Top Three
Covid-19 Tied to Higher Risk of Deadly Blood Clots in Large Study: Bloomberg on a new study.
"Covid-19 at any level of severity is linked to an increased risk of dangerous blood clots that start in patients’ veins and travel to the heart, lungs and other parts of the body."
"Non-hospitalized Covid patients were 2.7 times more likely to develop dangerous clots called venous thromboembolisms and were more than 10 times more likely to die than individuals who avoided the disease, scientists at Queen Mary University of London found in a study of almost 54,000 people followed for an average of about 4 1/2 months. The increase in risk was highest in the first 30 days after the disease began, but could remain elevated even longer, the researchers said."
"Risks were significantly worse for patients hospitalized for Covid, who had 28 times higher risk of venous thromboembolism, 22 times increased risk of heart failure and 18 times greater risk of stroke than unaffected people. Their chance of dying was 118-fold higher compared with their uninfected counterparts."
How 100 Large and Urban Districts Are Attracting and Retaining Staff: Brookings and CRPE.
"We found that only about half of large U.S. districts are planning to bolster staff recruitment efforts—by training local talent, offering bonuses, or creating more flexible job roles, according to our recent of district spending plans."
"Nearly all large U.S. districts, however, said they planned to expand staff training, according to our review—even though it’s not clear how well professional development drives staff retention."
"Of the 89 large and urban districts that publicly communicated new plans to support workers, 84 said they would offer more professional development opportunities. Only about half (52), said they planned to invest in recruitment strategies, such as “grow-your-own” pipeline partnerships, hiring bonuses, and relaxing teacher certification requirements. Fewer than half of the districts (42) said they planned to offer retention bonuses."
"In Arizona, Mesa Public Schools, the state’s largest district, is addressing educator shortages by moving away from the “one teacher, one classroom” model and instead having teachers work in coordinated teams of specialists. The idea is to share the load among working professionals, which could make the industry more appealing for current and aspiring teachers. Arizona State University’s teachers college is supporting the effort and now partnering with the School Superintendents’ Association to meet growing national interest in the approach."
"Only 26 large districts in our sample said they planned to put more funding toward supporting staff’s mental health and well-being. That means about three quarters of large districts may not be investing in these strategies."
NEAP Reactions:
Secretary Cardona: Statement and speech which calls for "bold action" that include:
"The Department will issue yet another resource for educators and state and district leaders on how they can use American Rescue Plan funds to address learning loss. The education field should expect this within one week."
"At the Department will also launch a new, expert-led series on the most promising tools to raise the bar and accelerate students’ learning in math and literacy…. We are going to be busy at the Department making sure leading educators and researchers have the ability to share best practices to all 50 states."
"And we will push out a Parent Checklist to make sure parents have the tools they need to ensure their children are getting the support they deserve using the Recovery funds President Biden made available."
Larry Summers thread: "When SP 500 falls by 5% it is a national event. Today we learned that more than 30 million kids lost 6 or more month of learning."
Sherrilyn Ifill with the Ford Foundation: "Yes. This was to be expected. It was the price for keeping as many teachers, school workers, children & their families alive. Now let's roll up our sleeves & get to work on it. Children suffer learning loss in war zones, from sickness, displacement. Let's just do the work."
Luke Zaleski, Legal Affairs Editor, Condé Nast, "School buildings were closed. Not schools. Anyone conflating the two conversationally is careless enough so as to be considered suspect on the topic generally."
Eugene Robinson: "It turns out that all the bitter back-and-forth between red and blue states about how quickly to reopen schools during the covid-19 pandemic was nothing but political theater, as far as test scores are concerned. Student performance suffered across the board, and it could take years to make up the ground we’ve lost."
WSJ Editorial Board: "The School Lockdown Catastrophe"
"It’s hard to understate the human damage that these dry statistics represent. The learning loss is considerable and will take years to make up, if it ever is. Children who fall behind in reading skills have difficulty learning other subjects. The numbers also mean that millions of young Americans don’t know even the basics of writing and arithmetic."
"The NAEP results support the case for school choice. Charter school performance was uneven, but in at least 11 states charter fourth graders outperformed their non-charter counterparts in math in 2022, including in Alaska (+16 points), Nevada (+12 points) and North Carolina (+21 points)."
"Catholic schools tended to stay open during the pandemic, and on average their fourth and eighth graders scored higher in reading and math than public-school students. Department of Defense schools performed even better. Students deserve an escape route from schools that can’t prepare them for life and work."
"The political consequences now should be a backlash against the politicians who let the unions close the schools for so long. For starters, that means anyone endorsed by American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten."
Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA Vaccine Advisory Committee: There is "probably no greater collateral damage, frankly, than what we did to those children in terms of lack of socialization, lack of education."
Rotherham Reacts: "Parents Are Owed the Truth About Learning Loss. NAEP Proves It"
"Most worrisome for those concerned about equity: Students already furthest from success in school were most impacted."
