Top Three
The Biggest Disruption in the History of American Education: Meira Levinson and Daniel Markovits in The Atlantic.
"Conventional accounts of the effect of school closures focus on the shift from in-person to online teaching and the academic losses that resulted. This familiar story isn’t false, but it’s only a part of the truth, and it understates both the disruption and the inequities that COVID wrought on students’ lives. When schools closed, all the goods that they provide became suddenly scarcer, and children and families who relied most on public provision of these goods suffered a cascade of harms that touched virtually every aspect of their lives."
"The disruption the coronavirus has caused to schoolchildren will ripple through the future of the COVID generation. Unfinished learning may turn out to be the easiest of these losses to cure."
"Lost academic opportunities bleed into life beyond the classroom, including most immediately by influencing post-high-school plans. Once again, this harm was concentrated among low-income students: In national surveys, nearly half of low-income high-school graduates in the class of 2020 reported changed future education plans because of the pandemic, compared with about one-quarter of students who had never been eligible for free- or reduced-price meals. Changed plans lead to changed futures."
"In one CDC survey, parents whose children’s schools had closed were nearly twice as likely to report concerns about job stability, child-care challenges, and difficulty sleeping as parents whose children’s schools remained fully open for in-person learning."
"A broad cure will also take a lot of imagination: to find new and better ways to deliver the many services that now run through physical presence specifically in schools. Effectively delivering these services will require flexibility and resilience, not least because school closures will likely continue."
"In Mississippi, for example, State Superintendent of Education Carey Wright told us in an email that she collaborated “with the medical community over 18 months” to direct $17.6 million in federal funding to expand telehealth and teletherapy for students statewide, bringing new “on-site physical and mental health services to our students and communities, including those in rural areas.”
CDC Recommends Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine for 6-17 Year Olds: CDC Statement.
The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted unanimously on Thursday to recommend that children ages 6-17 years receive Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine.
WSJ: "The two-dose regimen successfully boosted antibodies in children, the agency said, at a rate similar to the immune response in young adults. And the vaccine was 93% effective against Covid-19 in children ages 12 to 17 years in a study conducted when the original coronavirus strains were circulating, and 77% effective in children ages 6 to 11."
CNBC: "There is an elevated risk of heart inflammation after Covid vaccination for boys ages 12 to 17. However, Covid infection carries a higher risk of heart inflammation, according to the CDC."
Neutralization Escape by SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Subvariants BA.2.12.1, BA.4, and BA.5: Letter in NEJM. More via CNN.
"These data show that the BA.2.12.1, BA.4, and BA.5 subvariants substantially escape neutralizing antibodies induced by both vaccination and infection."
"Moreover, neutralizing antibody titers against the BA.4 or BA.5 subvariant and (to a lesser extent) against the BA.2.12.1 subvariant were lower than titers against the BA.1 and BA.2 subvariants, which suggests that the SARS-CoV-2 omicron variant has continued to evolve with increasing neutralization escape."
"These findings provide immunologic context for the current surges caused by the BA.2.12.1, BA.4, and BA.5 subvariants in populations with high frequencies of vaccination and BA.1 or BA.2 infection."
Federal
Bipartisan Gun Safety Bill Passes: Senate passed the bill 65 to 33. House passed it 234 to 193. Summary. White House SAP.
Congress Clears Bill to Extend Free Meals for Children Through the Summer: Via NYT. Summary.
"The legislation, the Keep Kids Fed Act, which the Senate passed on Thursday night by unanimous consent and the House approved on Friday by a voice vote, extends meal reimbursements and policies aimed at providing more flexibility for schools and meal operators through the summer and the next school year. The measure extends free meals for all children, which had been scheduled to lapse on June 30, until the end of the summer."
Privacy: Online Privacy Bill cleared a House subcommittee. It now moves to the full Energy and Commerce Committee for a vote. The bill still faces a long and potentially difficult path, particularly in the Senate." Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell said she’s not close to supporting a major proposal, dealing a significant blow to efforts to revive the long-stalled bill."
Covid-19 Research
Under 5s:
More than 2.7 million doses of COVID vaccines for children below five years have been delivered.
Matt Shapiro on the debate from the weekend about the slide suggesting COVID is a leading cause of death.
WSJ: Parents Struggle to Secure Covid-19 Vaccine Appointments for Young Kids.
Related: Here's an open source effort to track where vaccines are available.
Morning Consult finds significant hesitancy.
Largest Study Reports Long COVID Symptoms in Children Up to Age 14: Press Release / Study
"The results of the study found children diagnosed with COVID-19 in all age groups to be more likely to experience at least one symptom for two months or longer than the control group. In the 0-3 years age group 40% of children diagnosed with COVID-19 experienced symptoms for longer than two months, compared to 27% of controls. For the 4-11 years age group the ratio was 38% of cases compared to 34% of controls, and for the 12-14 years age group, 46% of cases compared to 41% of controls experienced long-lasting symptoms."
