Top Three
Pandemic Learning Loss Is Not an Emergency: Writes David Wallace-Wells in the NYT.
"But when I look at the data in detail, I just don’t see the signs of catastrophe that so many others seem to. I’m inclined to see that data as, at least, a glass half full, if not quite a best-case scenario. That’s because the declines, all told, strike me as relatively small, given the context: a brutal pandemic that terrified the country and killed more than a million of its citizens, upending nearly every aspect of our lives along the way."
"All told, at least as judged by test scores, the effect of extensive and perhaps excessive disruption to schooling was to return the country as a whole to the levels of educational achievement of the No Child Left Behind years."
"But I think, alongside those explanations, there’s something else: Americans as a whole are not exactly happy with how those two years went, and the pandemic has left almost all of us with some excess of rage and frustration. Early on, that was channeled into partisanship, with liberals blaming President Donald Trump for the pandemic itself and conservatives blaming liberals for pandemic restrictions.”
“But the lines of Covid partisanship are much muddier now — a few years on, there’s a Democrat in the White House, and a growing recognition that, while policy matters and political leadership have surely failed the country, the virus was going to wreak some amount of havoc regardless."
The New Reality Roundup: Via Marc Porter Magee.
"One tradition we broke during the pandemic was the regular collection and release of student achievement results. Unfortunately, bureaucracies that would prefer to operate in the dark outside of the watchful eyes of the public, like the California and New York education departments, took advantage of these disruptions to announce that they wouldn’t release test score data before the elections.”
"The New York State Education Department further broke with tradition by releasing the data as a Microsoft Access database file, which makes it almost impossible for an ordinary citizen to get access to the results and understand how their local district and schools are performing."
"Why were Catholic schools able to climb to the top of the rankings while district schools and charter schools lost so much ground? In part because in the fall of 2020 “more than 92% of Catholic schools across the country re-opened for in-person learning, compared with 43% of traditional public schools and 34% of charters.” The traditional focus of Catholic schools on rigorous curriculum, phonics, foundational knowledge, family engagement and safe and orderly classrooms likely also ensured that this extra in-person time was well spent."
"The only thing more depressing than the facts revealed by the 2022 NAEP was the relentless attempt by so many to spin them away into a cloud of indifference. The game plan is clear: minimize or obfuscate the results whenever possible and in instances where it’s not, fight any attempt to draw conclusions that might require a change in the way our education system works."
“The 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress results got released this week. I cannot stress the level to which I do not care,” writes Atlanta teacher Jay Wamsted in an op-ed for EdWeek."
“The hysteria over NAEP reflects our continued obsession with standardized testing, which began with the 2002 No Child Left Behind law and has shown no evidence of helping improve schools. The results …keep telling us what we already know,” writes Washington Post commentator Valerie Strauss."
“The Nation’s Report Card Shows Score Changes for Large City School Districts Mirror National Trends,” announced the headline of a press release for the Council of the Great City Schools, ignoring the enormous problems the NAEP revealed in their districts."
Let's Declare a Pandemic Amnesty: Via Emily Oster
"I have been reflecting on this lack of knowledge thanks to a class I’m co-teaching at Brown University on COVID. We’ve spent several lectures reliving the first year of the pandemic, discussing the many important choices we had to make under conditions of tremendous uncertainty."
"Some of these choices turned out better than others. To take an example close to my own work, there is an emerging (if not universal) consensus that schools in the U.S. were closed for too long: The health risks of in-school spread were relatively low, whereas the costs to students’ well-being and educational progress were high. The latest figures on learning loss are alarming. But in spring and summer 2020, we had only glimmers of information. Reasonable people—people who cared about children and teachers—advocated on both sides of the reopening debate."
"Given the amount of uncertainty, almost every position was taken on every topic. And on every topic, someone was eventually proved right, and someone else was proved wrong. In some instances, the right people were right for the wrong reasons. In other instances, they had a prescient understanding of the available information."
"The people who got it right, for whatever reason, may want to gloat. Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts. All of this gloating and defensiveness continues to gobble up a lot of social energy and to drive the culture wars, especially on the internet.”
