Top Three
Education Recovery Hub: The Collaborative for Student Success, CRPE, and the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University launched a new site identifying innovative education practices.
Schools Can Now Safely Make Masks Optional With the CDC’s New Guidelines: OpEd by three physicians.
"Respirators and other high-quality masks are highly effective at protecting their wearers, regardless of what people around them are doing. That makes the old mantra “my mask protects you and your mask protects me” obsolete. As a result, schools can finally safely make masks optional for students and staff."
"Maintaining aggressive mitigation policies, including strident mask rules, also sends children, families and staff the message that schools are not safe. This is simply not true."
"Clear off-ramps were not implemented up front, meaning that there has never been an end in sight, and sustaining mask-wearing for the entire school day, especially with no hope of normalcy, is hard."
"Everyone now has tools to protect themselves from severe disease, or any infection, if they so choose. Making this shift also respects that people will have different risk tolerance levels."
"It’s time we stopped worrying about what others are doing and started focusing on protecting ourselves. We have many more tools in 2022 than we did in 2020, and our policies should shift to reflect these advances."
Morning Consult / NYT Survey: With some interesting data points:
Only about half of parents are comfortable with in-person learning
More than 1 in 3 parents believe schools are opening too quickly
How certain or uncertain are you that each of the following will occur? We will learn how to live with COVID-19 and its variants without having to disrupt daily life: 66% Certain / 28% uncertain
Do you support or oppose the following initiatives taking effect in your community?
Requiring students to wear masks in schools: 68% support / 26% oppose.
Requiring students to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to attend school in-person: 55% support / 38% oppose
Transitioning students from in-school to online learning: 48% support / 41% oppose
Thinking about K-12 schools in your community, how do you think schools should continue to operate given the recent outbreak of the omicron variant of COVID-19?
In-person only for the rest of the school year: 20%
Online or remote for the next few weeks, but then return to in-person only for the rest of the school year: 14%
Online or remote only for the rest of the school year: 14%
Schools should provide students and teachers both options of either attending in-person or online/remote for the rest of the school year: 40%
Federal
Vaccine Mandate: “The Biden administration is officially withdrawing its requirement that most workers be vaccinated or regularly tested for Covid-19 – the controversial rule the Supreme Court blocked from enforcement earlier this month,” USA Today reports.
COVID-19 Research
What Japan Got Right About Covid-19: Dr. Hitoshi Oshitani in the NYT.
"If SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus, was being spread by aerosols and people could spread the virus before they developed any symptoms, it meant that Covid-19 was largely invisible and would be extremely challenging to eliminate. Prior diseases like SARS (caused by SARS-CoV, a related virus), which causes pneumonia in most cases, made it easy to identify patients."
"Because this wasn’t the case with SARS-CoV-2, a strategy of containment would be too difficult, and Japan needed to figure out an approach to living with Covid-19."
"I suggested a basic concept: People should avoid the three C’s, which are closed spaces, crowded places and close-contact settings. The Japanese government shared this advice with the public in early March, and it became omnipresent. The message to avoid the three C’s was on the news, variety shows, social media and posters. “Three C’s” was even declared the buzzword of the year in Japan in 2020."
"The three C’s taught people what to avoid. How they do that may be different, depending on individual circumstances and risk tolerance. Some people may be able to stay home. Others may remain silent on crowded trains as they commute to work to avoid spread. Some people may dine out but avoid sitting immediately across from one another. Most people are likely to continue to mask."
"When it comes to the numbers of cases and deaths, Japan has fared well compared to other countries. It has had about 146 deaths per million people in the pandemic so far. The United States has had about 2,590 deaths per million."
Pfizer Announces Omicron Booster Trial: Press release.
Omicron Infections Lead to a Smaller Share of Hospitalizations Compared to Delta: Via the CDC
The number of people infected visiting emergency departments was 86% higher than during the Delta wave in the fall and the number of people with Covid admitted to the hospital was 76% higher.
"Yet the report also offers some cause for concern. Because of soaring infection levels, the peak level of daily hospital admissions was higher than during previous surges. And deaths in the United States have risen in recent days," the NYT reports.
Omicron Peak: 31 states report plateauing or decreasing new case rates. But the nation is now reporting nearly 2,000 new COVID-19-related deaths per day -- up by 30% in the last two weeks.
Children and COVID-19: State-Level Data Report
Over 1.1 million cases were reported, nearly five times the rate of the peak of last winters’ surge.
For the week ending January 20th, nearly 1.151 million child COVID-19 cases were reported. This number is a 17% increase over the 981,000 added cases reported the week ending January 13th and a doubling of case counts from the two weeks prior.
