COVID-19 Policy Update #269
COVID-19 Policy Update
FRIDAY 6/4
TOP THREE
College Enrollment and Retention in the Era of Covid: New report from the College Board and coverage from EdWeek.
"During the 2020-21 school year, 120,000 fewer new high school graduates entered the nation’s colleges and universities than the year before"
Public four-year colleges saw an enrollment decline of less than 3 percent in 2020 compared to 2019.
Enrollment in community college and two-year schools dropped 12 percent among new graduating seniors in 2020 compared to the prior class.
At two-year colleges, for example, Black, Hispanic, and Native Hawaiian students’ enrollment rates dropped by about 15 percent each, while at four-year colleges, the drop in enrollment was only 1.9 percent for Hispanic students and 2.6 percent for Native Hawaiian students.
Retention rates at public two-year colleges decreased by 4.9% due to the pandemic, while retention rates increased by 1.4% in public four-year colleges and fell by 1.2% in the private nonprofit four-year sector
Four-year college enrollment rates decreased by more than 10% among students in 9 states and yet increased among students in 11 states
California: "Is it safe to fully reopen California schools? It's unsafe not to, says UCSF's Jeanne Noble and Monica Gandhi"
"Unquestionably, California’s children have been harmed by state and county COVID policies, enduring the longest social lockdown of any demographic group."
"Despite accumulating evidence of harm to children associated with school closures and large studies demonstrating that schools could operate safely irrespective of COVID prevalence, the state blocked schools from reopening in the purple tier and allowed county health officers to bar reopening in any tier as they saw fit."
"The science clearly supports a return to regular school life in the fall. Risk of hospitalization from COVID in children is low (likely much lower than the 0.7% initially cited). The risk of a child with COVID developing the serious, but treatable, inflammatory condition, MIS-C, is less than 0.1%. Of the 63,000 COVID deaths in California, there have been 23 deaths among persons under age 18, lower than the typical death rate among children during an average flu season. Long COVID in children is also rare."
"Finally, children need not be masked when returning to school in the fall if our metrics stay where they are today "
How Capitol Hill Staffers See the 2022 Midterms: Punchbowl News surveys Congressional staffers:
78% of House staffers think Republicans will win the House. This is up 12% from the last survey in April.
70% of Senate staffers think Democrats will keep the Senate. This is up 4% since April
46% of staffers say President Biden’s American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan will be coupled together in a reconciliation package and passed on a party line vote. Just 39% say only a hard infrastructure bill will pass; this is what Republicans are pushing for.
FEDERAL
ED: Released COVID-19 Handbook Volume 3: Strategies for Safe Operation and Addressing the Impact of COVID-19 on Higher Education Students, Faculty, and Staff
COVID-19 RESEARCH
National Rural Business Summit: COVID Collaborative hosted an event with Health Action Alliance, the Ad Council, the American Farm Bureau Federal, Center for Rural Strategies, Rural America Chamber of Commerce, National League of Cities, the National Rural Health Association, and the Daily Yonder.
The 90 minute event featured panels and talks from the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, White House Vaccinator Coordinator Bechara Choucair, and former Idaho Governor and COVID Collaborative Co-Chair Dirk Kempthorne, and signified the launch of a coordinated effort to strengthen vaccine uptake in rural communities.
Watch the full event here.
School Vaccination Sites: COVID Collaborative and the Council of the Great City Schools are supporting school districts in a school-level vaccination effort. The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials put together a comprehensive guide for standing up vaccination clinics in schools.
Impact of School Closures due to COVID-19 on Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders: New study out of Japan:
"Data on 121 children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and/or intellectual disorder were analyzed and it was found that externalizing and aggressive behavior increased in all NDDs, regardless of the type of diagnosis."
WHO on Vaccinations: Says vaccinating children is ‘not a high priority’ as vaccine supply is limited:
“Children are at (a) very, very low risk of actually getting COVID disease,” O’Brien, a pediatrician and WHO vaccine director said. “When we’re in this really difficult place, as we are right now, where the supply of vaccine is insufficient for everybody around the world, immunizing kids is not a high priority right now.”
