Top Three
6 Things We've Learned About How the Pandemic Disrupted Learning: Via NPR.
Students learned less when they were remote.
“We try not to say 'learning loss,' because if they didn't learn it, they didn't lose it," explains Ebony Lee, an assistant superintendent in Clayton County, Ga."
"It would mean so much for parents if somebody would acknowledge it. 'You know, we have learning loss,' " says Sheila Walker, a parent in Northern California. "Like our board, they don't even use those words. We know we have learning loss, so how are we going to address it?"
Students at high-poverty schools were hit hardest
"In high-poverty schools that stayed remote for the majority of the 2020-21 school year, students missed the equivalent of 22 weeks of in-person math learning. That's more than half of a traditional school year (roughly 36-40 weeks)."
"By contrast, students in similarly remote, low-poverty schools missed considerably less learning: roughly 13 weeks, Kane says, and he warns that closing these gaps could take years."
Different states saw different gaps
"In the quarter of states where students spent the most time learning remotely, including California, Illinois, Kentucky and Virginia, "high-poverty schools spent an additional nine weeks in remote instruction (more than two months) than low-poverty schools."
"On the other hand, in the quarter of states where overall use of remote instruction was the lowest, including Texas, Florida and a host of rural states, the report says, high-poverty schools were still more likely to be remote "but the differences were small: 3 weeks remote in high poverty schools versus 1 week remote in low poverty schools."
High school graduation rates didn't change much.
Many high school grads chose to delay college.
Schools can do something about it.
"For us, high-dosage means two to three times per week for at least 30 minutes, and ... no more than three students in a group," says Penny Schwinn, Tennessee's state education commissioner."
"Schwinn led the creation of the TN ALL Corps, a sprawling, statewide network of tutors who, Schwinn hopes, can reach 150,000 elementary- and middle-schoolers over three years. High school students with busier schedules can access online tutoring anytime, on demand."
"In Guilford County, Contreras says the benefits of their tutoring program go well beyond learning recovery. Their new tutoring corps draws heavily from graduate assistants at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, a regional HBCU."
Covid Vaccines Slowly Roll Out for Children Under 5: Via NYT.
"Yet clamoring from families is limited. The reasons for parental vaccine hesitation are varied. Two years into the pandemic, many families have become resigned to living with the virus, and a majority of American children have already been infected, mostly experiencing mild symptoms."
"While the vaccines remain highly effective at protecting against severe illness and death, they have become less effective at preventing infection as the virus has mutated, leading to disappointment and some cynicism from the public toward the injections. Some parents have encountered widespread misinformation about risks, while others are concerned about rare side effects, or simply do not want their children to be among the first to get a newly accessible vaccine."
"Many child-care centers and preschools still require masking and quarantine periods for children who come into close contact with the virus, though K-12 schools have generally lifted those precautions. Parents are exhausted after years of disrupted routines and report that their young children have never experienced school or socializing under normal conditions."
"Joseph G. Allen, a Harvard University expert on indoor environmental quality, who has studied the coronavirus and schools, said he believed it was time for most restrictions on young children to be lifted. Even if uptake of the newest pediatric vaccine is limited, he said, young children are “lowest risk and have had the highest burdens, as adults go around doing whatever they want to do.”
"The best way for child-care centers and schools to protect students and staff members over the next year, when new variants may emerge, is to invest in air-quality improvements such as HVAC-system upgrades and portable air purifiers with HEPA filters, Professor Allen said."
Related via Axios: Where to get COVID vaccine appointments for children under 5
Pandemic Negatively Affected Atlanta Students' Math Achievement: Researchers at Georgia Policy Labs compared data in Fulton County Schools, Clayton County Public Schools, and an anonymous school district for the second consecutive year. News article.
Covid-19 Research
Hospitalization and Emergency Department Encounters for COVID-19 After Paxlovid Treatment: Study via CDC.
"COVID-19–related hospital admissions and emergency department (ED) encounters occurring 5–15 days after Paxlovid treatment were described using data from a large integrated health care system."
"Reports of such hospitalizations or ED encounters occurred infrequently, representing <1% of Paxlovid-treated patients over the study period."
