COVID-19 Policy Update #237
COVID-19 Policy Update
TUESDAY 4/20
TOP THREE
Pandemic Learning Loss Can Be a Post-pandemic Opportunity for Education Reforms: Via Paul Reville
"Students are estranged from school, having lost trust, hope, motivation, control over their lives, and connections to one another and their teachers. All the learning-loss strategies have value and can make a difference for students, but not if we put the cart — the technical solution to a real educational problem — before the horse."
"The most urgent business is reconnecting children with their teachers and peers, rebuilding fractured relationships, restoring trust, reigniting inspiration, and rekindling hope and motivation."
"Meeting these challenges will require a major strategic pivot for the education system and the prioritization of strategies like home visits that include personalized teacher-family and teacher-student meetings, intensified social and emotional supports, as well as after-school and summer enrichment programs focused on fun, relationships, and activity."
"Schools need a case management system of operation to replace their one-size-fits-all factory model, which treats students as if they all have identical needs and challenges. Instead, the new education system should be redesigned to meet each child where he or she is and give them what they need inside and outside of school."
"Start with reconnecting, relationships, activity, and inspiration. Build toward individualization and success plans. One size doesn’t fit all. Let educators drive a major, personalizing, humanizing reform in education, one that truly and immediately focuses on advancing the well-being of our children."
New Test Scores Show Students Rebounding After Pandemic-Related Learning Loss: Via WSJ
"On average, students are performing below pre-pandemic expectations, but the learning gaps that existed for many at the start of the 2020-21 school year are shrinking, particularly in math, according to a report from Renaissance Learning Inc., an online testing program used in thousands of U.S. schools."
"Students across second through eighth grades are now closer to reaching expectations in math than they were in the fall. It will now take second and third-graders about two to three weeks to catch up in math. Last fall, scores projected it would take them four to seven weeks to catch up, the report said."
"The report’s findings are based on data from 3.8 million students’ assessments, called Star tests, over three testing periods between fall 2019 and winter 2021 across every state and the District of Columbia. That includes 2.3 million students taking early literacy or reading exams in first through eighth grade and 1.5 million students in second through eighth grade taking math assessments."
"Middle schoolers have experienced more challenges in reading. Renaissance projects it will now take seventh and eighth-graders eight to 11 weeks to catch up to where they are expected to perform at this time of year—a wider gap than in the fall, when they were only slightly behind meeting expectations."
Johnson & Johnson: Axios-Ipsos poll: Americans say J&J pause was the right call.
Most Americans support the pause in distribution of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, and so far there's no evidence that it's leading to broader vaccine hesitancy
More via Axios
FEDERAL
USDA: Extends Seamless Summer Option through June 2022 to support reopened schools this fall.
White House: Details are emerging on the second infrastructure "families plan" package:
$1 trillion in new spending and approximately $500 billion in new tax credits
$225 billion for child-care funding; $225 billion for paid family and medical leave; $200 billion for universal PreK instruction; hundreds of billions in education funding, including tuition-free community colleges across the country; and other sums for nutritional assistance.
COVID-19 RESEARCH
AstraZeneca: Study from the United Kingdom, published in NEJM
"Involved clinical and lab evaluation of 23 previously healthy patients who experienced blood clots and thrombocytopenia (low platelet counts) 6 to 24 days after receiving the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.”
“In all cases reported to date, this syndrome of thrombocytopenia and venous thrombosis appears to be triggered by receipt of the first dose of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine.”
"The study adds a very important detail. It says the risk of developing a low platelet count among people who get the vaccine appears to be about the same as among people who did not get the vaccine."
Vaccine Requirements: Two-thirds of Americans support COVID-19 vaccine requirements for college students
Vaccine Distribution: New vaccination site in NYC's Museum of Natural History.
They even put a band-aid on the whale.
Indoor School Sports Most Likely To Spread COVID-19: A study in an Atlanta school district revealed that the highest secondary COVID-19 attack rates were in indoor, high-contact sports settings (23.8%), staff meetings or lunches (18.2%), and elementary school classrooms (9.5%), and that staff were more susceptible to COVID-19 than students were.
STATE
Arizona: State Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman announced she’s allocating $21.3 million to hire more school counselors and social workers statewide as part of the School Safety Grant program
California: LAUSD has five current COVID-19 outbreaks involving schools — three in Santa Clarita and one each in Redondo Beach and Agoura Hills — “all are associated with participation in youth sports, not with attending instruction at school.”
