-risk health care workers and first responders were recommended for Phase 1, and K-12 teachers were in Phase 2. While children are less likely to get ill, they may still have large viral loads. K-12 teachers’ priority for vaccination should reflect that risk."
Pfizer, BioNTech: Submitted their formal application to FDA for emergency authorization of their COVID-19 vaccine. It's unclear how long the FDA will take (although some are saying it could be three weeks). However, the VRBPAC isn't scheduled to meet until Dec. 10 which might be the earliest the advisory committee will have the chance to review the data.
FEDERAL
Phase 4: The House and Senate met to discuss the end of year funding bill but various reports suggested that a COVID relief package came up in discussions, including expanded UI, additional funding for PPP, and student loan forbearance. It still seems as if a deal is not to be had, with most attention focused on the must-pass budget in order to avoid a government shutdown.
CDC: Director Dr. Redfield said, “The infections that we've identified in schools when they've been evaluated were not acquired in schools, they were actually acquired in the community and in the household... The truth is for kids K through 12, one of the safest places they can be, from our perspective, is to remain in school.” Video here.
ED: Sec. DeVos and states disagree on whether COVID-19 funding is just 'sitting in the bank." ED says that only $1.6 billion of the $13.2 billion provided for K-12 schools (12%) had been spent. And of the $3 billion in a governor's education fund, $535 million (18%) had been spent. The states argue that ED's calculations don't account for funds that are obligated.
Treasury vs Fed:
Sec. Mnuchin sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Powell asking the Fed to return all the unused CARES Act funds (approximately $455 billion). Allowing the emergency lending programs to expire on Dec. 31 will dramatically reduce the Fed's ability to backstop the financial system.
The emergency credit facilities works as an insurance policy against a deterioration in financial markets which helps to bolster market confidence.
It provoked a rare dissent from the Fed which said it would “prefer that the full suite of emergency facilities established during the coronavirus pandemic continue to serve their important role as a backstop for our still-strained and vulnerable economy."
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also opposed the move, “A surprise termination of the Federal Reserve’s emergency liquidity programs, including the Main Street Lending Program, prematurely and unnecessarily ties the hands of the incoming administration, and closes the door on important liquidity options for businesses at a time when they need them most."
Transition: New White House officials announced today include:
Cathy Russell, Director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel
Louisa Terrell, Director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs
Mala Adiga, Policy Director to Dr. Jill Biden
Carlos Elizondo, White House Social Secretary
Confirmation: Senate Republicans signaled they will confirm Biden Cabinet nominees, following a longstanding tradition of giving deference to the President for picking his/her team.
No National Shutdown: President Elect Biden promised the Governors that there wouldn't be a national shutdown.
COVID-19 RESEARCH
Vaccine Testing With Children: AAP recommended that children should be included in COVID-19 vaccine trials at the earliest possible stage. "If we do not add children to these research trials very soon, there will be a significant delay in when children are able to access potentially life-saving vaccines. This is unconscionable," said Dr. Sally Goza, president of the AAP."
Hospitalizations: Black, Latino and Native American are being hospitalized 4 times the rate of others according to the CDC. CNN has more.
Color of COVID: APM's Color of COVID project is revealing how Black and Indigenous Americans continue to suffer the greatest loss of life.
Wealthier Countries Claim Half of Projected COVID-19 Vaccine Supply: Via the Economist.
STATE
California:
California's system of school closures amounts to "state-sanctioned segregation," Patrick O'Donnell, the chair of the state Assembly Education Committee, said in an interview.
Los Angeles Unified’s school board president said he doesn't believe the district will reopen in January.
The Dublin High School’s robotics team created a sanitizing drone. The TERSUS Project — meaning “clean” in Latin, and also an acronym for Technologically Effective Rapid Smart Unmanned Sanitizer.
Colorado: The Colorado Education Association created a "COVID Dial" with recommendations based on community positivity rates. The dial suggests schools would stay remote-only until positivity rates dip below 3% - the NYC threshold but much more stringent than the 5% recommended by the CDC and WHO.
Illinois: A West Side Charter School let students opt-in to hybrid learning. They’re outperforming online-only students.
Indiana: The state's first secretary of education will be Holcomb adviser Katie Jenner.
Massachusetts: EdTrust survey:
Only roughly 1 in 10 parents said their children were learning in-person only.
15% of parents said they'd put their children in learning pods, with little difference across racial groups or income levels.
Black and Latino children from low-income families are much more likely to be learning entirely remotely than white and Asian children from families in a similar economic situation
New York:
The WSJ details the deliberations that went into closing NYC's schools, including the ongoing tensions between the Mayor and Governor that first surfaced in the spring.
Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the Pandemic Resource and Response Initiative at Columbia University and one of the mayor’s informal emergency response advisers, said "It was pretty arbitrary how they came up with 3 percent and not based on any science. It could have been 2 percent or 4 percent. This number was chosen as a compromise.”
Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told CNBC that places such as New York City that stop in-person learning before limiting indoor dining have it backwards. “We should be trying to curtail whatever activities we know are sources of community spread long before we close schools."
1 million students are shut out of school, but at least Gov. Cuomo will get an Emmy.
Ohio: Even during this time of polarization, can we set our differences aside and come together to enact SB 386 to make sugar cookies the official cookie of Ohio? Bolder legislation would be baking the recipe into the bill text.
South Carolina: All schools will get BinaxNOW rapid antigen test kits.
Texas:
TEA announced a partnership with Teaching Strategies for PreK learning resources as part of the state's THL 3.0 initiative.
INTERNATIONAL
Germany: New study suggests that most children caught COVID-19 outside school. "The Hamburg school authority said 78% of the 372 children infected with the virus between the summer and autumn holidays caught it outside school, with children under 12 only half as likely to become infected as older ones."
Hong Kong: Will close more schools after a surge of coronavirus cases
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
USDR: Great FT article about how USDR is helping states. "With more than 6,000 people expressing an interest and 500 active volunteers, USDR has completed 100-plus projects. One example was working for the Louisiana Department of Health to connect out-of-work healthcare professionals to facilities with acute staffing shortages."
Bad Bets: New report from BurningGlass on the The High Cost of Failing Programs in Higher Education
"Some 30% reported no 2018 conferrals at all. In other words, not a single student that year marched in commencement to receive a degree from these new programs."
"A staggering two-thirds of new programs produced 10 or fewer graduates in 2018."
How Opportunity Zones Can Help 7.5 Million Students Left Distressed by the Pandemic: Blog post by EIG's Rachel Reilly
Citi: Announced $15 Million in support to 30 CDFIs.
BOA: Announced how they will allocate $25 million of the $1 billion pledged to fight inequity. $1 million will go to 21 colleges and universities with large populations of Black and Latino students for job training. $1 million will go to the Aspen Institute, which is in turn collaborating with the National Center for Inquiry and Improvement, to help with "technical and programmatic assistance."
Project 10X: LISC unveils a $1 billion plan to tackle racial inequality
RESOURCES
Emily Oster: Schools are not spreading COVID-19. This new data makes the case.
"During the four-week period studied, roughly 80 percent of schools in the state reported no covid-19 cases at all. And of those schools that did detect covid, nearly 90 percent had only one or two cases across all students and staff. A single case is unlikely to be the result of in-school transmission — meaning students and teachers don’t appear to be catching covid from each other."
How Students Are Experiencing Online Learning: EdWeek has a set of quotes from students. Some clips:
"Online learning as a student this fall has, in my opinion, been the equivalent of hell on earth. The way that teachers demand us to do hours of work when only seeing them for 40 minutes at minimum."
"I actually kind of like online learning, I just wish more people were engaged in collectively making it feel as if we were still in physical classes. It'd be more fun, more socially engaging, less lonesome, and less emotionally draining."
"As of my experience of online studying, I would say it's good and bad for me. The good part is that I get more time to do my work and I don't have to sit in a boring lecture for really long and also I can wear and eat whatever I want and whenever I want. The bad part would not be seeing my friends, missing out on all the fun things like prom, homecoming, and many more things and also just not having that classroom fun we used to have. And I would say that attending class online is very difficult because school feels very optional now"
Governors Strategies to Expand Affordable Broadband Access: New report from NGA.
States Push to Ditch or Downplay Standardized Tests During Virus Surge: Via EdWeek discussing how GA, SC, TX, and VA are taking steps to relax testing.
Lockdowns For Thee, But Not For Me: Overview of politicians ignoring their own lockdown rules.
Math Knowledge Is Another Casualty of the Pandemic: Via BusinessWeek: "“The spring was a catastrophe,” ZEARN's Sharma says, with the rich/poor gap briefly reaching 50 percentage points. “We were traumatized by what we were seeing in the data.” When the gap shrank to 5.5 percentage points in September, she says, “My team was really happy. We were over the moon.” In the latest weekly data, the gap reached almost 17 percentage points. “It’s not on a good trend line. It’s trending apart again."
Surprise: Remember when the twins heard In the Air Tonight for the first time? They just listened to a Bob Dylan song that was on Obama's playlist. And then the former President surprised them...