COVID-19 Policy Update #178
COVID-19 Policy Update
TUESDAY 1/12
TOP THREE
Rapid Tests: Abbott Labs rolls out its BinaxNOW rapid COVID-19 test to schools and workplaces nationwide. Abbott will continue supplying HHS with a total of 30 million tests between now and March 2021. A breakdown of the initial 150 million tests shipped to states via HHS orders can be found here. (Press Release)
IES: Note from Mark Schneider, Director of IES
"When I was the commissioner of NCES between 2005 and 2008, Department of Education leadership met several times with DARPA to try to understand their model and import it into ED. DARPA's innovations were impressive, but I was even more impressed with their attitude toward failure—they were clear that the kinds of innovations they wanted to foster had a high probability of failing. Indeed, it was part of their business model. When I left NCES in 2008, ARPA ED had not gotten past the exploratory stage. The Obama Administration pursued ARPA ED with vigor—but it still did not materialize. The Trump administration was less vigorous in the pursuit of this model, and ARPA ED still has not gotten off the ground."
IES signed a contract with the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) to undertake three studies designed to be finished by the beginning of 2022.
An exploration of how the research centers (NCER and NCSER) conduct business.
The future of NCES.
NAEP, which, with an annual appropriation of over $160m, represents the single largest expenditure in the IES portfolio. The technology underlying NAEP is aging and needs a refresh.
How Online Teaching Needs to Improve—Even After the Pandemic: Via EdWeek.
"Despite all the frustrations and struggles to make remote and hybrid learning work during COVID-19, many teachers have evolved their practices to an approach more tailored to individual students’ needs, and the vast majority say they’ve gained skills that they’ll continue to use after the pandemic ends"
Covers the findings from a new Christensen Institute report
FEDERAL
General:
Budget Reconciliation - you will begin hearing more about the use of this process to advance parts of the Biden Administration's agenda. Our partners at PennHill provide a helpful overview of how the process works and which issues can be included in reconciliation.
PennHill memo summarizing each new member of the 117th Congress’ general background and, where available, includes information on education background and education policy positions taken during the member’s campaign or earlier in the member’s prior career.
HHS: Announced today that it will recommend opening up the vaccine process to everyone older than 65 — and will also aim to move doses out the door rather than holding back second doses. President-elect Biden plans that same approach.
SBA: Additional details on the next round of PPP.
Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC): Our partners at Brownstein have a helpful summary of the expansion of the program.
The ERTC was first enacted as part of the CARES Act to provide eligible employers with a refundable tax credit for up to $5,000 per employee.
The CAA provides a refundable tax credit, capped at $7,000 per employee per calendar quarter, for 70% of qualified wages up to $10,000 paid per calendar quarter to employees, from Jan. 1, 2021, through June 30, 2021.
STATE
Arizona: Gov Ducey called for more money to help children falling behind and warned schools that he expects them to offer in-person instruction as teachers gain access to the coronavirus vaccine. “We will not be funding empty seats or allowing schools to remain in a perpetual state of closure,” Ducey said. “Children still need to learn, even in a pandemic.”
Arkansas: Gov. Hutchinson opens vaccinations to residents older than 70, staff at schools, colleges & daycares
Florida: How Miami-Dade opened all its public schools -- and kept them open
Illinois: CPS:
About 900 CPS staff members, including nearly 30% of teachers required to work on Monday, were absent.
“We are doing this for our Black and Latinx students whose attendance and grades have suffered greatly because of the struggles with remote learning,” Schools CEO Janice Jackson said during a visit to Dawes Elementary School Monday morning. “We’re doing this for our youngest learners, who need the physical presence of an adult in order to thrive in a classroom setting, whether that’s in-person or learning at home. And we’re doing this for many of our parents, who are themselves essential workers.”
“The obvious underlying truth that no one is acknowledging is that this deadly return to in-person learning is about treating CPS like a daycare so we can push the working class back to work, and our city’s normal state of churning through people for profit,” said Edgewater resident Brian Bennett, who spoke during the public comment period.
Louisiana: New Orleans public schools announced their COVID testing plan for students and faculty.
Oklahoma: Governor Kevin Stitt, Commissioner of Health Dr. Lance Frye, and Secretary of Education Ryan Walters made a series of announcements today:
Teachers or students who are exposed to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 will not have to quarantine as long as that exposure happened in a classroom setting and all protocols were being followed. Those protocols include wearing masks, social distancing, and maintaining recommended cleaning measures. The change does not apply if the exposure comes outside of the classroom setting.
Vaccines for teachers over the age of 65 will begin this week and vaccinations will be administered to all teachers soon.
The Health Department will also double testing and increase masks and other PPE for schools.
As of Jan. 12, Broken Arrow had 106 total positive cases in students and 674 students quarantining due to close contact with someone who had tested positive. The district has 18,658 students enrolled in in-person learning and a mask requirement for grades 3-12.
Pennsylvania: Whitehall-Coplay School District to move from hybrid to 4-day in-person learning in February
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
How to Fix Economic Inequality?: Set of policy recommendations from the Peterson Institute.
Did the $660 Billion Paycheck Protection Program Get Disbursed to Minority Communities in the Early Stages of COVID-19? New NBER paper:
"From our analysis of data on the universe of loans from these programs and administrative data on employer firms, we generally find a slightly positive relationship between PPP loan receipt per business and the minority share of the population or businesses, although funds flowed to minority communities later than to communities with lower minority shares."
"PPP loan amounts, however, are negatively related to the minority share of the population."
"The EIDL program, in contrast, both in numbers and amounts, was distributed positively to minority communities."
Bitcoin: This is stressful. Stefan Thomas, a programmer in San Francisco, told NYT that he has 7,002 Bitcoin — currently worth about $236 million — but that he has no idea how to access it and can only guess two more passwords before being locked out forever.
LEARNING PODS
Zucchinis Homeschool Co-op: Pairs educators helped form in response to requests from their parent community for an option where their kids could learn safely and in-person during the pandemic. Great video describing the program.
RESOURCES
Student Privacy Communications Toolkit: For Schools & Districts: New from FPF.
Public Schools Should (Almost Always) Stay Open: It does the least harm to kids and adults argues Vladimir Kogan, PhD, and Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH
With Educators Getting COVID-19 Vaccine, It’s Time to Open Schools: OpEd. "The pandemic has widened the gap between those students and their peers — and every month that school remains virtual, they are falling further behind."
NSVF Funding Opportunity: NewSchools Venture Fund is offering $6 million in funding to create new innovative schools and advance diversity in PreK-12 education leadership.
The Science of Mob Thinking: Via Axios.
Surrounded by Heroes: Really moving segment from Lincoln, Neb anchor Bill Schammert. "Last Tuesday, we were surrounded by heroes who helped save our son's life."