Top Three
How U.S. Schools Are Spending $122 Billion in Stimulus Funds: Via Bloomberg:
"An analysis of spending plans from about 1,040 school districts in 35 states shows how education officials across the country are preparing to tackle learning loss, mental health, staffing crises and equity concerns exacerbated by multiple years of remote learning and classroom disruption, according to data compiled by Burbio, which has tracked shutdowns during the pandemic."
"The districts, ranging in enrollment from 350,000 students to a few hundred, received over $29 billion combined, or a quarter of the national allocation."
"More than half have earmarked funds for summer learning, with an average spend of over $2 million where disclosed. About a third are using it to pay for transportation, and nearly a quarter plan to invest in online platforms."
"Schools also earmarked more than $260 million for student mobile devices, $218 million for assessments and $207 million for supplies like masks, wipes and gloves."
The COVID Crisis Cracked Our Education System. A New Reform Coalition Must Come Together to Fix It in the Interest of Children: Robin Lake
"A rigid system designed for sameness cracked under the pressure of a crisis. Despite the exhaustive work of many well-meaning people, schools and school systems were largely unable to meet individual student needs. Children who had already been struggling were subjected to even more hardship."
"But where was the outrage over unequal access to technology before the pandemic struck? Why were people not furious over the decades of research that shows historically marginalized students — Black, Hispanic and low-income, in particular — are taught by less effective teachers? Or the large and persistent gaps in academic outcomes by race and income?"
"Millions of suburban families were shocked to see union politics and outdated management systems impede even a basic functioning of services and individualized support. But low-income families, complex learners and those with a child with a disability thought, “Welcome to the party.”
"No, what happened should not surprise us. It should, in fact, deepen our resolve for the changes that so-called reformers have been seeking for decades: high-functioning, 21st century schools and districts driven by evidence instead of politics, and immediate high-quality choices and options for those who do not have access to such schools and districts."
"It is time for a new, broader reform coalition made up of all those who saw things in the American education system during the pandemic that they cannot unsee — doctors, mental health providers, church leaders, afterschool providers, community activists, suburban parents, parents of students with disabilities and business leaders. Advocates for children must lead the way by uniting despite our differences."
Germany, France Restrict Moderna’s Covid Vaccine For Under-30s Over Rare Heart Risk:
"The Standing Commission on Vaccination (STIKO), a body of experts that advise German states on vaccination policy, said only the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine should be offered to people under the age of 30," reports Deutsche Welle."
"The draft recommendation, which covers both booster vaccines and those receiving their first shots, will now be evaluated, and possibly revised, by a separate group of experts and the German states."
"Health experts in France put forward a similar recommendation earlier this week, citing a nationwide study suggesting a “very rare” risk of heart inflammation linked to the Moderna vaccine."
"Pediatric cardiologist Matthew Oster, commenting on the Pfizer recommendation at the time, said he was "much more worried" about the risks of Covid to young people than risks posed by the vaccine."
Federal
Reconciliation: Sen. Manchin may delay Build Back Better until next year due to concerns over inflation.
HHS: "Plans will spend $650 million to bolster domestic manufacturing of Covid-19 tests, ahead of an expected rise in demand driven by school testing programs, the administration’s own workplace vaccine-or-test mandate and increased holiday travel," reports Politico.
COVID-19 Research
Moderna: Says it's vaccine has fewer breakthrough cases than Pfizer’s, but higher myocarditis rates in young men
"Reported cases of the rare heart inflammation in men under age 30 are relatively higher after Moderna’s vaccine compared with those who received the shots made by Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna Chief Medical Officer Dr. Paul Burton told reporters on a call Thursday."
This COVID-19 Detector Spots the Delta Variant in the Air: Via Fast Company
"Poppy is designed more like an everyday smoke detector, but built to spot COVID-19 instead of smoke."
"Poppy continuously samples the air via a collection tray that looks a lot like a COVID-19 test strip, using static electricity to pull viruses in without a loud fan. Each day, a building manager sends these strips to a lab, where analysis is done using a highly accurate LAMP test."