Teen Heart Condition and Vaccines: Heart reaction in 7 teen boys probed as possible rare Pfizer vaccine connection.
Pfizer: UK regulator approves Pfizer Covid vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds.
CDC Study on Children Hospitalizations: New study found that the hospitalization rate for COVID-19 in adolescents was about three times greater than hospitalizations linked to influenza over three recent flu seasons.
Contact Tracing Less than Optimal: A new study finds contact tracing was not applied optimally to help contain the transmission of SARS-CoV-2.
Scientists looked at five months of data on Covid-19 cases and close contacts from 13 health departments and 11 Indian Health Service locations.
Of the nearly 75,000 Covid patients, only a third named any contacts. Of these contacts, about 70% were informed of their exposure, while fewer than half agreed to monitor symptoms.
COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution: Helpful data visualization tool from McKinsey
STATE
Florida: Tampa Bay schools never saw big coronavirus outbreaks this year. Why? Some say pandemic protocols protected students and teachers. Others say the threat was always exaggerated.
Michigan: Gov. Whitmer vetoes bill to exempt graduations from crowd limits
New Jersey: Small poll of Newark parents found support for spending the money on tutoring services, a $500 educational stipend for every student, and other programs such as expanding pre-K and mental health services.
INTERNATIONAL
UK:
India Covid variant spreading in England’s schools, data shows
Learning loss ‘regressed to autumn levels’ after second wave of school closures.
"Primary school children had lost more than two months of learning in reading when they returned to class in March – which is greater than the losses during the autumn term."
"The study, by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) and Renaissance Learning, found that primary school learning losses in maths averaged 3.5 months in March 2021, compared to 3.7 months in October 2020"
"But the learning losses in reading increased, with primary school learning losses averaging 2.2 months in March, compared to 1.8 months during the first half of the 2020/21 autumn term (October)."
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Jobs Report: U.S. economy added 559,000 jobs in May and unemployment rate fell to 5.8%
Normally, that would be a stellar number but it was below the consensus expectation of 675,000 - a number which itself was lower based on last month's jobs report.
March was revised up by 15,000 to +785,000. April was revised up by 12,000 to +278,000
Women made up more than half of the job gains in May.
For the past two months, hourly wages for private employees have risen 21 cents in April and 15 cents in May, a significant increase.
"The data for the last two months suggest that the rising demand for labor associated with the recovery from the pandemic may have put upward pressure on wages,” BLS said."
School Closure Impact on Employment: Via the Hamilton Project at Brookings:
"We find that in states with relatively high levels of elementary school closures, the nearly 5 percentage point drop in the employment-population ratio for mothers with children age 5 to 12 is more than fully accounted for by having elementary school age children instead of teenagers."
"We note that in high-elementary-school-closure-states, the recovery in the labor market for mothers of teens is almost complete, whereas that for mothers of teens in low-closure-states lags."
"In both types of states, we find that employment outcomes were statistically significantly worse for mothers having a youngest or oldest child 5 to 12 instead of the youngest being a teenager."
"We find a larger and more statistically significant effect in states with more closures: if mothers of 5-12 year olds in high-closure states had instead been mothers to teens, we estimate that their employment-population ratio would have been roughly unchanged rather than falling nearly 5 percentage points."
The Black-White Economic Divide: Via Washington Post:
LEARNING PODS
How'd That Pod Work Out for You? 4 Parents Report Back: Interesting read:
The Mom Whose Pod Disbanded
The Parent Whose Pod Was “Magical.”
The Mom Who's Deeply Aware of Inequity
The Pod That Switched Teachers Halfway Through the Year
RESOURCES
Reopening Schools: Via NYT: A safe return to U.S. schools seems closer with vaccines and testing improvements
It's the Weekend: Hope you're as excited as this dad celebrating his son's graduation.