COVID-19 Policy Update #211
COVID-19 Policy Update
WEDNESDAY 3/3
TOP THREE
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona: USA Today OpEd: Here is my five-point plan to get students back in school full time
"First, we’ll convene the experts. The Department of Education will host a national summit on safe school reopening this month"
"Second, we’ll share best practices about the incredible work already happening in our schools."
"Third, we’re getting to work right away on the second volume of the ED’s COVID-19 Handbook."
"Fourth, we need to collect better data about how schools are operating during the pandemic."
"Finally, and most importantly, schools need financial help to reopen classrooms safely, stay open, address students’ learning needs, and support students’ mental health."
Zero COVID Risk Is the Wrong Standard: Via Jonathan Chait
"Teachers are hesitant to accept even small risks because they share a belief system with many other Democrats. And that belief system — or at least the purist version of it that is coming to the fore as the end of the pandemic draws within sight — could be called Zeroism."
"Zeroism is an inability to conceive of public-health measures in cost-benefit terms. The pandemic becomes an enemy that must be destroyed at all costs, and any compromise could lead to death and is therefore unacceptable."
"It is in part a reaction to the science denial and willful indifference flaunted by the Trump administration, which lied about the virus’s scope and minimized its effects."
"Like denial, Zeroism refuses to grapple with trade-offs in practical terms, preferring instead to frame the question in pure moral terms."
"The same tendency has caused them to overstate the risk that vaccinated people can transmit the virus and understate the protections vaccines offer."
"But in-person schooling is an area in which many liberals have remained hesitant even though authorities have managed to clearly communicate permission to resume normal activity. The nearly yearlong suspension of in-person schooling is exerting a toll the scale of which we can only begin to fathom"
"Under any sane calculation, whether school poses a small risk or an extremely small risk hardly matters, because the alternative is a social catastrophe that dwarfs any public health effect."
The Impact of COVID-19 on Pediatric Mental Health: Study from FAIR Health / Axios story
"Mental health care claim lines — or individual health services — for children 13-18 doubled in March and April of last year, compared to 2019."
"Claim lines for intentional self-harm as a percentage of all medical claim lines in the 13-18 age group increased 90.71 percent in March 2020 compared to March 2019"
For the age group 13-18, claim lines for overdoses increased 94.91 percent as a percentage of all medical claim lines in March 2020 and 119.31 percent in April 2020 over the same months the year before.
FEDERAL
COVID Relief Package:
The bill will now phase out the $1,400 payments faster for higher-income individuals.
Individuals earning over $80,000 now won’t qualify for the payments, compared with a $100,000 cap in the previously drafted legislation
The ceiling for couples will now be $160,000 against $200,000 before.”
"Biden Prepares Blitz of Action to Prod Schools to Reopen:" Via Politico
National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence: Released their final report. Some of the education recommendations:
"Congress should pass a National Defense Education Act II to address deficiencies across the American educational system—from K-12 and job reskilling to investing in thousands of undergraduate- and graduate-level fellowships in fields critical to the AI future"
"To eliminate this recruitment gap, the government should establish a civilian National Reserve Digital Corps (NRDC) modeled after the military reserve’s commitments and incentive structure. Members of the NRDC would become civilian special government employees in one of the agency Digital Corps and work at least 38 days each year as advisors, instructors, or developers across the government"
"For the foreseeable future, the United States’ STEM education system does not have the capacity nor the quality to produce sufficient STEM or AI talent to supply the United States’ markets or national security enterprise.9 To compete, the United States must reform its education system to produce both a higher quality and quantity of graduates."
COVID-19 RESEARCH
New Variants: Interesting chart from Dr. Fauci's briefing today. Note the P.1 characteristic of reduced vaccine effectiveness.
STATE
Arizona: Enrollment data came out (Excel file). 38,000 fewer students enrolled in public schools; Charter enrollment is up 6%
DC: The Washington Teachers' Union has announced a coordinated "situation room" with D.C. Public Schools that is designed to immediately respond to coronavirus-related issues at District schools.
Delaware: Schools are looking to slow down remote, hybrid 'learning loss'
North Carolina: 1 in 5 students at risk of not advancing to the next grade level.
The state’s largest school district, the Wake County Public School System, reported 30,063 of its 157,673 students were “at risk,” about 19%.