"The problem is, though, it’s almost 2023 and we’re still arguing about what happened in 2020 and 2021. Our politics are stuck in the past rather than looking forward. And as a result, too many leaders are still not mustering the political courage to level with parents about the future."
"The overall fecklessness, irresponsibility and almost total attention to politics and public relations rather than kids surprises even cynical observers of the sector. The noise-to-signal ratio is difficult for families — who have a lot on their plate besides this — to sort out."
"States should do more to communicate the results, gaps and data for all demographic groups, including gender. And because parents, of course, care most about their own child, states must also make sure state assessment results are clearly communicated in a timely manner — and that those results are an honest representation of what’s going on. Education advocacy organizations have an enormous role to play here to help communicate this information and hold state policymakers accountable."
Federal
White House: Fact Sheet: "President Biden to Announce Additional Efforts to Help Americans Get Their Free, Updated COVID-19 Vaccine This Fall."
"The President will call on every school district, college, and university in America to host at least one vaccination clinic by Thanksgiving."
"He will also call on employers to take actions like offering paid-time-off for vaccination, and working with local vaccine providers to host on-site vaccination clinics for employees."
"The Administration is releasing a fall playbook for businesses, with clear information about steps that businesses of all kinds can take to protect their workforces and customers and to keep their doors open—including actions they can take to get workers their updated COVID-19 vaccine, raise employee awareness about COVID-19 treatments, and improve indoor air quality in their buildings."
"Walgreens is working with Uber and DoorDash to provide free delivery of prescriptions of Paxlovid, an oral COVID-19 treatment, directly to the doorsteps of Americans living in underserved communities."
Covid Research
COVID-19 Vaccine Protects Vaccinated Children but May Not Prevent Transmission to the Unvaccinated: New Indiana University research on COVID-19 vaccinations in school-age children suggests one child’s vaccination provides strong protection to themselves, but may offer less protection to other unvaccinated children than expected.
Missing Science: A Scoping Study of COVID-19 Epidemiological Data in the United States: Paper which lists the Covid questions the US couldn't answer because of poor data collection.
"We identified 283 published epidemiological reports authored by investigators affiliated with U.S. governmental public health entities. Most reported on descriptive studies."
"Published analytic studies did not appear to fully respond to knowledge gaps or to provide systematic evidence to support, evaluate or tailor community mitigation strategies."
"The existence of epidemiological data gaps 18 months after the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic underscores the need for more timely standardization of data collection practices and for anticipatory research priorities and protocols for emerging infectious disease epidemics."
Omicron Keeps Finding New Evolutionary Tricks to Outsmart Our Immunity:Via NPR:
"SARS-CoV-2 is continuing to evolve extremely rapidly," says Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist who studies the evolution of viruses at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle. "There's no evidence that the evolution is slowing down."
"Instead, the most consequential evolutionary changes have stayed confined to the omicron family, rather than appearing in entirely new variants."
"Whereas alpha, beta, gamma and the other named variants sprouted new branches on the SARS-CoV-2 family tree, those limbs were dwarfed by the omicron bough, which is now studded with a plethora of subvariant stems."
"When you see convergence in evolution that's evolution's way of saying 'this mutation is repeatedly getting selected over and over again because it's really helpful,'" says Jesse Bloom, a computational biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle."
New Vaccine Roadmap Eyes Future Threats of Coronaviruses:The University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) published a draft version of a Coronavirus Vaccines Research & Development (R&D) Roadmap (CVR), highlighting strategies to develop vaccines that are effective against new COVID-19 variants, as well as coronaviruses that have not yet emerged in people. The roadmap draft is available for public review and comment. The roadmap is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation.
Did the Pandemic Change Your Personality? Possibly: Via the NYT.
“On Zoom you can mute,” Mr. Phung, 25, said. “It took me a while to know how to talk to people.”
"Now, a recent study of people’s personalities suggests that the discomfort he’s feeling is not uncommon for people in his generation, who were forced into the isolation of pandemic restrictions in their 20s, already a time of social anxiety for many of them."
"Covid has not only reshaped the way we work and connect with others, but has also redrawn the way we are, according to the study, which found some of the most pronounced effects among young adults."
"Our key personality traits may have dimmed so that we have become less extroverted and creative, not as agreeable and less conscientious, according to the study, published last month in the journal PLOS ONE."
"Younger adults, and especially teens, have faced greater restrictions on activities and experiences typical of adolescence and youth, Ms. Sutin’s study concluded. It found that individuals under 30 exhibited the sharpest drops in conscientiousness and agreeableness."
State Attorney Generals Write Letter to CDC's ACIP Committee: Letter
"Second, with respect to the VFC, ACIP should likewise tread carefully. The VFC is a program created by Congress in the wake of a measles outbreak to ensure that kids from lowincome families have access to free vaccines. But the COVID-19 vaccine does not provide the same protection against life threatening illnesses. Instead, it could put more kids at risk instead of protecting them which is the purpose of the VCF. The CDC should not be treating kids in lowincome households as lab experiments. Nor should pharmaceutical companies be allowed to use low-income families as cash cows."