“These discussions are heated, unpleasant and, ultimately, unproductive. In the face of so much uncertainty, getting something right had a hefty element of luck. And, similarly, getting something wrong wasn’t a moral failing. Treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people racked up more points than others is preventing us from moving forward."
"We have to put these fights aside and declare a pandemic amnesty. We can leave out the willful purveyors of actual misinformation while forgiving the hard calls that people had no choice but to make with imperfect knowledge... Because I thought schools should reopen and argued that kids as a group were not at high risk, I was called a “teacher killer” and a “génocidaire.” It wasn’t pleasant, but feelings were high. And I certainly don’t need to dissect and rehash that time for the rest of my days."
"Moving on is crucial now, because the pandemic created many problems that we still need to solve."
"Student test scores have shown historic declines, more so in math than in reading, and more so for students who were disadvantaged at the start. We need to collect data, experiment, and invest. Is high-dosage tutoring more or less cost-effective than extended school years? Why have some states recovered faster than others? We should focus on questions like these, because answering them is how we will help our children recover."
Federal
ED: Released a new "Supporting Learning Acceleration withAmerican Rescue Plan Funds" which highlights six strategies:
Provide students with tailored learning acceleration opportunities
Implement high-quality and effective tutoring
Use high-quality diagnostic and formative assessments to inform and personalize instruction
Integrate and prioritize the social, emotional, and academic needs of all students
Support the successful transitions of students from preschool to elementary school, elementary school to middle school, middle school to high school, and high school to postsecondary education and the workforce
Use high-quality out-of-school time (OST) learning experiences to support students’ social, emotional, and academic needs
CDC: CDC director experiences COVID rebound after taking Pfizer's Paxlovid.
Covid Research
Pandemic Didn't Change Infant Nerve Development: CIDRAP on a new study.
"A meta-analysis of eight studies finds that the risk of overall infant neurodevelopment didn't change during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic but that those with gestational exposure to SARS-CoV-2 were at higher risk for impaired communication and fine motor skills."
"Among all infants, 9,981 were screened before the pandemic, while 11,438 were screened after the pandemic began. Among the latter, 700 were born to mothers who had COVID-19 during pregnancy, while 7,778 had no known SARS-CoV-2 exposure, and maternal infection status was unknown for 2,960. Of the 8,892 infants screened from January 2020 to January 2021, 7% had neurodevelopmental impairment (NDI). Among the 691 infants who had been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 in utero, 12% had NDI, compared with 9% of those not exposed to the virus."
"Relative to infants screened from 2015 to 2019, the pandemic cohort had greater odds of impaired communication (odds ratio [OR], 1.70) and a higher likelihood of fine motor impairment (OR, 3.46) but no significant increases in overall development (OR, 1.12), gross (OR, 1.10) or fine (OR, 1.41) motor development, or personal-social development (OR, 1.20)."
COVID-19 Origins: Investigating a “Complex and Grave Situation” Inside a Wuhan Lab: A lot of buzz about this ProPublica/Vanity Fair article.
"The Wuhan lab at the center of suspicions about the pandemic’s onset was far more troubled than known, documents unearthed by a Senate team reveal. Tracing the evidence, Vanity Fair and ProPublica give the clearest view yet of a biocomplex in crisis."
"An interim report, released on Thursday by the minority oversight staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP), concludes that the COVID-19 pandemic was “more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident.”
"Even at the BSL-4 lab, they repeatedly lamented the problem of “the three ‘nos’: no equipment and technology standards, no design and construction teams, and no experience operating or maintaining [a lab of this caliber].”"And then, in the fall of 2019, the dispatches took a darker turn. They referenced inhumane working conditions and “hidden safety dangers.” On Nov. 12 of that year, a dispatch by party branch members at the BSL-4 laboratory appeared to reference a biosecurity breach."
