COVID-19 Policy Update #156
COVID-19 Policy Update
TUESDAY 11/24
The Googling Monkeys seem to have included a broken link in last night's update about the COVID Collaborative. Here's the corrected entry:
Ten Ways to Make Online Learning Work
Authored by all the former US Directors of Educational Technology: Linda Roberts, John Bailey, Karen Cator, Richard Culatta, Tim Magner, Susan Patrick, Joseph South, and Katrina Stevens
Forward by Former U.S. Secretaries of Education Arne Duncan, John King, Rod Paige, Richard Riley, and Margaret Spellings
TOP THREE
3%: The NYT on How de Blasio Backed Himself Into a Corner on Closing Schools
“I think there is a real sense among educators that this administration is not able to meet this moment,” said Paula White, the executive director of Educators For Excellence-New York, which represents thousands of city teachers. “What we are hearing consistently is just a complete lack of trust.”
"Adding to the mayor’s isolation is the fact that the school closures have also infuriated many parents whose children had returned to classrooms this fall and have been criticized by public health officials who said the decision was not sufficiently based in science."
"The fallout of the mayor’s decision last week is not limited to City Hall. Parents spent days pleading with Mr. Cuomo to overrule the mayor and keep the schools open, and The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Cuomo spent last Wednesday looking for ways to allow the city to use different metrics to continue in-person instruction."
"And the U.F.T., which supported the 3 percent number and encouraged the mayor to stick with it — despite a consensus view that the schools were operating relatively safely — is now facing fresh scrutiny from parents."
Roads to Reinventing: A great blog series from Transcend which builds off their paper from earlier this year that challenged communities to not just respond and recover but also use this crisis as an opportunity to reinvent. Two recent entries:
"We Aim To Remember": Affirmation And Belonging In The Lakota Oyate Homeschool Co-Op
I Believe With All My Heart, We Will Never Go Back”: How Navigator Is Making The Whole Child Leap
Decision-Making amid Uncertainty: District Responses to COVID and Systemic Racism: New paper from Carnegie that summarizes findings from interviews conducted with 17 experts about school districts and charter networks that made a relatively successful pivot to remote teaching and learning in spring 2020, particularly for low-income students and students of color.
FEDERAL
Economic Relief: 127 economists push for 'immediate' aid that includes a second direct cash benefit.
COVID-19 RESEARCH
Moderna Interview: Axios on HBO interview with Tal Zaks, chief medical officer of Moderna included this:
Kids: Moderna hopes to begin pediatric trials soon, with hopes of having adolescents vaccinated by the beginning of the next school year.
Big caveat: Zaks warned that the current trial data is specific to preventing symptoms, not to transmissibility. In other words, a vaccinated teacher could, in theory, still pass on the virus to unvaccinated students.
COVID Mild In Most Children: New study that found only 4% of children tested positive of more than 135,000 children tested at seven children's hospitals.
States Are Getting Ready to Distribute COVID-19 Vaccines. What Do Their Plans Tell Us So Far?: Via KFF:
Every state plan highlights the following broad categories as being priority populations for Phase 1 efforts: health care workers, essential workers, and those at high risk (older people and those with pre-disposing health risk factors).
Less than half (19 of 47, or 40%) of state plans reviewed include a numerical estimate of the number of individuals in different priority populations;
A majority of states (25 of 47, or 53%) have at least one mention of incorporating racial and/or ethnic minorities or health equity considerations in their targeting of priority populations. Some states expect to make racial and ethnic minorities an explicit priority population group, while others report using more general or indirect methods to do so, such as through use of the social vulnerability index.
Less than a third (13 of 47, or 28%) of states’ plans provide an estimate of the number of vaccine providers in the state
Just over half (25 of 47, or 53% ) of state plans report having immunization registries/database systems in place
The 4 D's of Vaccine Distribution: The Hustle has a helpful way of thinking through the downstream challenges of vaccine distribution:
Durability: How long will the protection last?
Dangers remaining: We don’t have data on long-term effects.
Distribution: Many parts of the world don’t have the proper cold-chain infrastructure to distribute the vaccine. Also, which populations and demographics will get it first?
