COVID-19 Policy Update #243
COVID-19 Policy Update
WEDNESDAY 9/28
TOP THREE
American Families Plan: The White House released a fact sheet describing their second $1.8 trillion infrastructure package focused on families. Key highlights include:
Free Community College: A $109 billion program to provide tuition and fee-free community college
Pell: Increases the maximum Pell grant size by $1,400. Would extend eligibility to DREAMERs
College Retention and Completion: A $62 billion grant program aimed at completion and retention activities at colleges that serve high numbers of low-income students. Would support wraparound services, emergency basic needs grants, practices that recruit and retain diverse faculty, transfer agreements between colleges and evidence-based remediation programs.
Two Years of Subsidized Tuition and Expanded High-Demand Programs: $39 billion in assistance to attend two years at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) and other minority-serving institutions (MSIs).
Doubling the TEACH Grant: Doubles the TEACH grant from $4,000 per year to $8,000 per year and expanding it to early childhood educators.
Grow Your Own: A $2.8 billion program that would fund year-long paid teacher residency programs with the aim of having a greater impact on student outcomes, teacher retention and a higher likelihood of enrolling teacher candidates of color.
Earning In-demand Credentials: $1.6 billion to help educators obtain certifications in high-demand areas, such as special education, bilingual education and certifications that improve teacher performance.
Educator Leadership: $2 billion to support programs that provide high-quality mentorship programs for new teachers and teachers of color to develop them as teacher leaders. Childcare: A $225 billion childcare program to subsidize the cost of childcare, especially for the lowest income families, and a $200 billion program to expand State Pre-K, with both programs requiring certain minimum compensation requirements for those working in such programs.
Expanded School Meal Provisions: $17 billion in increased reimbursement for free meals through schools operating under community eligibility provisions (CEP). Also calls for an expansion of the Summer Pandemic EBT program to all States and students receiving free and reduced-price meals Paid Family Leave: Would guarantee 12 weeks of paid parental, family, and personal illness/safe leave by year 10 of the program, and also ensures workers get three days of bereavement leave per year starting in year one. Provides workers up to $4,000 a month, with a minimum of two-thirds of average weekly wages replaced, rising to 80 percent for the lowest wage workers.
Child Tax Credit: Extends the increases in the American Rescue Plan through 2025 and makes the Child Tax Credit permanently fully refundable. Expands the Child Tax Credit from $2,000 per child to $3,000 per child for six-years old and above, and $3,600 per child for children under six.
Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC): Makes the expansion for childless workers permanent and roughly triples the EITC for childless workers, benefitting 17 million low-wage workers.
ACA: Invests $200 billion to extend the expanded ACA premiums tax credits in the American Rescue Plan which provided two years of lower health insurance premiums for those who buy coverage on their own.
The real debate will be around the President's proposal to pay for this. Axios covers it here.
COVID Collaborative Resources for Schools: The COVID Collaborative, the Edmond J. Safra Center at Harvard University, the Brown School of Public Health, and New America:
Launched a Roadmap to Healthy Schools: Building Organizational Capacity for Infection Prevention and Control
Released Scientific Consensus Statement on Infection Prevention and Control measures for a return to safe in-person learning.
Released a Use of Funds Advisory Memo for COVID Relief for K-12 Schools.
Perspectives of Black K12 Parents: New poll (crosstabs and blog post) from EdChoice:
Two-thirds don’t think it will be safe to send their kids back to school until at least August
Black parents report higher levels of preference for schooling at home compared to schooling outside the home.
More than one-third of Black parents are either participating in a pod or looking to form or join one.
FEDERAL
ED: Roberto Rodríguez was nominated to serve as Assistant Secretary for Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development
CDC: Updated their "Childhood Vaccination Toolkit for Clinicians"
"CDC’s public sector vaccine ordering data show a 14% drop in 2020-2021 compared to 2019, and measles vaccine is down by more than 20%."
COVID-19 RESEARCH
Uber: Will let you book a vaccine appointment through its app
West Virginia is Offering an Incentive to Get Vaccinated: Money: Via the Washington Post which covers the $100 savings bond plan we mentioned yesterday. Includes this gem of a quote:
"Justice said he knows there will be some who criticize his plan. “But if I’m able to pull this off and we are able to shut this down for the small price of $27.5 million … I would tell those critics to kiss my butt.”
College Students Are Eager to Get Vaccinated: Via Axios:
"Nearly 90% of college students say they probably or absolutely will get vaccinated, according to a BeatTheVirus/Generation Lab poll"
STATE
California: New USC study on the homework gap:
"While 97% of families with school-aged children have internet access at home, the connections vary by reliability and speed. And 6% say they are rarely or never able to connect to the internet for remote learning."
Delaware: The State Department of Education has outlined four main strategies for accelerated learning (announcement here)
Providing high-quality instructional materials, and purchasing statewide licenses for access to math and reading instructional materials.
The Department of Education will provide access for every student to an online repository of about 3 million e-books
To support schools with mathematics acceleration, the Department will provide Delaware public schools with licenses to access Zearn Math for Summer 2021 and the 2021-2022 school year
Offering more professional learning opportunities to school leaders and teachers, particularly geared toward reading
Implementing assessments to identify learning gaps
Creating new ways to support student learning in settings like summer learning, extended school days, tutoring, and more.
Georgia: Fulton County district’s enrollment drop will cost $16 million.
Illinois: Gov. Pritzker is considering vaccine requirement for students returning to state universities
Maryland: The Maryland State Board of Education, in a unanimous vote, will require public schools to offer all students the option of attending classes in-person this fall.
New York: NY archdiocese schools to end remote learning next year
Texas: Garland ISD will offer students the option of learning online next year.
RESOURCES
Return to Learn Tracker: Via AEI. As of April 19, 47% of districts are fully in person, 4% are fully remote, and about 48% of districts are offering some type of hybrid instruction.
In-person learning is more prevalent in counties with high vaccine hesitancy (61%) compared to low vaccine hesitancy (33%).
Fully in-person learning is almost twice as prevalent in majority–Donald Trump districts (58%) compared to majority–Joe Biden districts (29%).
9 Ways States Are Confronting COVID Learning Loss: Via The 74
5 Ways to Think About Social and Emotional Learning: Via Justina Schlund
Learning Recovery: The Research on Tutoring, Extended School Year, and Other Strategies: Via EdWeek. Heather Hill from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
"To qualify as high dosage tutoring, the program must provide each student roughly 75 minutes per week of small-group or individual instruction over a 36-week period."
"Several sources of evidence point to a longer school year as promising.... A back-of-the-envelope estimate based on a study by Benjamin Hansen suggests that adding between two to six weeks of instruction would be needed to achieve the same effects as 36 weeks of high-dosage tutoring per year per student."
Donations from Teachers Unions Spiked: As Congress debated school reopening, virus relief. Via RollCall
"The AFT political action committee gave $1.6 million to congressional candidates and committees, including $1 million to House Majority PAC."
"The NEA’s PAC increased its federal donations by 38 percent, shelling out $371,000 in this year’s first quarter compared with $269,000 in the same period of 2019."
Two Baby Goats Jumping on a Dog: But don't be too hard on them. They're just kids.