"Our Nation’s children are not the federal government’s guinea pigs. As a country that failed so many children over the last couple of years, we owe it to them and their parents to take a responsible path forward. The ACIP should reject considerations of adding the COVID-19 vaccine to the list of childhood immunities and the VFC."
State
California:
"2022 California standardized test results wipe out years of steady progress," via EdSource.
"Fewer than half of students met the state standard in English language arts, with a drop of 4 percentage points to 47.1% from pre-pandemic 2018-19, when the state last required the test statewide. Exactly one-third of students performed at standard in math, a decline of 6.5 percentage points. For Black students, it is now 16% and 9.7% for English learners."
"In third grade English language arts, the first statewide measure of children’s ability to read, scores fell 6.5% percentage points to 42.2%, the lowest of any grade."
"In eighth grade math, a signal of students’ preparation for high school math, scores fell 7.4 percentage points, to 29.2, also the worst of any grade."
New Covid School Data Hub analysis. 3% of students had high or very high access to full in-person learning in 2020-2021; Avg ELA and math proficiency decline 2019 to 2022: 5.4pp.
DC: Jay Mathews, "I thought at least 50 percent credit for no work was okay. I was wrong."
"A teacher I know was working at a D.C. public high school when the district installed a rule during the pandemic that no grade on any assignment could be lower than 50 percent."
“It only took a few weeks before our students knew the score,” he said, “and it was an insult to their intelligence to believe that our bright, savvy kids wouldn’t soon learn how to work the system. Essentially, with the 50 percent grading rule, if our students completed one or two assignments, they would pass — and they knew it.”
"The 50 percent rule, he said, created “an environment where students can come to school to pop their heads into the classroom to tell the teacher to mark them present, which the teacher is required to do, then proceed to socialize, wander the halls, flirt, fight, walk to the corner store for some food and come back, play games in the gym or atrium, vandalize school property, pop in on the few friends who chose to go to their class, disrupting everyone, and generally live a free and happy life without consequences.”
North Dakota: "NAEP Results Show Importance of Education Aid, Teacher Support."
Texas: IES: "Early Progress and Outcomes of a Grow Your Own Grant Program for High School Students and Paraprofessionals in Texas"
Wisconsin: Milwaukee Public Schools:
"MPS spokesperson Nicole Armendariz says the district is using 40 remote teachers, including nine substitutes, in 13 middle and high schools."
"The students aren’t alone in classrooms. While the teacher is livestreamed, a paraprofessional or other school employee, dubbed a “classroom coach” supervises."
"The company providing these teachers is Elevate K-12, based in Chicago. Founder Shaily Baranwal says demand for Elevate teachers has grown since the COVID-19 pandemic."
"Baranwal says her company has over 10,000 teachers and works in more than 350 school districts, including seven in Wisconsin. "
"MPS continues to recruit, offering $6,000 hiring incentives at certain schools, along with relocation stipends."
"MPS is set to spend up to $2.5 million on Elevate K-12 if the collaboration extends through the full school year."
International
Japan: Starts COVID vaccination for children aged 6 months to 4 years.
Economic Recovery
Inflation: Interesting chart of inflation forecasts vs actual.
What Have Workers Done with the Time Freed up by Commuting Less?: Via the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Resources
Americans Less Optimistic About Next Generation's Future: Via Gallup.
42% say today's youth are likely to have better life than their parents.
Optimism is down 18 points since last reading, in 2019.
Republicans' optimism has fallen 33 points since 2019; Democrats' is flat.
How States Can Use American Rescue Plan Funding and Federal Grants to Support Teacher Diversity: Via EdTrust.
How to End the Epidemic of Failure in America’s Schools: Jeb Bush in the WSJ.
"The U.S. has a choice: Give up on a generation or confront this challenge head-on. Some adults find it easier to give up. They won’t say it out loud; they’ll simply lower expectations. Or they’ll explain away the drop in scores, blaming the pandemic when scores had already begun to decline before Covid hit. Rather than raise the bar, they’ll dodge accountability, allowing today’s low math and reading scores to become tomorrow’s ceiling. That is unacceptable."
"Lawmakers must step up, too. One way to help parents is eliminating the barriers students face in accessing a better education. This year, Arizona became a national model by creating a universal education savings account program with flexible, portable and customizable funding. That kind of legislation is transformative for student learning."
"Early literacy is the foundation for long-term reading success. To ensure every child can read by the third grade and be ready to succeed in life, policy makers must ensure that all educators are trained in phonics and the science of reading—an evidence-based approach to teach the understanding of sounds, decoding, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension."
"The same is true for math instruction. States should ensure that students have access to trained, effective math teachers. That may mean not all elementary teachers should teach math, only those who specialize in it."
Hang in There: We all need to keep each other close.