"Poppy provides results via a simple online dashboard—which arrive either the same day or the next morning. The system is also capable of spotting 1000 other pathogens in the air, like the seasonal flu, for an added cost and added turnaround time of three days."
"Their previous startup, named Meta, used machine learning to analyze research papers, and it sold to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2017."
"Another startup, called Opteev, launched ViraWarn earlier this year, which is a similar, plug-in COVID-19 detector that works instantly, without third-party labs, but uses a significantly less-accurate testing methodology and lacks the capability to map pathogen flows through a space."
Schools Change Mask Policies as Children Get Covid-19 Shots: Via WSJ
Should an 11-Year-Old Wait to Get the Bigger Covid-19 Vaccine Dose?: Asks the WSJ "Pediatricians across the country said they have received similar inquiries from parents. If their child is approaching the age of 12, should they wait to get them the bigger dose? The answer from most pediatric and infectious-disease experts is no."
#ProtectOurKids Action Guide: From Made to Save on the Pfizer EUA for kids 5-11. Resources, talking points, guides, and more.
What We Know So Far About Waning Vaccine Effectiveness: Via NYT:
But Eric Topol takes issue with it, "It is misleading and missing key reports from New York State, Veterans Affairs, Puerto Rico, Israel, Qatar, the UK, and several others... Exemplifies bad messaging, skewed, incomplete data. No, it's not true that "vaccines still offer strong protection against severe Covid-19" which is why the majority of at-risk US people (such as age 60+, past 6 months from ) have not gotten boosters yet"
More Than Half of Unvaccinated Won’t Change Their Minds: New paper in Nature.
"19% of Dallas residents say they have no intention of getting the Covid-19 vaccine, with more than half of that group saying nothing can change their mind."
"More than one-fifth (21.4%) of the national respondents indicated an unwillingness to vaccinate."
How to Help Kids Overcome Their Nerves About Vaccination: Via Washington Post.
State
Arizona: Mike McShane: "Arizona Is Modernizing School Transportation"
California: LAUSD students want mental health help, reliable tech
"The survey included input from 769 students and follow-up student focus groups commissioned by a coalition called Communities for Los Angeles Student Success, under the leadership of United Way of Greater Los Angeles."
"About half the students said they worried about not only their own mental health but that of parents, other family members and friends."
Said one student, "I felt dumb, because I was learning about how to apply for financial aid and the application requirements...I was a senior in high school, and I didn’t know how to apply for college. I didn’t have the resources I needed."
Ohio: 33% of Ohioans missing out on child tax credit. Also interesting, 26% of families are using CTC for education purposes.
Pennsylvania: An order by Pennsylvania’s acting health secretary that requires masks inside K-12 schools and child care facilities was thrown out Wednesday by a state court that said she lacked the authority. The Wolf administration put the decision on hold by filing an immediate appeal.
"The state’s disease control law does not give health secretaries “the blanket authority to create new rules and regulations out of whole cloth, provided they are related in some way to the control of disease or can otherwise be characterized as disease control measures,” wrote Judge Christine Fizzano Cannon, a Republican, for the majority."
"She said the judges “express herein no opinion regarding the science or efficacy of mask-wearing or the politics underlying the considerable controversy the subject continues to engender. Instead, we decide herein only the narrow legal question of whether the Acting Secretary acted properly in issuing the Masking Order in the absence of either legislative oversight or a declaration of disaster emergency by the Governor."
International
Australia: Closure of hundreds of schools, childcare centers prompts calls for rapid tests.
“The objective now is to keep schools open,” said Fiona Russell, a pediatrician and epidemiologist at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. “There is a need to stop disruption to families because ‘test to stay’ approach dramatically reduces lost learning without compromising community safety."
"In NSW, there have been 21,467 cases in people aged 0 to 19 from June 16 to October 23, representing about 30% of all cases"
Germany: Was once praised for its Covid response. Now it’s seeing 50,000 cases a day, prompting a dramatic warning.
