Top Three
Teacher Poll: Via EdChoice/Morning Consult: Report / Crosstabs.
Roughly one out of six teachers reported having to quarantine because of COVID-19.
Nearly one-third of teachers reported having substantial numbers of their students out of class due to exposure to COVID-19.
The monthly amount teachers would ask parents to pay (per child) in order to facilitate a learning pod dipped slightly to $465 in March.
Nearly one out of four teachers are interested in tutoring opportunities outside of school hours – regardless of school sector.
Michigan Learning Growth: 1-in-4 students tested through 8th grade showed no learning growth.
"The report by EPIC analyzes student performance in benchmark tests last fall and, when available, compared it to fall 2020. The analysis is based on test results for the roughly 80% of the state’s 935,000 K-8 students who took the assessments."
Code for America Receives $100 Million to Transform America’s Social Safety Net: "With coordinated commitments through The Audacious Project and Blue Meridian Partners of $100 million over seven years, Code for America is launching a new Safety Net Innovation Lab that will work with state governments to reimagine and rebuild delivery of equitable and accessible benefits."
“The goal: partnering with 15 states to reach 13 million people and unlock $30 billion in benefits in the areas of food assistance, health care, and other basic needs.”
Federal
U.S. Extends Transit Mask Mandate Through May 3: Reports Reuters. TSA statement.
U.S. Renews COVID-19 Public Health Emergency: Reports Reuters. HHS statement.
This allows "millions of Americans to keep getting free tests, vaccines and treatments for at least three more months."
Covid-19 Research
America Created Its Own Booster Problems: Via Katherine Wu in The Atlantic.
"Eight months on from President Joe Biden’s announcement of his ambitious plan to revaccinate every eligible adult, tens of millions of eligible, vaccinated Americans—many of whom gladly signed up for their initial doses—still haven’t opted for an additional shot."
"Just 30% of the United States’ population is boosted, putting the country below most other Western nations."
"For boosters, experts presented nothing like that unified front. After an initial series of doses, shot-sparked defenses against hospitalization and death held up spectacularly well, but the safeguards against infection dropped far faster, making breakthroughs commonplace. Divided over what they hoped vaccines could afford—a shield against serious illness, or a blockade against as many infections as possible—experts began to argue over the need for additional shots, especially in the young and healthy. "
"After boosters began their slow trickle out, the message to the public wasn’t that “everyone should get them,” but a sputtering of wishy-washy snippets as eligibility ballooned: Revaccinate the immunocompromised and the elderly and those with comorbidities! Let some younger, healthier people get more shots—if they’re exposed to the virus a lot—but don’t say they should! All right, everybody is allowed to boost, but only if you want to? Fine, fine, you’re all supposed to boost right now—why aren’t you boosted??"
"SARS-CoV-2 now feels more ubiquitous, less terrifying, much more like background noise; the precautions that defined the past two years of crisis have started to disappear. The urgency of boosters simply doesn’t square with the idea that masking, surveillance, gathering restrictions, proof-of-vaccination protocols, and remote schooling and work are no longer necessary, says Neil Lewis, a behavioral scientist at Cornell University. “There’s a conflict in saying, ‘Take off your mask, but also go get another shot."
Pandemic Cut US Life Span Almost 2 Years: More than any peer nation, reports CIDRAP on a new study.
"Over the study period, Americans' overall life expectancy fell, on average, 1.87 years, with greater decreases in Hispanic (-3.70 years) and Black (-3.22) compared with White (-1.38) populations."
Can We Trust Case Numbers?: Asks Katelyn Jetelina.
State
Illinois: State officials are asking Chicago Public Schools to repay $87.5 million the district mistakenly received in 2018 during the rollout of a new state school funding formula.
Indiana:
Tennessee: RC Virtual School
“I am a trailblazer … always pushing myself further and breaking down barriers.”
"That is the motto of the Rutherford County Virtual School, which is now in its second year and boasts an enrollment of more than 400 students in grades 3-12."
