Top Three
The Walton Family Foundation: Names Romy Drucker Director of K-12 Education Program
"With nearly 15 years of working on education issues, Drucker spearheaded the development of the K-12 Education Program’s new five-year strategy."
"Previously, she co-founded and led The 74, an award-winning nonprofit news organization focused on education."
"She held several senior leadership positions in the New York City Department of Education over five years, working to improve the quality of education for the city’s 1.1 million students."
If Republicans Bet Against Vaccines for Children, Their Schools Will Lose: Via Nat Malkus
"Last school year, Republican’s collective bets about keeping schools open during the pandemic paid off, allowing far more students in red states and school districts the in-person options that today are common across the nation."
"The current bet is whether vaccinations will provide meaningful protections for students and limit COVID spread in schools, and this time the stakes are not how to best endure the pandemic, but how quickly localities will get past it."
"This school year, if Republicans disproportionately bet against vaccinations for school-aged children as much as polls predict, their students and schools are the ones likely to lose."
STAT Asked 28 Public Health Experts About Their Holiday Plans Amid Covid-19: The responses were mixed.
Federal
Reconciliation
CBO released scores for three sections of the House’s version of the Build Back Better Ac: the Small Business title; the Veterans Affairs title; and Homeland Security.
CRS on BBB's universal preschool provision.
Amazing stat from Punchbowl's survey of Congressional staffers: "Just 2% of Democratic staffers believe that the budget reconciliation debate has helped them. 52% of Democrats say the debate has harmed their party. 40% say it’s neither harmed nor helped."
"Sen. Manchin sounded an alarm Wednesday after new consumer data found that U.S. inflation had hit a 30-year high, giving Democrats fresh headaches on President Biden's social and climate spending plan."
It's Infrastructure (Next) Week: The President will sign the bipartisan infrastructure package next Monday.
What $65B of Broadband Infrastructure Funding Means for States and How They Should Prepare: Great overview by BCG.
COVID-19 Research
COVID Home Test Recall: Ellume's COVID-19 home test recall
"The FDA classified the recall of Ellume's over-the-counter COVID-19 home test as Class 1, the most serious type of recall, after the Australian diagnostic test maker removed some of its tests from the market last month."
"Ellume had cited higher-than-acceptable false positive test results for SARS-CoV-2 as the reason for the recall."
More via VeryWellHealth
Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine Patent Dispute Headed to Court: Via Reuters
"NIH's scientists played "a major role" in developing Moderna COVID-19 vaccine and the agency intends to defend its claim as co-owner of patents on the shot, said NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins."
"In a story first reported by the New York Times on Tuesday, Moderna excluded three NIH scientists as co-inventors of a central patent for the company's multibillion-dollar COVID-19 vaccine in its application filed in July."
"In its statement, Moderna said, "We do not agree that NIAID scientists co-invented claims to the mRNA-1273 sequence itself. Only Moderna’s scientists came up with the sequence for the mRNA used in our vaccine."
Behavior-Predictive Beliefs are Inconsistent with Information-Based Beliefs: NBER paper.
"Beliefs elicited as risk perceptions—i.e., the chance to get infected—are inconsistent with those case-count beliefs, even when mathematically, they should be identical."
"Risk perceptions—that are significantly better predictors of reported behavior."
Together, these findings suggest that researchers and policymakers, who increasingly engage in direct elicitation and communication of numeric measures of uncertainty, may get very different outcomes, depending on which measures they use."
Children Are More Tolerant of a Parent Performing the Nose Swabbing Technique: According to a new study by researchers at the University of Bristol.
"Nose swab samples collected by parents are as good as those collected by nurses at detecting respiratory infections in children.”
Forced Covid Vaccination for Kids Is Unlawful: Argues Jenin Younes in the WSJ.
"The emergency-use authorization of the Covid vaccine also creates a legal distinction. Federal law requires, among other things, that potential recipients of EUA products be informed “of the option to accept or refuse administration of the product, of the consequences, if any, of refusing administration of the product, and of the alternatives to the product that are available and of their benefits and risks.”
"Put plainly, this means that patients—in this case children—may not be forced, coerced or pressured into taking EUA products and are entitled by law to refuse them."
Johns Hopkins Receives Grant To Study COVID-19 Safety Measures In Schools: The $1.47 million NIH grant will focus on eight school systems in Maryland, including Baltimore City Public Schools.
The U.S. Is Relying On Other Countries’ Data To Make Its Booster Shot Decisions: Via FiveThirtyEight
State
California:
Mayor Breed backs recall of three San Francisco school board members: 'Our kids must come first'
Catholic schools of Diocese of San Diego to allow vaccine exemptions.