Resources
We Polled Kids About The Pandemic. They're Doing Surprisingly OK: Via FiveThirtyEight (Poll results here).
"Between Oct. 25 and Nov. 2, FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos used Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel to survey 689 kids ages 5 to 11, 572 kids ages 12 to 17 (let’s call them “teens” for our purposes), and more than 1,500 of their parents."
Large majorities of teens describe their home life (95%), their relationship with their parents (94%), their mental health (90%), their social life (89%), and their sense of connection to others (86%) as good. Similarly, nearly all (96%) kids 5-11 say they feel good right now.
25% teens 12-17 are concerned about their ability to do well in school, up from 17% pre-COVID.
57% say they have received the COVID-19 vaccine, with another 5% indicating they would if it were up to them.
Children 5-11 are more split in their opinion, with roughly equal shares saying they are very likely (27%) and not at all likely (26%) to get the vaccine if it were up to them.
Among unvaccinated teens who are not very likely to get one, concern over a lack of testing (45%) is the top reason driving hesitancy, followed by their parents (27%), and safety concerns (25%).
Vaccine hesitant kids 5-11 cite their parents (26%) and concerns over a lack of testing (25%) as their primary concern.
With COVID Relief Money, Schools Take on a Bigger Role in Student Mental Health: Via Chalkbeat.
"In Kansas City, Kansas, educators are opening an after-school mental health clinic staffed with school counselors and social workers. Schools in Paterson, New Jersey, have set up social emotional learning teams to identify students dealing with crises. Chicago is staffing up “care teams” with the mission of helping struggling students on its 500-plus campuses."
“In the last recession, with the last big chunk of recovery money, this conversation wasn’t happening,” said Amanda Fitzgerald, the assistant director of the American School Counselor Association. “Now, the tone across the country is very focused on the well-being of students.”
"When the National Association of School Psychologists surveyed members this fall, more than half of respondents said their districts intended to add social workers, psychologists, or counselors, according to policy director Kelly Vaillancourt Strobach."
Wave of Teacher Time Off Forces Districts Short on Subs to Cancel School: Via The 74.
"Seattle Public Schools announced that its 52,000 students would have no school Friday due to large shares of staff making Veterans Day into a four-day weekend. And in Montgomery County, Maryland, the Board of Education voted this week to make a scheduled half-day before Thanksgiving a vacation day for the district’s 165,000 students because there are too few subs to fill in for the large number of educators taking time off before the break."
Substitute Teachers Never Got Much Respect, but Now They Are in Demand: Via NYT:
"Oregon once had 8,290 licensed substitute teachers, but by Sept. 18, that number had been cut in half."
"Missouri once required 60 college credits, the equivalent of an associate degree. Now, substitutes just need to complete a 20-hour online course on professionalism, diversity and classroom management."
Measuring Forward: Emerging Trends in K-12 Assessment Innovation: Via Knowledge Works with an amazing analysis and state-by-state information.
Honoring Our Veterans: We use this day to honor our nation’s veterans who protect our country and guard our freedoms. We thank them for their service and sacrifice for their country.
"The nation owes a great debt to its veterans, whose service to the nation spans every decade, every year, every day of our country’s existence. Through untold courage and sacrifice, America’s veterans have secured the liberty which the founding fathers sought to establish here in the new world.” Gen. Colin Powell
100 years ago, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery was dedicated to unidentified US service members who died at war. Earlier this week, for the 1st time in 96 years, the public was allowed to place flowers here.
Meet the Army sergeant who ran a makeshift orphanage in Kabul to care for children during the evacuation
Organizations doing great work:
VETPAW which is a community of US war veterans dedicated to protecting African wildlife and training local African rangers in the war against poaching.
K9s For Warriors which rescues and trains shelter dogs to be paired as Service Dogs for Warriors.
Team Rubicon that utilizes the skills and experiences of military veterans with first responders to rapidly deploy emergency response teams.
Homes for Our Troops which builds specially adapted custom homes for severely injured Veterans. CNN's Jake Tapper is running some charity auctions over at eBay for them.