COVID-19 Policy Update #228
COVID-19 Policy Update
WEDNESDAY 4/7
TOP THREE
Educator Vaccinations: CDC reports that nearly 80% of teachers, school staff, and childcare workers receive at least one shot of COVID-19 vaccine
Low-Achieving Districts Offer Less In-person Instruction: Via AEI's Return to Learn Tracker:
Instructional offerings differ by levels of student achievement; remote learning is more than twice as prevalent in low-achieving districts (11%) compared to high-achieving districts (4%).
Teens Are Starting to Get Vaccinated. That’s a Big Deal for Schools: Via EdWeek
"More than 30 states have already opened vaccine eligibility to those 16 and up."
"The only vaccine currently authorized for use in the United States that’s approved for ages 16 and up is made by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and German company BioNTech. The other authorized vaccines, made by Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, are approved for ages 18 and up."
FEDERAL
ED: Miguel Cardona Takes His Schools Reopening Message on the Road
COVID-19 RESEARCH
AstraZeneca: "The European Medicines Agency has concluded there is a link between AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine and “very rare” but dangerous clotting events reported in a number of countries where the vaccine has been used, events which in some cases have been fatal." More via STAT.
MIS-C: CDC study. Analyzed data on 1,733 patients diagnosed with MIS-C between March 2020 and January.
75% of the children did not show any COVID-19 symptoms.
About 60% of children required intensive care, and 24 children (1.4 percent) died.
KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor: March 2021
STATE
California: Gov. Newsom expects full in-person fall return to school after state scraps color-coded tiers
Illinois: CTU wants reopening of high schools delayed one week, citing COVID-19 variant concerns.
Rhode Island: Survival kits ease return to high school
Texas: Tutoring corps could help kids with COVID learning slide — and train new teachers
INTERNATIONAL
Canada:
Teachers warn that some students have 'checked out' of school, and it will be hard to get them back
Ontario minister of education says teacher unions are stoking fear about school safety.
BC's top doctor insists closing schools in COVID hot zones can lead to rising cases
“Cases go up when children are not in school and that’s a downside impact on families. So we need to find that way of safely keeping children in schools so that we can protect our communities — anin d that is something that we take very seriously — that we’ve put a focus on,” she says."
Greece: Set to reopen schools using self-test kits for COVID-19
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Job Training That’s Free Until You’re Hired Is a Blueprint for Biden: Via NYT
"There is emerging evidence that these kinds of programs are a very effective and exciting part of work force development,” said Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard. “Social Finance is targeting and nurturing new programs, and it brings a financing mechanism that allows them to expand.”
"The Social Finance income-share agreement with students ranges from about 5 percent to 9 percent depending on their earnings — less from $30,000 to $40,000, and generally more above $40,000. The monthly payments last four years. If you lose your job, the payment obligation stops."
Ten Economic Facts on How Mothers Spend Their Time: Via Brookings.
RESOURCES
Even as Schools Reopen, Many Students Learn Remotely: Via the AP
"Nearly 46% of public schools offered five days a week of in-person learning to all students in February, according to the survey, but just 34% of students were learning full time in the classroom. The gap was most pronounced among older K-12 students, with just 29% of eighth graders getting five days a week of learning at school."
How Four Cities Are Trying to Close the Digital Divide: Good profiles of Sacramento, Calif., Chattanooga, Tenn., Houston and Philadelphia.
Broadband Access For Success In Postsecondary Education: Via NGA
Lessons from Race to the Top: Via Emily Freitag
The Biggest Problem for America’s Schools: "Summer programs will help. But they won’t be enough." Via the Atlantic.
How a $25 Million Donation to Help Students Got Ensnared in Politics: Via Vox
"Here’s what happened: Earlier this month, San Francisco announced that a foundation called Crankstart, funded by famous Sequoia venture capitalist Mike Moritz and his wife, Harriet Heyman, was donating $25 million to help start a city initiative to offer free summer school or day care programs to kids. The program would be aided by an outside advocacy group called TogetherSF that was formed last year to work on civic projects in the city and has also, separately, been funded by Crankstart. Crankstart brokered the arrangement between TogetherSF and the summer school program."
"But TogetherSF’s involvement has become controversial — and is being cast by one San Francisco supervisor, Hillary Ronen, as a possible political play by education reformers. And Ronen this week convinced the board, on a 10-1 vote, to delay approving the program to educate San Francisco students until she could investigate TogetherSF and its political ties."
John Oates & Saxsquatch: The crossover event you've been waiting for.