Connecticut: Gov. Ned Lamont announced that public schools will be integrating a curriculum called TeachRock, the brainchild of Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Steven Van Zandt and his nonprofit organization, the Rock and Roll Forever Foundation.
His dog made an appearance during the announcement too.
Delaware: Intutorly, a free online tutoring service started by high school teenagers amid the pandemic, won first prize in the University of Delaware Horn Entrepreneurship's Diamond Challenge.
Michigan: Educators and students push state to close schools while COVID cases surge
"Six groups, including Michigan Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (MICORE), Black Lives Matter Michigan, Detroit Area Youth Uniting Michigan (DAYUM), Michigan Education Justice, Detroit Heals Detroit and Michigan Students Dream, launched a petition earlier this month garnering support to pause in-person learning in Michigan “until the COVID-19 spread goes down and we can ensure safe learning environments.”
Nebraska: A study found COVID infections in Omaha schools were six times higher for students and two-and-a-half times higher for school staff than originally reported, according to officials with the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
New Jersey: The Overdeck Family Foundation, in conjunction with the New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund, is partnering with The College of New Jersey’s School of Education to launch the NJ Summer Tutoring Corps Program.
"The eight-week program will provide tutoring this summer for thousands of K–5 students who have experienced pandemic-related learning loss. Kids in groups of 3-4 will meet with a tutor for three hours a week beginning in late June."
Interview with Laura Overdeck. Story here.
New Mexico: Via Erin Richards at USA Today: "A New Mexico school sent all kids back in person in one day. We followed a teacher to see how it went." Great photo/video essay.
North Carolina: Board of education approves new summer school guidelines.
Wisconsin: Governor Evers, announces $175 Million to support COVID-19 testing in schools
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
New Tools from Skillful: Developed with support from Strada Education Network, Ivy Tech Community College, and the state of Indiana, as well as with additional support from Cognizant U.S. Foundation and Microsoft Corp., the new tools will help job seekers in the state and beyond.
"The new virtual, skills-based training program for career coaches is the first in a suite of training and resources developed to improve the support job seekers can receive from career coaches."
How the Pandemic Did, and Didn't, Change Where Americans Move: Via NYT
"In short, as disruptive as the pandemic has been in nearly every aspect of life, it doesn’t appear to have altered the underlying forces shaping which places are thriving or struggling. The graphic below shows that the metro areas that gained the most net movers in 2020 — or lost the most — are almost entirely the same as those in 2019"
RESOURCES
The Shadow Orphan Crisis of COVID-19: More than 40,000 children likely lost parents to Covid-19. Who will help them?
"When a young person loses a parent, they don’t just lose someone they love, they lose financial support. They become at greater risk of dropping out of school (at any level); for anxiety, depression, alcohol and other substance misuse issues; and for feeling like they have lost control over their lives."
"The first two years after losing a parent is a period of critical risk for developing depression,” Kathryn Cullen, a psychiatrist at the University of Minnesota Medical School, wrote in a 2018 editorial in The American Journal of Psychiatry."
Tom Brady: The Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback is one of the latest investors in Class, a tools suite for the conferencing platform Zoom.
Class has now raised $58 million in less than a year, with a $30 million Series A in February 2021 and a $16 million seed round in September 2020.
Want to Make Education More Innovative? Let’s Invest in R&D: Via Jeff Wetzler and Sujata Bhatt
During COVID-19, Schools Have Made a Mad Dash to 1-to-1 Computing. What Happens Next?: Via EdWeek
"A survey last month of educators by the EdWeek Research Center found that about two-thirds recalled there was one school-issued device for every middle and high school student before the pandemic. 42% said the same about elementary school kids."
"90% of educators said there was at least one device for every middle and high schooler by March of 2021. An additional 84% said the same about elementary school students."
"The whole pandemic had been like a big proof of concept for 1-to-1,” said Gaddis of Wake County. “Now it’s taking all of those learnings and putting them into [practice]. What does 2021-22 look like?”
Reimagining the Road to Graduation: Via Bellwether: The Need for Extraordinary Systems to Get Students to and Through College.
Dog Wins Relay Race: At Utah high school track meet (video)
"A dog is seen breaking loose from its owner near the final turn, then immediately passing the second-, third- and fourth-place runners. The dog sprinted to catch up with Gracie Laney, who was surprised to find out she had a competitor at her heels."
“At first, I thought it was another runner and I was surprised because we had a pretty good lead,” Laney told KSL. “As it got closer, I thought, ‘That’s too small to be a person,’ and then I noticed it was a dog.’"
"Holly ran the final 100 meters of the race in about 10.5 seconds"