Top Three
Groups Seek More Guidance on 18-month Extension for ESSER Spending: Via K12 Dive
"The organizations, which include AASA, The School Superintendent Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, said more guidance is urgently needed as school systems make spending decisions for the three pockets of funding that comprise ESSER."
"Specifically, the organizations are seeking:
"Confirmation that the 18-month spending extension option also applies to ESSER I and ESSER II funds. The obligation deadlines for ESSER I and II are Sept. 30, 2022, and Sept. 30, 2023, respectively."
"Consideration of a further liquidation extension for ESSER III funds to Dec. 31, 2026, rather than March 31, 2026, so districts and states can tap this money through the end of the 2025-26 school year."
"Implementation of a streamlined process for requesting spending extensions. Submitting and reviewing extension requests on a district case-by-case basis would be an “extraordinary burden,” the letter said. Rather, the organizations suggest allowing states to apply for a blanket spending extension for all districts in a state."
Lessons from TFA’s Virtual Tutoring Program in Battling Learning Loss: Elisa Villanueva Beard in The 74.
"TFA’s virtual tutoring program, Ignite, is a community-based initiative designed to meet the needs expressed by parents and school leaders to accelerate learning and foster connection and belonging."
"Last year, we recruited 728 college students to partner with 2,300 kids in seven states. This coming school year, we will have more than 1,500 tutors partnering with more than 4,500 kids across 14 states. Tutors work with three students virtually during the school day, at least three times per week."
"Veteran educators from each school oversee groups of tutors, in partnership with Teach For America staff, ensuring that what students are learning follows the school’s curriculum. All tutors receive intensive training based on best practices as defined by The Annenberg Institute’s National Student Support Accelerator at Brown University. To ensure students are learning and the tutors are continually building their skills,the college students receive regular feedback from their trainers."
"The early results are promising, showing both the students and the tutors benefited from Ignite. At the end of this school year, 99% of schools with an Ignite program reported that students grew in academic learning and engagement. More than 95% of students said their tutor taught them the way they learned best. At one Phoenix middle school, 79% of participants this fall met or exceeded their individualized growth goals, as measured by Star Math, an assessment tool. A Louisiana elementary school reported similar successes in reading."
Heart Disease After COVID: Article in Nature.
"Doctors have reported cardiovascular problems related to COVID-19 throughout the pandemic, but concerns over this issue surged after the results of the VA study came out earlier this year."
"Data from the England’s health-care system, for example, show that people who had been hospitalized with COVID-19 were about three times more likely than uninfected people to face major cardiovascular problems within eight months of their hospitalization. A second study found that, in the 4 months after infection, people who had had COVID-19 had a roughly 2.5-fold increased risk of congestive heart failure compared with those who had not been infected."
"Health modeller Sarah Wulf Hanson at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle used Al-Aly’s data to estimate how many heart attacks and strokes COVID-19 has been associated with. Her unpublished work suggests that, in 2020, complications after COVID-19 caused 12,000 extra strokes and 44,000 extra heart attacks in the United States, numbers that jumped up to 18,000 strokes and 66,000 heart attacks in 2021. This means that COVID-19 could have increased the rates of heart attack by about 8% and of stroke by about 2%. “It is sobering,” Wulf Hanson says."
Federal
ED: Is accepting comments until Sept. 1 on two mental health grant programs:
Covid-19 Research
Missed Vision Screenings for School-Age Children During The COVID-19 Pandemic: Study.
"Among states with vision screenings mandates, participants reported that 23.7% states waived screenings, 31.6% continued screenings, and 36.8% modified requirements, such as grades screened or assessments included (e.g., color vision and stereoacuity screenings)."
"These results suggest that millions of students across the United States missed vision screenings during the 2020–21 academic year."
Kids Might Help Shield Adults from Severe Covid-19: Study
"Rates of COVID-19 infection were slightly higher for adults with exposure to older children for adults with children 6–11 and 12–18, respectively, compared to those with children 0–5 years, although no difference in rates of COVID-19 illness requiring hospitalization or ICU admission was observed."
"However, adults without exposure to children had lower rates of COVID-19 infection but significantly higher rates of COVID-19 hospitalization and hospitalization requiring ICU admission compared to those with children aged 0–5."