Texas: Facing teacher shortages and burnout, Texas school district to adopt a 4-day week.
"The Jasper Independent School District, located in eastern Texas, confirmed last month that they will switch to the 4-day model during the 2022-2023 school year."
Resources
Sal Khan: On how to boost math performance and make free college a reality.
"People are just super tired. You had faculty, administrators, students, everybody trying the best they could. You have teachers that are feeling depleted. I was working with a school district, and we were thinking about doing an after-school program where kids could do more Khan Academy work. And they were just saying how impossible it was to find people to staff it. Historically, if they paid $50 to $60 an hour, there were teachers who were more than happy to do it. But now they’re paying $70 to $80 an hour, and teachers are still not willing to do it. And to me, that’s a sign of fatigue."
"We have this partnership with [nonprofit assessment organization] NWEA that I believe is the best of both worlds. Where you have these interim assessments, and then it informs the personalized practice, and you as a district or principal or teacher get a roll-up of how kids are performing, and you get to validate that against a very psychometrically valid assessment like MAP Growth. That’s what I would be doing if I was a superintendent or chief academic officer."
"We started a pilot with Howard University. It’s very small right now, five classrooms. But there’s no reason it couldn’t scale to 5,000 classrooms. Where the [high school] students are taking a mastery-based, personalized college algebra course on Khan Academy called Howard College Algebra. And if they get mastery in the Khan Academy course, they’re going to get transferable college credits from Howard University."
Fueled by Fentanyl, Rate of Fatal Teen Overdoses Doubled in 2020: "After staying flat for a decade, the overdose death rate among U.S. adolescents nearly doubled from 2019 to 2020 — an alarming climb that continued into 2021, a study in JAMA shows." More via Stat.
"A recent study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, found that more than 2m fentanyl-filled fake pills were seized by law enforcement agencies in the last quarter of 2021 alone – an indication of how common they have become in the nation’s illicit drug supply," the Guardian reports.
Grandparents Step in After Children Lose Parents to Covid-19: Via the NYT.
Pandemic Kids Lack Basic Life Skills: Via the Washington Post.
"It was one of many “missing skills” that Jarboe discovered among her students over the course of the semester. She expected them to show up behind where they should be in academic categories such as reading.”
“But what she hadn’t counted on was that her children would prove unable to do things such as cutting along a dotted line with scissors. Or squeeze a glue bottle to release an appropriately sized dot. Or simply twist a plastic cap off and on."
Effects of Remote Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic on Young Children's Learning and Academic Behavior in Georgia: Study on Perceptions of Parents and School Administrators including focus group responses.
This Teen Shared Her Troubles With a Robot. Could AI ‘Chatbots’ Solve the Youth Mental Health Crisis?: Via The 74.
The Time Has Come for Truly Personalized Learning — With a Navigator to Make Sure Each Child Succeeds: Paul Reville and Geoffrey Canada in The 74.
"The concept of navigator has some modest footholds in education. There are guidance counselors who can in theory play such a role but are undermined by unworkable student-counselor ratios. A few schools feature advisories that provide some navigation services."
"Special education students have Individualized Education Programs. But even so, navigation and success planning are rare in schools. Personalization is not the norm as it is, for example, in medicine, where patient navigators — primary care physicians — advocate for the unique needs of each individual and guide families in producing better health outcomes for their loved ones."
"To implement a navigator strategy, leaders must create a system that enables a designated adult to reach out to a particular student on a regular basis to see how they’re doing, with an emphasis on making kids feel seen, heard, understood and cared for. Such an initiative, which could be funded using abundant federal COVID relief funding, meets the urgent, immediate need of providing a quality adult relationship that connects each student and family to supports and opportunities while enhancing their sense of belonging to a community."
MIT OpenCourseWare: Launches NextGen platform.
Virtual Instruction Is Here to Stay. Here Are 7 Tips for Doing It Well: Via EdWeek.
Joy: Just a happy dog having the time of its life in a public fountain.