COVID-19 Policy Update #234
COVID-19 Policy Update
THURSDAY 4/15
TOP THREE
The Impact of Summer Learning Programs on Low-Income Children’s Mathematics Achievement: A Meta-Analysis: An EdWorking Paper
"We present results from a meta-analysis of 37 experimental and quasi-experimental studies of summer programs in mathematics for children in grades pre-K-12, examining what resources and characteristics relate to stronger student achievement, attainment, and social-emotional and behavioral outcomes."
"Compared to control group children, children who participated in summer programs that included mathematics lessons and activities enjoyed significant improvements in mathematics learning as well as social-behavioral outcomes."
Schools Can Open Safely during COVID, the Latest Evidence Shows: Via Scientific American
"More than a year after schools around the country first shut down, many experts agree they can remain open safely if they implement measures such as mask wearing, physical distancing and good ventilation."
"Evidence suggests that the benefits of having kids in school—with precautions in place—strongly outweigh the risks, especially now that most teachers have been vaccinated."
"Perhaps the most important measure schools can take to keeps kids and staff safe is the universal use of face masks at all times, except when eating or drinking."
Policy Hackathon: How to Get Schoolkids Back on Track: Via Politico
COVID-19 RESEARCH
Third Vaccine Dose?:
Pfizer CEO says third COVID vaccine dose likely needed within 12 months
Fauci said people may need to get booster shots for the Covid vaccines in a year
Johnson & Johnson: An Economist/YouGov poll found that the FDA recommendation to pause distribution of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine caused public confidence in the vaccine to sink 15 percentage points.
CDC Finds Very Few ‘Breakthrough Cases’: Via WSJ
CDC found only 5,800 cases of COVID-19 infection among more than 66 million Americans who have completed a full course of vaccination.
Represents 0.008% of the fully vaccinated population.
Children Vaccine Trials: Stanford launches pediatric vaccine trial that will include children as young as 6 months
STATE
Alabama: Sylvan Learning says their assessment showed an average learning loss of about three months in both reading and math across grades 3 through 8.
California: WSJ Editorial Board: "Education Tragedy in Los Angeles"
"Throughout the fall 2020 semester, the report notes, elementary-school students in L.A. received fewer than two hours a day of synchronous instruction on average—less than half as much as in the Long Beach and San Diego school districts."
"Yet even by this low standard, the Great Public Schools Now report finds that “over 13,000 middle and high school students were consistently disengaged in fall 2020,” and “an additional 56,000 did not actively participate on a daily basis.” In January and February, some 22,800 students missed three or more days of class a week."
Kentucky: Covington City Schools ready for 70% increase in students in summer program
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Retail Sales: Increased 9.8% in March (beating expectations of 6.1%)
Overdose Deaths: More than 87,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in the 12 months leading to September 2020.
That represents a 29% increase in overdose deaths for the months between October 2019 and September 2020 compared to the prior year.
5 Ways the American Jobs Plan Can Support State Workforce Policy: Via ECS
Creating More School-to-Work Pathways: Report from PPI
Family Voices: Building Pathways From Learning to Meaningful Work: New report from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Gallup.
Via The 74: "Many parents are rethinking the value of a traditional four year college education, opting instead for hands-on experiences for their children such as vocational education programs, joining the military or starting their own business, a new poll has found."
Online School. Poor Technology. Declining Enrollments: Via Politico
LEARNING PODS
Is Hybrid Home Schooling the Future of Education? Over at EdWeek, Rick Hess interviews Mike McShane
"Put simply, hybrid home schools enroll children in a traditional brick-and-mortar school for part of the week, and students learn from home for part of the week"
"Families who participate in hybrid home schooling want to spend more time with their children and feel like the traditional school schedule and calendar are out of sync with the rhythms of their family’s life. But it isn’t just that. Many families find themselves getting the best of home schooling—for instance, the personalized attention, the supportive environment, more control over what is learned—and the best of traditional schooling—community, socialization, expertise, extracurriculars, and so on."
"Private hybrid home schools are usually tuition-driven and frequently cost between one-third and one-half of local private school tuition."
Learning Pods are Now Helping Vulnerable Students. Will the Trend Survive the Pandemic? Via The City
RESOURCES
7 Big Ideas: From Paul Herdman on how Delaware can maximize its stimulus dollars.
Strengthen our tech infrastructure
Invest in Early Childhood Education (and Educators)
Invest in our teacher pipeline
Build deep academic and social supports for vulnerable populations
Expand on what worked about remote learning
Rethink high school
Support community-wide investments
Pandemic Learning Gains: Via the Christian Science Monitor
"Oakland REACH is partnering with the Oakland Unified School District to offer hub programming after school, and more than 400 students are signed up. The district recently announced plans to expand its partnership to up to 1,000 students by this summer."
"I think a lot of the narrative about learning loss tends to be narrowly focused on academic or cognitive skills. What are the math units we didn’t get to? What depth of knowledge around social studies topics have we missed?” says Danielle Neves, deputy chief of academics at Tulsa Public Schools in Oklahoma, where 81% of students are economically disadvantaged. “I think our students have gained a lot of other things. Children are incredibly resilient human beings, and I think they’ve learned a different kind of resilience in this year.”
"We made a conscious effort to focus on ‘unfinished learning’ rather than ‘learning loss,’ says Ms. Neves in Tulsa. “In a lot of ways, they can be similar in meaning ... but we wanted to make a choice to remove the onus of that from the students.”
What We’ve Learned by Investing $52 Million in Black and Latino Innovators: Via Stacey Childress and NewSchools Venture Fund
COVID-19 Changed Education in America — Permanently: Good long piece via Politico
"The challenge, said Jaclyn Ballesteros, an early childhood educator at KIPP Northeast Elementary, a charter school in Denver, is “how can we keep breaking down these barriers of inequity through what we learned in the pandemic?”
"A recent poll from POLITICO and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that 29 percent of parents want their child to be in remote or hybrid learning for the next school year, while a RAND Corporation survey of school districts found that by last fall, one in five were already planning or contemplating a post-pandemic virtual schooling option."
Band Practice in the Age of Covid-19: Via WSJ
Why Public Schools Shouldn’t Offer a Remote Option This Fall: Via David Zweig
Racial Differences on Reopening: New AEI paper by Vladimir Kogan: What’s behind racial differences in attitudes toward school reopening (and what to do about them)
Kevin Bacon: Singing Backstreet Boys I Want It That Way with Alpacas.