Colorado: Denver canceled classes or moved some schools to remote learning amid staffing shortages.
Indiana: New program seeks to alleviate shortage of special education teachers.
Missouri: State launches online recruitment and training platform.
"The state is investing $50 million over the next three years in TeachMO.org and other recruitment projects, such as the Teacher Education Recruitment and Retention Grants and the Pathways to Teaching Careers Program."
New York:
NYC is rolling out vaccine clinics to each of it's more than 1,000 schools that serve elementary aged students.
Nearly 1 in 10 New York City public school students were homeless last school year according to a new report.
Texas: Texas schools can again set their own face mask rules after a federal judge overrules Gov. Abbott's ban.
International
Israel: The country's pandemic advisory board on backed administering Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine to children age 5-11.
"Out of the 75 experts on the panel, 73 health experts voted in favor of approving the vaccine, with two voting against."
Economic Recovery
Inflation: Jumped 0.9% from September and 6.2% from last year - the highest in 31 years.
Washington Post with a deeper dive.
Report on Opportunity Zones: Via GAO which found:
The OZ incentive supported at least $29 billion in new equity investment throughout the country through 2019 (essentially the first year of operation).
"Without data collection and reporting on OZ performance, policymakers have limited information to (1) determine if the tax expenditure is achieving its intended purpose, (2) evaluate performance, and (3) compare it to other tax expenditures intended to achieve similar purposes."
OZ designations were high-need communities:
The median household income in the average OZ is $38,600, compared to $66,500 nationally.
The average poverty rate in OZs is 25%, nearly double the national average of 13%.
The share of OZ residents whose highest level of educational attainment is high school or lower stands at 53%, compared to 39% nationally.
"The GAO report tries to get at the question of whether investments taking advantage of the OZ tax benefits would have gone forward anyway. Through interviews, 10 out of 18 Opportunity Funds reported to GAO that “they would not have invested in their projects without the incentive.”
More from EIG
SpinLaunch Completes First Test Flight: This has absolutely nothing to do with COVID or education. I just found it interesting.
"SpinLaunch, a start-up that is building an alternative method of launching spacecraft to orbit, conducted last month a successful first test flight of a prototype in New Mexico."
"The company is developing a launch system that uses kinetic energy as its primary method to get off the ground – with a vacuum-sealed centrifuge spinning the rocket at several times the speed of sound before releasing."
Video explainer and footage of the first launch here.
Is Santa Claus Coming to Town? Maybe Not. Shortages of Santa's in the labor market.
"Available Santas know they are hot commodities. “The ones that are working have raised their price,” he said, noting that Santas he works with are currently charging between $175 to $300 an hour, depending on where they live and the number of hours for the gig—asking about $50 more than usual."
"As president of American Events and Promotions and founder of a professional Santa school in Denver, Ms. Mesco says she currently has around 3,000 men in her Santa network. She also has 200 women and says Mrs. Claus is increasingly getting solo bookings. Early this year, she knew there was going to be a problem. Ordinarily she books 15 or 20 “Christmas in July” events. By late February, she says she had already booked 70."
Resources
How Parents Can Navigate Play Dates With Some Children Vaccinated and Others Not: Via Chicago Tribune
Policymakers Should Have Prioritized an Operation Warp Speed Addressed at Preventing Widespread Learning Losses: Argues Scott Winship in The Dispatch.
"The poorest families today are better off than the poorest families in earlier generations, but it is still a problem if upward mobility is low—if children who have the lowest-earning and least-educated parents with the least desirable jobs end up in a similar place themselves."
"My own estimates indicate that about half of men raised in the bottom fourth of family income subsequently remained in the bottom fourth as adults."
"Understandably, both schools and federal policymakers were scrambling in the initial weeks and months of the pandemic. However, after the initial policy response in March and April, and once kids limped out of the 2019-20 school year, federal policymakers should have prioritized an Operation Warp Speed addressed at preventing widespread learning losses that could damage a generation of children and permanently reduce the wealth of our nation."
In Designing Resilient School Systems, We Must Move Beyond ‘Either/Or Thinking’ When It Comes to Digital Tools & Remote Learning: Via ASU Prep Digital's Julie Young
How the Build Back Better Act Will Dramatically Improve the Lives of Youngest Learners: Via EdTrust.
Strada Education Network: Names Stephen Moret as President and CEO
Judicial Overreach: A Georgia judge 'banished' the Elf on a Shelf
"The elves, Robert D. Leonard II wrote, "represent a distraction to school students and a risk to the emotional health and well being of Cobb's young children." Buddy plans on filing an appeal.
Back In Black: With Maple on the drums
This Star Wars cantina one is good too.