Top Three
Chronic Absenteeism: "New data from the state’s Public Education Department (PED) shows that 40% of all schools in the Albuquerque Public School (APS) district consider a majority of their student population chronically absent."
High School
Highest: Del Norte (36.30% chronically absent)
Lowest: Volcano Vista High (12.66% chronically absent)
Middle School
Highest: Van Buren Middle (34.15% chronically absent)
Lowest: Desert Ridge Middle (3.72% chronically absent)
Elementary School
Highest: Wherry Elementary (91.62% chronically absent)
Lowest: Corrales Elementary (14.94% chronically absent)
The Mystifying Rise of Child Suicides: Long and difficult piece via the New Yorker.
"The sooner depressed or suicidal children receive treatment, the more likely they are to recover, but children remain radically undertreated. There are too few child psychologists and psychiatrists, and most pediatricians are insufficiently informed about depression. Research suggests that only one out of five American adolescents who end up in a hospital after attempting suicide is transferred to a mental-health facility, and access is predictably worse among the poor and in communities of color."
"Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of child suicide is its unpredictability. A recent study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders found that about a third of child suicides occur seemingly without warning and without any predictive signs, such as a mental-health diagnosis, though sometimes a retrospective analysis points to signs that were simply missed."
"Children are often secretive about suicidal impulses; parents are often in denial. Some years ago, the eleven-year-old son of a friend of mine required a psychiatric hospitalization because of uncontrollable outbursts of anger. I rode with my friend and his son in the ambulance from his house to the hospital. The boy at first could express only rage, then lapsed into despair at his lack of self-control. He said, “I think of suicide a lot. I was thinking about it earlier today, in fact. I don’t plan to do it, probably.” When we arrived at the hospital, the admitting physician asked my friend whether his son had ever been suicidal, and he said, “I don’t think so.” I pointed out that the boy had expressed strong suicidal ideation not twenty minutes earlier in the ambulance. Suicide is so unimaginable to parents in general that a child’s mentioning it can wash over them."
Report Card on State Responses to COVID: NBER paper
"It examines three variables: health outcomes, economic performance throughout the pandemic, and impact on education"
WSJ editorial: "The study ranks Florida 28th in mortality, in the middle of the pack and about the same as California, which ranks 27th despite its far more stringent lockdowns and school closures. But Florida ranks third for the least education loss and 13th in economic performance. California ranks 47th overall because its shutdowns crushed the economy (40th) and in-person school (50th). In other words, Florida did about average on mortality as other states, but it did far better in protecting its citizens from severe economic harm and its children from lost schooling. “The correlation between health and economy scores is essentially zero,” say the authors, “which suggests that states that withdrew the most from economic activity did not significantly improve health by doing so.”
Federal
Dr. Ashish K. Jha: Introduces himself as he takes over as the White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator.
Mask Mandate on Airplanes Could Be Extended: Dr. Ashish Jha told the Today Show that extending the federal transportation mask mandate that applies to airplanes, buses and trains is “absolutely on the table.”
ED: Supporting Effective Educator Development Program grant notice and statement by the Secretary.
The Gridiron Superspreader: More than 10% of attendees of Gridiron dinner have been infected with the virus.
“The number of attendees who have tested positive for the coronavirus after last weekend’s Gridiron dinner has risen to 67, organizers say, including Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who became the third member of Biden’s Cabinet in attendance who was infected,” the Washington Post reports.
COVID-19 Research
WHO Says It Is Analyzing Two New Omicron Sub-variants: BA.4 and BA.5.
New Drug Slashed Deaths Among Patients With Severe Covid, Maker Claims: Via NYT and Veru press release.
"The new drug, sabizabulin, reduced deaths among hospitalized Covid-19 patients so drastically in a clinical trial that independent safety monitors recommended stopping it early, officials at Veru Inc., the drug’s maker, said. The trial was halted on Friday."
"About half of the 52 trial participants given a placebo or dummy pill along with regular care died within 60 days, an indicator of how very sick they were. But the death rate was 20 percent among the 98 participants who received sabizabulin, who were just as ill. The drug was given once a day for up to 21 days."
CDC's Data Modernization Initiative: 2021 report.
Using Donald Trump’s COVID-19 Vaccine Endorsement to Give Public Health a Shot in the Arm: A Large-Scale Ad Experiment: NBER paper.
"Our study involved presenting a 27-second advertisement to millions of U.S. YouTube users in October 2021."
"Results indicate that the campaign increased the number of vaccines in the average treated county by 103. Spread across 1,014 treated counties, the total effect of the campaign was an estimated increase of 104,036 vaccines."
"The campaign was cost-effective: with an overall budget of about $100,000, the cost to obtain an additional vaccine was about $1 or less."
State
Kansas: School grades show sharp decline due to COVID-19 based on a Kansas Policy Institute analysis.
Michigan: Schools take advantage of broad discretion in COVID spending, Chalkbeat reports.
Ruh-roh: "About $10,000 would go to a nutrition room to make smoothies, according to River Rouge’s plan."
