COVID-19 Policy Update #272
COVID-19 Policy Update
WEDNESDAY 6/9
TOP THREE
Education Breakthroughs Using The Approach That Accelerated Covid Vaccines? Here’s How: Via Stacey Childress
"Advances in instructional methods and technologies have shown promise at small scale. But the education sector struggles to translate these into more widely used methods, tools, and practices that support students and teachers."
"R&D converts research into capabilities — practices, methods, prototypes, tools — that can be built on to create breakthroughs. The education sector, and K-12 in particular, lacks this type of R&D capacity. Other sectors of society have much stronger R&D ecosystems and often the innovations they spur have enormous impact on our everyday lives."
"Arati Prabhaker, who served as DARPA’s director during the second Obama administration, made the connection in an op-ed in The Hill last week: “Developing a vaccine for a new infectious agent used to take years or decades. Moderna was able to ship its first Covid-19 vaccine doses for clinical trials just 42 days after the sequence for the spike protein was known. A DARPA program made that possible.”
"DARPA doesn’t develop anything itself. Instead, it recruits visionary people as Program Managers (PMs) who then set barely-achievable goals for solving critical challenges. It nurtures a culture and processes that support big thinking, informed risk-taking and rigorous decision-making."
"EF+Math was founded in 2019 to do just that. The program aims to double the number of Black and Latino students who are proficient in math in grades three through eight. Building on evidence that certain executive function skills — like working memory — help students learn math much more effectively, the program team employs an Inclusive R&D model that brings together a diverse group of educators, researchers, and developers from the beginning of the process."
Coalition to Advance Future Student Success: New coalition includes AFT, NEA, CCSSO, CFC, NSBA, NCSL, NAESP, and others.
COVID-19 School Data Hub: Emily Oster announced a new national database to inform policy and research about the COVID-19 pandemic and students in U.S. public schools
"Our goal is to compile data at either the school- or district-level on learning models (traditional five-day-in-person, hybrid, virtual) over the course of the school year. We will additionally aim to collect information on enrollment counts by learning model."
"When we launch the full site in August, these data (and, we hope, much more) will be available for download. We’ll also be working to post public data that can be matched up to the school data -- information like school demographics and community COVID cases, and possibly also information about things like internet connectivity infrastructure. We’ll also be working with private companies to post information about their data, and to connect them with researchers and policy-makers who might want to access information on learning outcomes, child health or school attendance data."
FEDERAL
ED:
Will launch an Equity Summit Series beginning on June 22nd
The Office for Civil Rights released a new report highlighting how COVID-19 threatens to deepen divides in educational opportunity across our nation’s classrooms and campuses if the pandemic’s disparate impacts are not adequately addressed
Senate: Voted 68-32 to approve a sweeping package of legislation intended to boost the country's ability to compete with Chinese technology.
A lot of education connections here including AI research, STEM education, and regional innovation hubs.
COVID-19 RESEARCH
Gen Z: Is most hesitant on COVID-19 vaccines, and COVID Campus Coalition founder says youth outreach should focus more on TikTok, Instagram
STATE
California: Releases new summer programming and school reopening data, launches Parental Engagement Campaign
Mississippi: These schools never returned to in-person learning. Here's what happened. Good long piece.
Pennsylvania: Meg Snead, acting secretary of the Department of Human Services, said children under the age of two do not need to wear face coverings. But children between the ages of 2 and 12 should wear face coverings in public settings or around people outside of their household.
Texas: Plano ISD suspends plan for permanent online learning option due to lack of state funding.
Washington: Kelso Virtual Academy approved to accept any Washington students
INTERNATIONAL
Hong Kong: Parents and children still have doubts over Covid-19 vaccine, despite government lowering age threshold to 12
Mexico: More than a million children returned to classrooms for the first time in more than a year thanks to an easing of pandemic lockdown measures.
UK: Schools in England struggle to contain rising Covid variants. Student populations, which remain unvaccinated, have been disproportionately hit
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Technology Fills the Gap as Jobs Lag GDP: Via Greg Ip
"But the pandemic may also have prodded companies to change their business models and intensify their use of technology to squeeze more sales out of the same workforce. Industries accounting for a third of the job loss since the start of the pandemic have increased output, including retailing, information, finance, construction, and professional and business services, said Jason Thomas, head of global research at private-equity manager Carlyle Group."
"Executives began to ask “hard questions: Why do we have so much floor space? Are we sure our cost base makes so much sense? Why were we taking so many intra-office trips? This experience has just revealed how ignorant you were about the frontiers of technology that you could exploit.”
If You Thought Working From Home Was Messy, Here Comes Hybrid Work: Via WSJ: Mandatory Mondays and Fridays. Unused desks and crowded conference rooms. Employers and workers navigate a return to offices.
States Begin Ending Pandemic Unemployment Benefits This Week: 25 states are withdrawing early from federal unemployment programs.
"Economists are divided over how the premature end to benefits might affect hiring in the months to come. The job search website Indeed did see an increase in traffic from states that announced an early cut to benefits, but it was modest — about 5% — and faded quickly."
RESOURCES
Walton Family Foundation:
Marc Sternberg is stepping down from his current role as K-12 Program Director at the Walton Family Foundation to launch A-Street Ventures, a $200+ million privately sponsored investment fund with a strategic focus on seeding and scaling innovative K- 12 student learning and achievement solutions for students, families, and schools.
Romy Drucker will be the Interim Director of the WFF K12 Education program.
Red States Offered 432 More Hours of In-Person Learning vs Blue States: The numbers, "provided to The 74 by the school calendar tracking website Burbio, deliver a cumulative view of schooling decisions throughout COVID-19 and reinforce evidence of a partisan divide long highlighted by researchers."
How to Close the Homework Gap Based on Student Connectivity: CoSN released a report on the preliminary findings on students’ at-home internet connectivity and provided guidelines on bandwidth, devices and other remote learning needs based on the data.
Education/Economic Mobility Survey Summary: Good compilation of survey results produced by Langer Research Associates for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Parent Polling: EdChoice/Morning Consult poll from May 7–20. (Report / national public crosstabs / K–12 school parents crosstabs)
It's Okay: Golden Buzzer for Jane ("Nightbirde") for her beautiful performance of "It's Okay."
On New Year’s Eve 2019, Marczewski was diagnosed with terminal cancer after “innumerable tumors” were found on her lungs, liver, lymph nodes, ribs, and spine, and she was told she had six months to live. In July 2020 she went into remission, but the cancer soon returned.
“I have a 2 percent chance of survival, but 2 percent is not 0 percent."
"You can't wait until life isn't hard anymore before you decide to be happy."
"Call me cursed, call me lost, call me scorned. But that’s not all. Call me chosen, blessed, sought-after. Call me the one who God whispers his secrets to. I am the one whose belly is filled with loaves of mercy that were hidden for me"