COVID-19 Policy Update #184
COVID-19 Policy Update
FRIDAY 1/22
TOP THREE
New Variants:
Prime Minister Johnson said the UK COVID variant may be 30% more deadly.
Researchers on the government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag) concluded that it may increase the death rate by 30%-40%. (Study here)
Chief Science Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance says the new variant is 30-70% more transmissible than the old variant and can affect anybody of any age.
Three new laboratory studies are raising concerns that the immune response triggered by a COVID-19 infection or vaccination may be less effective at protecting against the new South African variant.
What One District Did to Prevent Students From Failing: Via NYT on Lubbock County, Texas
"77% of the district’s remote high school students were failing at least one class. 30% of the youngest students, particularly in first and second grades, were not meeting grade-level expectations on a reading assessment"
"So the district took a drastic step: It ended its remote instructional option and required all of its 1,010 students — from prekindergarten to the 12th grade — to return to the classroom."
"The greater risk has been infections outside of school. The surrounding community of Lubbock County had among the worst outbreaks in Texas during the fall, fueled by a mix of returning college revelers and local residents fed up with pandemic precautions."
COVID Has Forced Teachers to Confront Longstanding Problems—And Education Will Never Be the Same: Long piece
"I confess that I’ve become part of that problem: Like many teachers, I set up my courses so students can pass just by completing a majority of assignments, whether or not they really master the material. No teacher can completely buck the system, and we’re all cognizant of the importance of keeping graduation rates and other school-wide statistical indicators high—what I call the pass-students-along mindset."
"Moreover, the whole experience has made me wonder what it really means to assign a student 93%, or an 87%, or a 61% anyway? Are my rubrics and grading metrics really precise enough to capture the essence of human learning in a certain subject area down to a percentage point?"
"We are even witnessing an evolution of the concept of “attendance,” a word that normally has signalled, in an obvious arithmetic way, a student’s physical presence in a classroom. The shift to online and hybrid learning has undermined this traditional “seat-time” approach to credits. And my own district has struggled with the question of how to record attendance for online learning this fall. What constitutes being “present”? Logging in during class time? Submitting an attendance form? Completing the assignment for that day? The challenge is nationwide, as Nicole Gaudiano reported for Politico recently: “Districts may be collecting some form of attendance data, but how frequently and what constitutes attendance varies.”
"School districts, administrators, and teachers (myself included) are all doing our best to deal with this unprecedented situation. But if we’re being honest with ourselves, we can’t blame all of our difficulties on COVID-19. In many cases, the pandemic has caused us to confront issues that have gone unaddressed for a long time. If we deal with them in a constructive and thoughtful way, then maybe some good will come out of this historic medical tragedy."
FEDERAL
FCC: Jessica Rosenworcel will serve as acting FCC chair
ED: Announcement with bios.
Sheila Nix, Chief of Staff
Claudia Chavez, White House Liaison
Suzanne Goldberg, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Strategic Operations and Outreach, Office for Civil Rights (serving as acting Assistant Secretary)
Ian Rosenblum, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Programs, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (serving as acting Assistant Secretary)
Emma Leheny, Principal Deputy General Counsel, Office of the General Counsel (serving as acting General Counsel)
Donna Harris-Aikens, Senior Advisor for Policy and Planning, Office of the Secretary
Ben Miller, Senior Advisor to the Chief of Staff
Ben Halle, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications, Office of Communications and Outreach (serving as acting Assistant Secretary)
Rich Williams, Chief of Staff, Office of Postsecondary Education
Greg Schmidt, Senior Counsel, Office of the General Counsel
Jasmine Bolton, Senior Counsel, Office for Civil Rights
Alex Payne, Special Assistant, Office of Legislation and Congressional Affairs
White House Presidential Actions:
Executive Order on Ensuring an Equitable Pandemic Response and Recovery
Executive Order on Supporting the Reopening and Continuing Operation of Schools and Early Childhood Education Providers
Executive Order on Ensuring a Data-Driven Response to COVID-19 and Future High-Consequence Public Health Threats
Executive Order on Establishing the COVID-9 Pandemic Testing Board and Ensuring a Sustainable Public Health Workforce for COVID-19 and Other Biological Threats
Executive Order on Protecting Worker Health and Safety
Executive Order on a Sustainable Public Health Supply Chain
Memorandum to Extend Federal Support to Governors’ Use of the National Guard to Respond to COVID-19 and to Increase Reimbursement and Other Assistance Provided to States
Executive Order on Improving and Expanding Access to Care and Treatments for COVID-19
Executive Order on Promoting COVID-19 Safety in Domestic and International Travel
COVID-19 RESEARCH
Randomized Trials: A group of researchers suggests the use of randomized trials to help return children to schools.
Distressed Communities Have Higher Death Rates: EIG found that economically distressed areas have higher death rates than well-off areas. The 10% of counties that were the most economically distressed before the pandemic have an average COVID-19 death rate 2.1X higher than the 10% of counties that were the most well-off.
Vaccine Tracker Tool: Inspired by the work of volunteers in California and Massachusetts, the Afterpattern team created a model vaccine availability tracker that can be easily replicated and deployed in other states. The model tracker is free and built on Afterpattern's no-code platform so it can be duplicated and used without being a programmer.
Vaccine Backstop: Gritstone Oncology will start human testing of an experimental Covid-19 vaccine it hopes can target potential strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that could evade current vaccines. The idea is to have a vaccine "backstop" should it be needed.
STATE
California: Schools can be used as COVID-19 vaccine centers under new state guidelines, but they’ll have to apply to health authorities for the role
New York:
NYC continues to deny coronavirus testing for Catholic schools, despite court ruling
NYC has lost contact with 2,600 students since March
Tennessee: Nashville parents criticize school board chair for taking Caribbean vacation while most schools were shut down
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Higher Ed Tuition: Stanford, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown and Harvard all raised undergraduate tuition for the 2020-2021 academic year, even though classes are being taught largely online.
Workers Are Struggling For Skills Support During Pandemic: Via Politico
"With 85 million Americans having trouble paying basic household expenses and 10 million fewer jobs today than a year ago, Zahidi and Wanamaker said it’s time for the U.S. government to formulate a grand bargain to help American workers retool for the uncertain, but green and digital economy that’s coming."
“There is a skills mismatch and it's growing. There needs to be a much bigger focus on reskilling and upskilling,” Zahidi said, “most governments are failing to think right now smartly about the markets of tomorrow, the jobs of tomorrow," she added. What sets America apart is that it has the resources to do something about that — to help individual workers and employers make smarter long-term decisions."
RESOURCES
Learning Loss: Dan Willingham on addressing learning loss.
Mental Health: 5 ways schools are addressing pandemic-induced mental health issues
AFT on Reopening: “Widespread regular testing is the heart of any successful school reopening plan, particularly in the absence of widely available vaccines,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten told McClatchy. “If the Biden administration wants to reopen school buildings much more robustly in the first 100 days of its administration, widespread regular testing is the heart of what’s needed.”
Investors:
Ironhack raises $20 million for its coding bootcamps
Multiverse, an edtech startup founded by the son of Tony Blair gets $44 million
African edtech startup uLesson lands a $7.5 million Series A
Childcare Parent Survey: Morning Consult and the Bipartisan Policy Center. Survey results. Deck
AutoPilot: Amazing video of a Tesla auto-driving from San Fran to LA.