New York: NY Comptroller "Oversight of Mental Health Education in Schools"
"For a sample of 22 school districts we surveyed, all were able to describe the mental health curriculum they implemented; however, only 19 actually provided supporting documentation to show they implemented some sort of mental health education and met the minimum requirements of the Law."
"Although schools are often considered the natural and best setting for comprehensive prevention and early intervention services for all students, we determined that, for many school districts, their mental health teams (i.e., school-employed psychologists, counselors, and social workers) are understaffed, based on staff-to-student ratios recommended by the National Center for School Mental Health and the National Association of School Psychologists."
Ohio: PBS stations get $5 million to address learning loss this summer.
Pennsylvania:
Radnor School District to switch to virtual day for April 18 as COVID cases increase.
The city of Philadelphia will reinstate an indoor mask mandate, the first major U.S. city to do so this spring.
To give you a sense of how much the politics have swung on this, Democratic Governor candidate Josh Shapiro called the decision "counterproductive."
International
China:
Signs in Beijing, "Do not post pandemic-related messages online.”
Via WSJ, "Shanghai Woman’s 16-Hour Bus Ride Into Quarantine: ‘My Only Wish is to Leave This Place Alive’
An elderly couple in Shanghai took their family member to the hospital gate and fell in despair.
Crazy video: People screaming out of their windows after a week of total lockdown.
Economic Recovery
Hybrid Work and New York: Via NYT
"PwC, a global consulting firm with its American headquarters in New York City, has told 40,000 of its United States employees that they can work remotely forever. Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, a white-shoe law firm with about 300 lawyers in New York, is allowing its staff to live anywhere in the country."
"With more companies settling into a permanent period of hybrid work, the average New York City office worker is predicted to reduce annual spending near the office by $6,730 from a prepandemic total of around $13,700, the largest drop of any major city, according to research from economists at Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, Stanford University and the University of Chicago."
"The decline in Manhattan office workers poses a profound threat to the city’s real estate-reliant tax base, money that helps fund schools, the police and parks. Without regular commuters, the region’s public transit systems face service cuts that will disproportionately harm workers who must show up in person."
"About 37% of New York employees went to the office in late March, according to data from Kastle Systems, an office security firm, a pandemic-era high, but still far below the 80 percent norm before the pandemic."
Computerization of White Collar Jobs: NBER paper which finds that "when firms adopt new software at the job-title level they increase the skills required of job applicants."
A 4-Year Degree Isn’t Quite the Job Requirement It Used to Be: Via the NYT
"There has been a gradual shift overall, according to a recent report and additional data supplied by the Burning Glass Institute. But the research group’s company-by-company analysis underlines both the potential and the challenge of changing entrenched hiring practices."
"The Burning Glass Institute is an independent nonprofit research center, using data from Emsi Burning Glass, a labor-market analytics firm. The researchers analyzed millions of online job listings, looking for four-year college degree requirements and trends. In 2017, 51 percent required the degree. By 2021, that share had declined to 44 percent."
Families Grapple with Baby Formula Shortages: Via Axios, "29% of baby formula inventory was out of stock nationally the week of March 13, up from 18% when the year started and 3% a year earlier."
Poverty in America: Axios map of new Census data.
Resources
School Reopening Mess Drives Parents Toward GOP: Via WSJ.
“The defection of once-loyal voters like Ms. Loughran—along with disapproval from independents—is among the challenges Democrats face in their bid to retain control of Congress and win state-level races in this November’s midterm elections.”
“These voters say Democratic officials left pandemic restrictions in place too long and mishandled the health crisis, with devastating consequences for their children, while Republicans have generally pushed to minimize school closures and keep the economy open.”
Why Aren’t States Innovating in Student Assessments? Asks Michelle Croft
Addressing Learning Loss in Disadvantaged Kids: Via US News & World Report on a new NWEA report.
“Historically underserved students can grow academically at the same pace or faster than their peers in the school year,” says Lindsay Dworkin, vice president of policy and advocacy at NWEA. “Prior to this research, it’s been unclear what the school year versus summer growth trajectories have been and where we are losing ground. This research puts a big spotlight on summer and the need to do better over the summer for these students.”
"For example, in a study of K-8 students nationwide, rural students entered kindergarten with higher achievement levels in math and reading than their non-rural peers. But by the end of third grade, non-rural students consistently outperformed those from rural communities across the grades. The report found that rural students grow at slightly faster rates in math and reading than other students when school is in session – but they lose more ground almost every summer."
Why American Teens Are So Sad: Derek Thompson in The Atlantic with four forces propelling that increase:
Social-media use
Sociality is down
The world is stressful—and there is more news about the world’s stressors
Modern parenting strategies
Accelerate’s Call to Effective Action for High-Impact Tutoring: Apply here or attend a webinar here or learn more here.
Fears of a School Superintendent Exodus: Via The 74, "data from ILO Group, an education strategy and policy firm, show about 37% of the nation’s 500 largest school districts have experienced leadership turnover since the pandemic began."
School Enrollment: Burbio has collected enrollment data that compares two years from 41 states plus the District of Columbia, representing just over 75% of US public school enrollment.
6-Year-Old, Publix Employee Became Best Friends: They reunited for the first time since the pandemic.