"The types of non-specific symptoms associated with long COVID are often experienced by otherwise healthy children; headache, mood swings, abdominal pain, and fatigue are all symptoms of common ailments that children experience which are unrelated to COVID-19. However, this study revealed that children with a positive COVID-19 diagnosis were more likely to experience long-lasting symptoms than children who had never had a positive diagnosis, suggesting that these symptoms were a presentation of long COVID."
"Compared with controls, children aged 0–14 years who had a SARS-CoV-2 infection had more prevalent long-lasting symptoms. There was a tendency towards better quality-of-life scores related to emotional and social functioning in cases than in controls in older children. The burden of symptoms among children in the control group requires attention. Long COVID must be recognised and multi-disciplinary long COVID clinics for children might be beneficial."
Persistence of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant in Children and Utility of Rapid Antigen Testing: New small study:
"While the numbers of participants and samples analyzed were low, we found an exact correlation between results from the BinaxNOW rapid antigen test and results of cell culture, generally accepted as the best marker for virus infectivity"
"In this study close to half of infected children remained positive for SARS-CoV-2 (and likely were infectious) for at least two days after they would have returned to school under the January 14, 2022 CDC guidelines."
"Consideration should be given to lengthening the current recommendation for five days of isolation before return to school, potentially in combination with requirements for a negative rapid test result."
Lessons for the Next Pandemic: Via former Deputy HHS Secretary Tevi Troy.
A Plan for CDC Reform is Long Overdue: Writes JHU professors Brian Miller and Phillip Phan.
"And in the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has served as a prism, magnifying the CDC’s weaknesses in what were prior core functions — forecasting, detecting and managing disease outbreaks. Operationally hamstrung by an unwieldy organizational configuration with 15 offices and centers reporting to the agency director, the CDC needs to return to a more focused and nimble structure. During the pandemic, the CDC struggled with crisis communications, early diagnostic test development, and transparent, timely, and sensible public health guidance on non-pharmaceutical interventions."
"Simultaneously, the CDC failed to both anticipate and estimate basic tradeoffs in public health policy, such as the harms of school closures on childhood mental health, or lockdowns resulting in worsening of substance abuse and increased overdoses, or the CDC’s eviction moratorium, which expired July 31, 2021, while eventually struck down by the Supreme Court, still cost hundreds of thousands of landlords billions."
"Unlike nearly every other federal agency, the CDC exercised regulatory power without an opportunity for public input or evaluation of the economic effects of its policy decisions. The CDC failed at its core mission while contributing to the pandemic’s economic hardship."
Deborah Birx: Video from her interview at the Aspen Institute Health Ideas.
State
Arizona: Scottsdale Unified School District is offering free tutoring to students through Varsity Tutors.
California: Tutoring options in Los Angeles Unified leave families frustrated.
New York: Governor Hochul announced a first-of-its-kind, interactive broadband map to provide the most detailed depiction of broadband infrastructure in New York to date.
International
China: Beijing kids must take a PCR Covid test to play in the park.
Economic Recovery
Farewell to the Pre-COVID Supply Chain: Via Axios.
"These are the first steps in the long-term, systemic shifts that will happen over the course of the next decade, Dan Swan, co-lead of McKinsey’s global operations practice, tells Axios."
"Details: 44% of the supply chain execs said that they increased regionalization in their supply chains in 2021, nearly double the share that did so in 2020."
"81% implemented dual-sourcing — or using two suppliers instead of one for a given item — last year, up from 55% the year before."
Creating and Expanding a Diverse Broadband Workforce with Good Jobs and Career Pathways: New report by America Achieves.
Resources
Catholic School Enrollment Boomed During Covid: Kathleen Porter-Magee Annie Smith Matt Klausmeier at the Manhattan Institute.
Unfinished Agenda: The Future of Standards-Based School Reform: Via Michael Cohen and Laura Slover.
Hidden in Plain Sight | A Way Forward for Equity-Centered Family Engagement: Via Learning Heroes.
New Learning Loss Calculator Estimates COVID Slide, Costs of Catching Kids Up, in 8,000 School Districts: Via Marguerite Roza, Katherine Silberstein, Aashish Dhammani & Chad Aldeman in The 74.
District leaders can use “The Calculator” to estimate the level of student learning loss in their schools.
"For example, Seattle Public Schools was fully remote for three-quarters of the 2020-21 school year. Given the makeup of its student body, the available research would estimate that the average district student lost an average of 17 weeks of learning in math and 10 weeks in reading. Some lost more; some lost less."
"Our calculator also compares the estimated learning losses with how much money a district would need to spend to remedy them. We used available research on the effect sizes of tutoring (a high-impact investment) to estimate those costs. Based on our calculations, Seattle leaders would need to invest approximately $105 million to address the learning losses in their community."
Disengage: Berklee College of Music student Kieran Rhodes wows the AGT judges with an emotional audition on the piano. His original song about overcoming depression is at the 2:43 mark.