Denialism: The vaccine is as effective as the number of people who take it. Many valid concerns will have to be addressed to ensure maximum uptake.
Geographic Distribution: Tyler Cowen makes the case for geographically concentrated vaccine doses.
STATE
Maine: The Maine Department of Education announces new team of nurses to support contact tracing efforts in schools. After the DOE put out a call for retired nurses willing to be trained to help with contact tracing, 21 nurses stepped forward in just two days.
Rhode Island: New report that suggests one in four Rhode Islanders can't meet basic food needs.
Tennessee: Parents split over Metro Nashville Public Schools decision to switch back to virtual learning.
Virginia:
Alexandria City Public Schools switches back to online learning until early 2021.
Fairfax County Public Schools reported Fs up by 83% this year. Vulnerable children struggling most: Fs for students w/ disabilities up by 111%, for English learners up by 106%
INTERNATIONAL
Australia: Australia’s intelligence agencies have been caught “incidentally” collecting data from the country’s COVIDSafe contact-tracing app during the first six months of its launch.
Romania: Article on how their rural students are struggling under COVID. A World Vision study revealed that over 60% of parents in the countryside have not worked during the pandemic, and close to half are unable to provide adequate food, medicine, hygiene products or school supplies for their children.
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Despite Challenges, Opportunity Zones Provide Much-Needed Capital: Via NYT:
"In Buzzard Point, an industrial district in southwest Washington, PTM Partners and Douglas Development converted a vacant General Services Administration office building overlooking the Anacostia River into 452 luxury apartments and 17,000 square feet of commercial space that will house a charter school."
"Some 80 projects are in the pipeline in Baltimore’s 42 opportunity zones, Mr. Seigel said. They range from the $90 million redevelopment of Penn Station to the conversion of four abandoned row homes into work force housing and ground-floor commercial space that will be geared toward Black-owned and community businesses."
Automation and Future of Work: The software platform Robotics Hub has helped DHL Supply Chain reduce the time needed for robot integration by 60% at a site near Madrid. He says the technology will cut system implementation time to a matter of days and reduce costs from six figures to five.
The Future of Remote Work: McKinsey "What’s next for remote work: An analysis of 2,000 tasks, 800 jobs, and nine countries"
"The virus has broken through cultural and technological barriers that prevented remote work in the past, setting in motion a structural shift in where work takes place, at least for some people."
"The potential for remote work is determined by tasks and activities, not occupations"
"A researcher at Stanford University found that only 65 percent of Americans surveyed said they had fast enough internet service to support viable video calls."
Education is estimated at 33% of effective potential for remote work with a high of 69% theoretical.
RESOURCES
"Most Schools Should Close and Stay Closed Through Winter:" Oped from Leana Wen:
"As a physician, mother, daughter of a schoolteacher and former city health commissioner who oversaw schools, I know that in-person schooling is crucial for children’s cognitive and emotional development. But loss of learning isn’t the same as loss of life, and we cannot put the burden of society’s failures on the people who work in schools. If we truly want to prioritize children, we need to drive down community infection rates and invest in safety upgrades in schools — not jeopardize the lives of teachers, staff and their families."
Ed Tech:
Kahoot has acquired language learning mobile game maker Drops for up to $50 million.
Profile of Varsity Tutors' Ian Clarkson and his path from Amazon to Sears to tutoring.
As Covid Cases Surged, a School District Reopened. Here’s What Came Next: Via WSJ:
"Just one week after reopening, the Walled Lake Consolidated School District found itself in the throes of the debate dividing communities across the country over when to close schools. The school board called a vote on closing, as over 25% of teachers at some schools were already under quarantine because of Covid-19 exposure—but many parents wanted to keep the doors open."
"After two hours of debate, the board voted 6-1 to pause all in-person learning in the district for three weeks until Dec. 8. It plans to evaluate whether to extend the pause at its Dec. 3 meeting. Staffing shortages brought on by the surge in Covid-19 cases ultimately led to the decision, said Superintendent Kenneth Gutman."
Thankful: "Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings." -- William Arthur Ward