COVID-19 Policy Update #287
COVID-19 Policy Update
WEDNESDAY 6/30
TOP THREE
Who Closed the Schools? HBS working paper which looked at 150 largest school districts.
"During the 2018-2019 year, students at schools that would later opt for online instruction had school days that were 18 minutes (4 percent) shorter. Their teachers spent 30 fewer minutes at school each day and 1.5 fewer non-teaching days at school each year."
"Taken together, these numbers mean that at the schools that chose to be online the average teacher works 100 fewer hours per year than the average teacher in the schools that chose to educate their students in person."
"For the K-12 student in an online school, this difference in hours cumulates to over a half-year less instruction by the time they graduate relative to their peer at an in-person school."
"Teacher-favoring districts tend to be more urban, to have more minorities, and to have more students from low socioeconomic status households."
"Remote learning schools are more likely to be urban and, for the subset of schools for which we have funding data, have per-student resources that are almost 25% greater than those at in-person schools."
"At the start of the 2020-2021 school year, Covid rates in the counties of in-person schools were 2 percent versus 1.7% in online schools. By May 17, 2021, Covid rates had risen to 10.2% in in-person school counties versus 8.9% in those of online schools."
Delta Variant and Schools: Via the 74: Marks ‘Most Dangerous’ Time in Pandemic for Kids, May Force Schools to Re-Up Safety Measures, Experts Say
Neighborhoods Matter: Assessing the Evidence for Place Effects: Really good NBER paper from Eric Chyn & Lawrence Katz
"Childhood neighborhoods affect long-run economic and educational outcomes in a manner consistent with exposure models of neighborhood effects."
"For children, at least five factors appear to be mediators of place effects: school quality, peer influences, pollution, exposure to violence, and criminal justice policies."
"Only recently has enough time passed to study long-run outcomes for the younger children in the Moving to Opportunity demonstration. Chetty, Hendren and Katz linked the Moving to Opportunity sample to administrative tax records to study impacts for children of all ages. They found substantial positive effects on adult earnings and the likelihood of attending college for younger children in the experimental treatment group."
"The long-run economic gains from moves to lower-poverty areas for the younger children and the, if anything, adverse effects for the older children in Moving to Opportunity are apparent and similar in magnitude for both male and female children, despite the observed gender differences in short-run adjustments to new neighborhood environments."
"In other words, this estimate suggests that a young child who moves at birth to a better area and stays there for 15 years would pick up 60 percent of the difference in permanent resident adult economic outcomes between their origin and destinations."
"Laliberte (2021) finds that 50 percent or more of the gains in educational attainment from moving to a better neighborhood in Montreal is driven by increased access to higher-quality schools."
"Jackson (2018) finds strong evidence that teacher value-added in non-cognitive skills as measured by non-test score behaviors (absences, suspensions, course grades, and grade repetition) is distinct from test score effects and has substantial impacts on student longer-run outcomes."
"The Moving to Opportunity experiment generated ben24 eficial impacts on long-run economic outcomes of moves to higher-opportunity areas only for younger children who received a larger “dosage” of childhood exposure to improved neighborhood environments relative to their older counterparts."
COVID-19 RESEARCH
Delta Polling: Unvaccinated Americans are not worried about the Delta variant
"Awareness of the Delta variant of COVID-19 is highest among those who are already vaccinated (82%)."
"Just two-thirds of Americans who will not get vaccinated (64%) are aware of the variation, compared to 47% of adults who are on the fence about getting the vaccine."
"One-third of those who are currently unvaccinated (including those who will not get vaccinated, those who plan to get vaccinated but are not yet, and those who are unsure about vaccination) believe that the Delta variant does not pose a risk to anyone (34%)."
New Face Mask Prototype Can Detect COVID-19 Infection: Study / Harvard & MIT Press Release
"Tiny, disposable sensors to diagnose SARS-CoV-2 infection can be fitted into face masks and integrated into clothing like lab coat"
Moderna: Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine shows promise against Delta variant in lab study
A Revolutionary Solar Fridge Will Help Keep COVID Vaccines Cold In Sub-Saharan Africa: Via NPR.
Louisiana's Vaccine Lottery: The number of people in Louisiana who received their initial COVID-19 vaccine increased by 14% in the week after the state opened registration for its $2.3 million lottery incentive
STATE
New York:
NYC’s budget deal pilots smaller class sizes, dedicates millions to COVID learning loss
"The mayor proposed spending $91 million in federal COVID relief dollars to pay for 500 additional social workers as well as a short mental health assessment for every student when they return in the fall. (Families can opt their children out of getting screened, officials have said.)"
NYC to pay for summer school taxis for homeless students and those with disabilities.
West Virginia: WV Dept. of Education announces partnership to send 258,000 books to public school children entering first, second and third grade next school year.
INTERNATIONAL
UK: A news report suggesting that schools will be told to treat Covid-19 in the same way as illnesses such as the flu under plans being considered by the Government.
"The proposal is part of a wider vision for the UK to “learn to live” with Covid-19 once most of the population is fully vaccinated and the virus is endemic."
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Why Workers Aren't Returning to Work: Indeed survey
25% are afraid of COVID-19 and are waiting for vaccination rates to climb before getting back to work.
20% say they have a financial cushion and around 12% say their unemployment insurance is the reason they're not rushing to get a job.
20% of lower-wage workers are staying home due to child care responsibilities.
"Unemployed workers also cited milestones that must be reached before they would want to start work, such as reopening of schools or more job choices. Job seeker responses to this question suggest that unemployed workers are likely to feel greater urgency in the months ahead."
Labor Market Mysteries: Via Jason Furman: US workers are quitting jobs at historic rates, and many unemployed are not coming back despite record job openings.
"Since September 2020, transition from unemployment to employment has been lower than that in the typical month, most recently 24 percent and around that same value for most of the last nine months."
"This is notable because normally one would expect the transition rate from unemployment to increase as more jobs became available, as measured by the job openings rate. In fact, the current transition rate is closer to what one would expect with an openings rate of 3 percent, only about half of the current openings rate."
Unprocessed Tax Returns: IRS faces 35 million unprocessed tax returns as backlog swells.
"This backlog represents a fourfold increase from 2019"
"As a result of the backlog, millions of taxpayers have to wait much longer for their tax refunds. In the current filing season, 70 percent of individual income tax returns included refunds, with the average refund amounting to about $2,800. Refunds are also important for delivering tax credits to low-income Americans, while some other taxpayers need their returns to be processed to proceed with things such as mortgage applications."
"The agency received an average of about 45 million calls per year from 2018 to 2020. It received more than 167 million in 2021, a nearly 300 percent increase from 2018, with only 9 percent of calls answered by an IRS customer service representative."
"The responsiveness of one of the most important IRS services — the 1040 support line for individual income tax returns — fared even worse. That line received about 85 million calls, with only about 3 percent reaching a customer service representative, according to the taxpayer advocate report."
RESOURCES
Make Telemedicine Services for Children Permanent: Kelly Wolfe, a former educator and advocacy leader for children’s health in Minnesota and vice president of strategic partnerships and regulatory compliance at PresenceLearning: During COVID, states let students get speech therapy, mental health counseling and other services online. Make those changes permanent
Inclusive R&D Centers Educator Voice. It’s Already Changing the Face of Math Instruction: Via Imani Goffney and Melina Uncapher
Everyone on Twitter: Is one of these three animals.