"In a large, real-world population, exposure to young children was associated with less severe COVID-19 illness. Endemic coronavirus cross-immunity may play a role in protection against severe COVID-19."
UPI: "One hypothesis that people batted around was maybe people that had a lot of common colds in the past few years may have some built-up immunity to cope with COVID-19, and then either not get an infection at all or get only a mild infection and not a severe one," said lead researcher Dr. Matthew Solomon, a cardiologist in the research division at Kaiser Permanente Northern California in Oakland. This study can't prove that having a common cold protects you from severe COVID-19, only that it may confer some immunity. But the research team said the concept merits further exploration."
Walgreens COVID-19 Index: More than a third of the tests are positive and some states have seen a spike of 25% in the last week.
Back-to-School Outbreaks: Via Axios.
Antigenic Characterization of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Subvariant BA.2.75: New study which suggests it may not be able compete with BA.5 globally.
State
Arizona: Great Hearts Academies is entering its second year of offering virtual K-8.
Maryland: Governor Hogan declares August as "Immunization Awareness Month", encourages Marylanders to remain COVIDReady.
Michigan: The 74 with a good piece, "The Pandemic Isn’t Over — But Are Schools Over COVID Protocols?"
Washington: Serve Washington, Schultz Family Foundation and Ballmer Group partner to scale innovations that increase career opportunities for young adults through AmeriCorps.
Economic Recovery
Job Openings: Job openings fell to 10.7 million in June from 11.3 million in May.
Credit Accumulation and Completion Rates among First-Year College Students: Via the National Student Clearinghouse.
"Students earn roughly 75% of the credits they attempt. That is, on average, students earn 9 credit hours for every 12 credits they attempt."
"Only 51% of full-time students earned 24 or more credit hours in their first year. Less than a third (28%) earned 30 or more hours of credit. The average full-time student does not even attempt enough credits to complete a bachelor’s degree in four years. Across their first year of study, the average full-time student attempted fewer than 27 credits and earned fewer than 22. Given existing credit completion rates, this means the average full-time student is not on track to complete a bachelor’s degree even in five years."
Looking first at racial/ethnic groups, the overall CCR ranged from 66.8% to 84.1%. The highest CCRs were achieved by Nonresident Aliens (84.1%), followed by Asian (83.5%), and White (79.8%) students. Black/African American (66.8%), American Indian/Alaska Native (67.8%), and Hispanic (73.6%) students had lower CCRs.
First-year, degree-seeking students who were identified by their institution as “college ready” in both math and English achieved a higher CCR (81.1%) compared to students who were “not college ready” in both (62.5%).
Black and Hispanic Employees Often Get Stuck at the Lowest Rung of the Workplace: The WSJ reports, "A new comprehensive survey by McKinsey suggests that companies’ diversity efforts have largely missed the employees who stand to gain the most from them."
If This Is a Recession, We Might Not Know for Months: Via the WSJ.
Recession
Pods in Action: KaiPod Learning via CRPE.
School Reopening Decisions During the COVID-19 Pandemic: New EdWorkingPaper:
"Reopening decisions were consistently associated with a district or county’s partisan composition—areas with a larger Democratic constituency were less likely to reopen, especially at the start of the year."
"Further, unions likely influenced how districts reopened (e.g., staffing different modes of instruction, limitations on classroom capacity), not just when, and this is not captured in the existing research."
"Third, we can assume parental preferences interacted with reopening, but the nature of that relationship remains unclear. Existing research establishes a clear—but not causal—relationship between the availability of in-person options and preferences for or selection of in-person learning."
A Cyberattack Illuminates the Shaky State of Student Privacy: Via the NYT.
K-12 Education Policy With Purpose: An Open Request for Proposals: Stand Together Trust announced a funding opportunity to invest at least $1 million over the next 6 months to support projects in four categories:
Funding Families: Modernizing education funding by funding families – not institutions – to pursue customized, individualized education opportunities.
Busting Boundaries: Increase student opportunity by disconnecting school enrollment from a student’s home address.
Radically Reimagining Learning: Inspiring ideas that redefine the who, what, where, and when of education.
Enabling Education Entrepreneurship: Breaking down the barriers and accelerating innovations that allow for visionary education leaders to realize new and unconventional learning options for families.
It's Difficult to Get Work Done: When the interns are so needy.