Dispensing of Oral Antiviral Drugs for Treatment of COVID-19 by Zip Code–Level Social Vulnerability: CDC analysis. Via Stat:
"While the most socially vulnerable zip codes have more locations to get Covid-19 antiviral medications like Paxlovid, the people in those areas received the medications less often than those in less vulnerable neighborhoods."
As prescribing of the drugs picked up between March and May, the researchers report, the rates at which these drugs were dispensed jumped at least 15-fold in places with low- and medium-vulnerability levels, but only five-fold in the most vulnerable communities. The issue might involve unequal access to prescribing clinicians, the authors say, as well as the end of government reimbursement of certain Covid-related costs for the uninsured."
Doctors' Group Urges Biden Administration to Revise Guidelines for Children: Yahoo News: “We strongly urge you to revise the CDC’s COVID-19 guidelines with regard to testing, isolation, and vaccine recommendations for children to ensure that public health policies are not doing more harm than good,” says a letter sent by Urgency of Normal — a group that has argued for a steady return to pre-pandemic behaviors — to Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the White House pandemic response team, and Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Report Critiques Trump Admin's COVID Response: "Top Trump administration officials ignored warnings and embraced a "herd immunity via mass infection" approach to containing COVID-19 to justify not taking meaningful action to curb the virus in the fall and winter of 2020-2021, Axios' Adriel Bettelheim reports a House oversight panel report concluded Tuesday."
Reinfection Risks: Eric Topol is concerned about the findings from a new study.
"The first finding is the comparison of people with reinfections vs those with only 1 infection. Note the doubling of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular, and lung adverse outcomes, 3-fold risk of hospitalization, and impact on other health domains."
"Next is the durability of these adverse outcomes for this same comparison (reinfections vs 1 infection) in 30-day increments, indicating that much of the hit was up front, but persistent increased risk was evident for most endpoints throughout the 6 months follow-up."
"Obviously these findings are worrisome since reinfection was quite rare before the Omicron wave hit, at 1% or less through the Delta variant wave. But now reinfections have become much more common. Why? The Omicron BA.2, BA.2.12.1, BA.4, and BA.5 have progressively increased immune escape and there is limited cross-immunity with BA.1, the Omicron version that about half of Americans got infected with early in 2022."
"We await an independent replication of these reinfection findings, but I note much of what these authors have thus far published from the Veterans Affairs information resource has indeed been replicated."
State
Missouri: Teachers, staff sue St. Louis Public Schools over COVID vaccine mandate compliance, termination
North Carolina:
The NC Department of Public Instruction and the NC Collaboratory, a policy research center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, are leading a joint $6 million effort to spur research on the impact of COVID-19 on student learning and the evaluation of existing policies and programs aimed at overcoming those challenges.
All UNC System HBCUs are offering free summer classes to help students get ahead.
International
China:
“During the lockdown, children who tested positive for Covid-19 were separated from their parents; fences were installed to restrict people’s movement; pets whose owners tested positive were reportedly slaughtered by authorities; white-clad workers entered residents’ apartments to spray disinfectant without consent; and at least 200 individuals are believed to have died, not due to Covid, but due to lack of access to hospitals.”
UNICEF: Executive Board calls for urgent action to address the learning crisis.
Economic Recovery
Recession:
Goldman Sachs has doubled the likelihood of the U.S. economy suffering a recession in the next 12 months to 30% (up from 15%), after its economists became “increasingly concerned” that the Fed will accept a sharp slowdown in growth to curb inflation
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: “The New York Federal Reserve’s internal model is flashing an 80% risk that the US economy will enter a sustained contraction in the second half of this year, much sooner than presumed just weeks ago. The chances of a ‘soft landing’ have dropped to 10%."
Inflation: “Supply constraints, exacerbated by Russia’s war in Ukraine this year, account for about half of the surge in US inflation, with demand currently making up a third of the increase, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco,” Bloomberg reports.
Resources
Thousands of Students Will Face Long COVID: EdWeek says schools need to plan now.
Conversations With Kids: New report from Transcend.
Here’s What Happens: When you hang out with the boys for too long...