We’re Used to Stress in the ER. But Omicron Has Made Our Jobs Impossible: OpEd in the Washington Post.
COVID-19: Endemic Doesn’t Mean Harmless: Essay in Nature.
"In other words, a disease can be endemic and both widespread and deadly. Malaria killed more than 600,000 people in 2020. Ten million fell ill with tuberculosis that same year and 1.5 million died. Endemic certainly does not mean that evolution has somehow tamed a pathogen so that life simply returns to ‘normal’."
"Much can be done to shift the evolutionary arms race in humanity’s favour. First, we must set aside lazy optimism. Second, we must be realistic about the likely levels of death, disability and sickness. Targets set for reduction should consider that circulating virus risks giving rise to new variants. Third, we must use — globally — the formidable weapons available: effective vaccines, antiviral medications, diagnostic tests and a better understanding of how to stop an airborne virus through mask wearing, distancing, and air ventilation and filtration. Fourth, we must invest in vaccines that protect against a broader range of variants."
State
Arkansas: Schools with high COVID cases make decisions on virtual, in-person learning.
DC: Starting test-to-stay for preK students.
Illinois: Under a new statewide compromise, public school and higher education employees across Illinois won’t have to expend their sick time if they are forced to miss work due to COVID-19 — as long as they’re fully vaccinated.
Maryland: Court rules in favor of Anne Arundel Co. mask mandate.
Massachusetts: In an update on state testing efforts, the State reported that as of Jan. 503,312 "test and stay" tests conducted with 496,440 coming back as negative - meaning a 98.6% negative rate in schools
Michigan: CNN talks to parents in Flint, Michigan who say their kids are struggling with remote learning.
New Jersey: Updated guidance recommends that students 12 and older without a booster shot, even if vaccinated with two doses, should stay home if they are exposed to the virus in school.
New York: A Long Island judge struck down New York state’s indoor mask mandate, saying health officials needed approval from the legislature for a December rule requiring face coverings in schools, transit hubs and other indoor settings.
Utah: To go online, a Utah school will now need signoff from 4 state leaders, including the governor.
International
COVID:19 Scale of Education Loss Nearly Insurmountable: Warns UNICEF
Robert Jenkins, who leads UNICEF's education efforts, said just reopening schools is not enough. "Students need intensive support to recover lost education. Schools must also go beyond places of learning to rebuild children's mental and physical health, social development, and nutrition."
"In Texas, for example, two thirds of children in grade 3 tested below their grade level in math in 2021, compared to half of children in 2019."
"In South Africa, schoolchildren are between 75 per cent and a full school year behind where they should be. Some 400,000 to 500,000 students reportedly dropped out of school altogether between March 2020 and July 2021."
Australia: States are taking their own political paths on COVID-19 school rules
India: BCG and Teach for India released: India Needs To Learn — A Case for Keeping Schools Open
Resources
Graduation Rates Fall: High school graduation rates dipped in at least 20 states after the first full school year disrupted by the pandemic, suggesting the coronavirus may have ended nearly two decades of nationwide progress toward getting more students diplomas, a Chalkbeat analysis shows.
SAT Moves Online: The College Board announced that the SAT will be delivered digitally in 2024.
"In November 2021, College Board piloted the digital SAT in the U.S. and internationally; 80% of students responded that they found it to be less stressful and 100% of educators reported having a positive experience."
“The digital SAT will be shorter—about two hours instead of three for the current SAT, with more time per question.”
“The digital test will feature shorter reading passages with one question tied to each, and passages will reflect a wider range of topics that represent the works students read in college.”
“Calculators will be allowed on the entire Math section.”
“Students and educators will get scores back in days, instead of weeks.”
“To reflect the range of paths that students take after high school, digital SAT Suite score reports will also connect students to information and resources about local two-year college, workforce training programs, and career options.”
Kids Shouldn’t Have to Be ‘Resilient’: Mary Katharine Ham in the Atlantic.
Children, COVID, and the Urgency of Normal: New toolkit.
"We are a group of scientists and pediatric, infectious disease, emergency, and ICU doctors concerned that COVID-19 mitigation measures for children are doing more harm than good. Health must be viewed holistically— yet school policymakers have narrowly defined “safety” as the mere absence of COVID, putting children into a loop of mitigation measures that are uncoupled from actual risk. After two years of living with one disruption after another, the toll on children’s mental and physical health is increasingly evident and alarming. To protect them, an urgent return to fully normal schooling is needed."
We've Seen A Lot of Weird Things During the Pandemic: But this dog playing Jenga is quite something.