COVID-19 Policy Update #283
COVID-19 Policy Update
THURSDAY 6/24
TOP THREE
It's Infrastructure Week: Biden strikes infrastructure deal with bipartisan group of senators
$1.2 trillion over eight years, or $974 billion over five years and offers more than $550 billion in new spending.
Includes $65 billion for broadband. Does not include any dedicated funding for school construction/modernization.
The White House says: "The President calls on Congress to pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework and send it to his desk, and pass a budget resolution and legislation that makes his full Build Back Better vision a reality."
And there's the rub. The President is calling for the "care" proposals that weren't in this deal to be included as part of a budget resolution package.
President Biden said this afternoon: “If this is the only thing that comes to me, I’m not signing. It’s in tandem.”
Speaker Pelosi: “There ain’t no infrastructure bill without the reconciliation bill.”
So we're one step closer to an Infrastructure deal but it still requires selling it to the rest of the Senate, House members, and disappointed progressives. It also shifts the focus of the debate to the reconciliation package.
How Covid-19 is Inspiring Education Reform: Via the Economist
"Big shocks have sometimes changed schooling for the better. The second world war midwifed the Butler Act in Britain, which increased years of compulsory schooling and abolished the fees still charged by many state schools. After Hurricane Katrina inundated New Orleans, officials there embarked on sweeping school reforms. Nine years later graduation rates had increased by 9-13 percentage points."
School closures have heightened awareness of inequality. Even before the pandemic 16-year-olds from England’s poorest families lagged about 18 months behind their richer peers academically. The maths skills of the strongest- and weakest-performing American students were drifting further apart."
"Mr Schleicher argues that tailoring schooling to the specific needs of each child is essential to closing achievement gaps. “We impose exactly the same kind of education on every student…so why are we surprised when learning outcomes are a function of social background?” He maintains that in too many places schools are “effectively gigantic sorting systems that are not designed to facilitate individual growth”
"Struggling learners would benefit enormously if expanded tutoring schemes become core parts of education systems. A long-running tutoring programme at Match Charter Public School in Boston provides one model. Before the pandemic it offered all children in four grades daily tutoring in maths. It operates a longer school day than is common in its neighbourhood, so Match manages to slot these sessions into students’ timetables without them having to give up anything else."
"City Connects, an organisation that works in Ireland and America, provides a useful example of how schools with enough money can overcome this. It encourages schools to create support plans for every pupil that go beyond their educational difficulties, dealing with emotional and health problems or chaos at home. Trained “co-ordinators”—about one for every 400 students—implement them. They maintain a database that helps them speedily connect pupils with services such as food and clothes banks, affordable mental-health care and subsidised eye tests. Mary Walsh, City Connects’ boss, says local governments and charities often offer useful services but families do not know about them or struggle with the paperwork."
The Most Detailed Map of Vaccine Hesitancy: COVID Collaborative and IHME released a new tool that shows data on people’s openness to receiving a COVID-19 vaccine by Zip Code and county for the entire US.
We previously only had data for 3,000 counties. The new tool breaks out the data by 30,000 zip codes. It also allows you to see the trends over time.
The data comes from US COVID-19 Symptom Survey based on survey results from Carnegie Mellon University’s Delphi Research Group with Facebook’s support.
FEDERAL
Treasury: U.S. may hit debt limit in August
"Without congressional action to suspend or raise the limit after July 31, the government could begin to miss payments on its obligations, triggering a default on government debt."
Why it matters: It's a rare action forcing event for Congress that could be a vehicle for other legislative packages including infrastructure, "care infrastructure" proposals, or the Endless Frontiers Act.
COVID-19 RESEARCH
Delta:
Dr. Fauci says children 'more likely' to get COVID Delta variant
Now a mutation of that variant has emerged, called “delta plus,” which is starting to worry global experts. More from NPR.
Kids and Long COVID: Children, like adults, are at risk of developing "long COVID." But experts are still struggling to understand what, exactly, that risk level is.