The state’s second-largest district, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, reported 47,942 student “at risk,” out of 138,884 — 34.5%.
District responses here.
Texas:
Following Gov. Abbott's decision to lift all COVID-19 restrictions, including ending the mask mandate, TEA issued guidance saying districts may continue requiring masks
Teachers are going door to door as kids disappear from remote classes.
“I felt a sense of urgency,” Rawlinson Principal Sherry Mireles said, “If they’re not getting their schooling it’s our responsibility. I’m not going to allow a 12-, 13-, 14-year-old to drop out. Not on my watch.”
Wisconsin: The Milton School District plans to make both synchronous and asynchronous options for students permanent going forward.
"I’m a big believer in student voice and choice, and I feel like the more that we can personalize learning, the better. And I hope that’s a lesson that overall in education we do better at personalized learning for our students."
INTERNATIONAL
UNICEF: Schools for more than 168 million children globally have been completely closed for almost a full year. Report / Data.
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
U.S. Economic Outlook and Monetary Policy: Remarks by Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard
"On average, over the period from November 2020 to January 2021, the fraction of prime-age women with children aged 6 to 17 who were out of the labor force for caregiving had increased by 2.4 percentage points from a year earlier, while for men the fraction had increased by about 0.6 percentage point."
"If not soon reversed, the decline in the participation rate for prime‑age women could have scarring effects, with longer-term implications for household incomes and potential growth"
"Additional fiscal support is likely to provide a significant boost to spending when vaccinations are sufficiently widespread to support a full reopening of in-person services. Various measures of financial conditions are broadly accommodative relative to historical levels and should remain so"
The Future of Workplace Benefits: Via Axios:
"According to a new survey of human resources departments from Care.com, a whopping 98% of employers plan to expand their benefits."
"66% are adding flexibility to help parents and other caretakers. And 63% are adding child care benefits."
Meet the Home-Rental Firm Turning Tenants Into Homeowners: Promise Homes has been acquiring rental houses and promoting homeownership to the tenants it inherits.
Deaths of Despair: New National Academies report (479 pages of data and policy recommendations) From Stat:
"The authors analyzed drug- and alcohol-related death data and concluded that the total included more than 1.3 million among working-age adults from 1990 to 2017, making up about 8% of all deaths in this group."
"The largest increases in drug-related mortality rates were seen in white people (particularly men), older Black men, and in the regions of Appalachia, New England, and the industrial Midwest."
"Also during the study period, a ballooning opioid crisis coincided with economic shifts in some industries."
"The report said there is evidence to suggest that economic instability can also influence suicide mortality, which increased during the study period in Appalachia and the Rust Belt. Overall, there were nearly 570,000 suicides among working-age adults from 1990-2017, with significant increases in suicide rates seen mainly among white people."
"Policy Conclusion 11-1 To reduce and ultimately eliminate racial/ethnic and other socioeconomic inequalities that continue to drive racial/ethnic disparities in U.S. working-age mortality, policy makers and decision makers at all levels of society will need to dismantle structural racism and discriminatory policies of exclusion (in such areas as education, employment and pay, housing, lending, civic participation, criminal justice, and health care) and be intentional in ensuring that new social and economic policies serve to eliminate, and not perpetuate, the social and economic inequalities to which racial/ethnic minority groups have long been exposed."
RESOURCES
Assessments: Via Chalkbeat: After feds say tests still required, critics mobilize and states look for loopholes
Zoom Fatigue: Stanford researchers identify four causes for ‘Zoom fatigue’ and their simple fixes.
6 Feet or 3 Feet Apart? Why Reopening Schools Is Not So Easy: Via NYT
Financial Turmoil: Open or Remote? What it Means for School District Budgets: Deck from Marguerite Roza:
EdChoice / Morning Consult Poll: New survey results (and crosstabs). So. Much. Data... on school reopenings, vaccine hesitancy, learning pods, tutoring, and more.
Dolly Gets A Dose of Her Own Medicine: Last April, Dolly Parton announced a $1 million donation to Vanderbilt which helped fund three pandemic-related research projects, including one related to the Moderna vaccine. Yesterday, she received the vaccine while singing a revision of her song "Jolene"
"Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, I'm begging of you please don't hesitate"
"Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, 'cause once you're dead then that's a bit too late."