Why The White House Will Miss Its Vaccine Target: Via the AP: “A half-dozen officials involved in the vaccination campaign, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the missed target candidly, pointed to a combination of factors, including: the lessened sense of urgency that followed early success in the vaccination campaign; a decision to reach higher than a play-it-safe lower goal; and unexpectedly strong recalcitrance among some Americans toward getting a shot.”
Vaccination Rates: Bringing back up to the top of your inbox this useful NYT interactive database of vaccination rates.
One thing to watch - the huge differences among state vaccination rates among teens (12-17).
33% overall.
High states are Vermont (64%), Mass (58%), and Hawaii (56%)
Low states are Idaho (less than 1%), Miss (9%), Louisiana and Alabama (12%).
Also - the slowing pace of vaccinations puts the US on target of reaching 70% around Nov. 26.
Vaccine Mandates At Colleges: Percentage of two- and four-year colleges and universities that are requiring students to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
New COVID Test: FDA greenlights its first saliva-based COVID-19 antibody test. Good news for schools looking for an alternative to swab-based testing for younger children.
NIH Begins Study of COVID-19 Vaccination During Pregnancy and Postpartum: For the study, NIAID researchers plan to enroll up to 750 pregnant people and 250 individuals who are two or fewer months postpartum and who have or will receive one of the three FDA-authorized vaccines. Infants will also be enrolled, and both sets of participants will be followed through one year post-delivery.
STATE
California:
Education bill heads to the Governor's desk that includes changing lower grades to pass or fail options, extending high school by one year, and exceeding the minimum state credits and courses for students who were junior or senior in 2020-21. Family members of students with poor grades can also formally request the school to allow their children to repeat their grades.
San Francisco mom Naomi Laguana has spent the better part of 11 years dedicated to the city’s public schools, volunteering in classrooms and the front office, serving as PTA president and leading the Parent Advisory Committee.
After her son fell behind during distance learning, and his school appeared to have no specific plan to address learning loss in the fall, she and her husband decided to make the move to private school.
“I had to do what’s right for my kid,” she said Wednesday. “I gave it my all and it just didn’t work out.”
Maryland: OpEd by Margery Smelkinson, an immunology and infectious-disease scientist: Maryland schools should drop all mask mandates
"The state is reporting an average of less than one daily case per 100,000 residents, one of only three states to do so. Test positivity is 0.6 percent, and, most important, there has been a 90 percent reduction in hospitalization since April."
"Earlier measures of the hospitalization rate of children upon infection, estimated to be 0.1-1.9 percent, is a small fraction of the adult rate. The most recent evidence suggests that even these low rates are substantially overstated. In fact, coronavirus and influenza hospitalization rates in children are comparable."
"Indeed, present conditions indicate the chance of catching the coronavirus from one encounter is just 0.00007 percent. As seen with Israel’s faster and more comprehensive vaccination effort, vaccinating children was not a precondition for cases to plunge and for lives to quickly return to normal, even for the unvaccinated. "
New York:
NYC promises all classrooms to have 2 air purifiers next year.
A survey asked how Black and Latinx families, students and educators across New York would they like to see local school districts invest $12 billion in federal coronavirus relief funding.
Governor Cuomo announced that New York State will provide $25 million in child care scholarships to all essential workers starting June 23, 2021
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Defining Job Quality for Reemployment and Recovery: State Action Planning Template from NGA
Improving Unemployment Insurance Delivery Playbook: New comprehensive guide from New America on making unemployment insurance safe, usable, and accessible.
RESOURCES
The Catalyze Challenge: Offers grants up to $500,000 for bold and innovative ideas to reimagine career-connected learning
A Framework to Accelerate Student Learning: From JerseyCAN which includes:
Student and Family Engagement
High Quality, Inclusive Curriculum, Instruction, and Training
Effective Resource Allocation for Equitable Systems
Educator Support and Innovative Staffing
Data for Understanding Student Learning
Not Socially Distant: Puppy tries to squeeze into seat with toddler best friend.
Speaking of puppies, YouGov asked people to choose their favorite dog breed. Bernese Mountain Dogs came in at 28 - way behind Beagles at 15.
Teddy and Bentley were not pleased with the rankings.