"Given advance access to hundreds of pages of the Senate researchers’ findings and analysis, Vanity Fair, in partnership with ProPublica, spent five months investigating their underlying evidence. We analyzed WIV documents, consulted with experts in CCP communications, asked biocontainment experts to help analyze documents and reviewed with independent scientists the possible evidence that certain vaccine research may have begun far earlier than acknowledged."
"The interim report also raises questions about how quickly vaccines were developed in China by some teams, including one led by a military virologist named Zhou Yusen. The report called it “unusual” that two military COVID-19 vaccine development teams were able to reach early milestones even faster than the major drug companies who were part of the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed program."
"Vanity Fair and ProPublica spoke to experts who said that the timeline of Zhou’s vaccine development seemed unrealistic, if not impossible. Two of the three experts said it strongly suggested that his team must have had access to the genomic sequence of the virus no later than in November 2019, weeks before China’s official recognition that the virus was circulating."
"Rick Bright, the former HHS official who helped oversee vaccine development for the U.S. government, told Vanity Fair and ProPublica that even a four-month timetable would be “aggressive,” especially when the virus in question is new. “Things aren’t usually that perfect,” he said."
"By contrast, the interim Senate report concludes that “the hypothesis of a natural zoonotic origin no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt, or the presumption of accuracy.” The available evidence doesn’t fit the patterns of previous outbreaks, it states, including outbreaks of SARS in 2003 and avian influenza in 2013. Those outbreaks saw many independent spillover events in multiple locations, and those viruses “exhibited much greater genetic diversity than early SARS-CoV-2 strains.” And within six months of the first known case of SARS, the report says, Chinese health officials found evidence of the virus in palm civets and raccoon dogs."
First-dose COVID Vaccine Coverage Was Higher in States With Mandates: Study.
CDC researchers compared first-dose COVID-19 vaccine coverage in 12 states and Washington, DC, with vaccine mandates and no test-out option with that in 14 states that didn't require them or that offered a test-out option. The study period included the 8 weeks before and after the mandates were announced from Jul 26 to Dec 31, 2021.
An estimated 11.5% of 5,508,539 first-dose vaccine administrations were tied to the announcements. Vaccine receipt began to rise in the 13 jurisdictions with mandates 3 weeks after the announcement, with statistically significant increases of 0.20, 0.33, 0.39, 0.45, 0.49, and 0.59 percentage points in weeks 3 through 8, respectively, over the 62.9% coverage in the 14 comparison states.
While increases in vaccine primary series completion occurred 5 to 8 weeks post-announcement, a statistically significant difference of 56.3% between states with and without mandates was noted only at 7 and 8 weeks (difference, 0.2 percentage points).
Immunological Dysfunction Persists for 8 Months Following Initial Mild-to-Moderate SARS-CoV-2 Infection: Study.
State
Illinois: A Chalkbeat/Better Government Association analysis found that "a slew of high-poverty districts across the state have spent small fractions of their relief funds, despite serving students who were especially hard hit by the pandemic."
"Many are in Chicago's south suburbs, where almost a dozen districts have reported spending 15% or less of their federal dollars. Bloom Township, where 72% of almost 3,000 students are low-income, has spent only 6% of its $20 million allocation, according to state data."
"High-poverty Illinois districts have spent a smaller portion – about 42% – of their Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, or ESSER, allocations than wealthier districts, which have spent roughly 60%, according to the Chalkbeat/BGA analysis of state records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act."
"Among the districts slowest to spend COVID money are a cluster of about 15 south suburban districts, which serve overwhelmingly low-income Black and Latino student populations. Those districts have spent 14% of their federal dollars on average. That’s about $1,200 per pupil – less than half the average amount for high-poverty districts statewide."
"Almost 80% of students in these south suburban districts live in poverty. About 12% of their students met state standards in reading on the 2022 state report card and roughly 7% did in math, showing marked decreases in proficiency compared with pre-pandemic. Brookwood School District 167, a district that serves 57% low-income students, has reported spending only 7% of its $6 million — or $449,228 — as of mid-September."
"West Harvey-Dixmoor, where almost every student is low-income, has reported spending 13% of its federal COVID recovery money as of mid-September, according to state data. The district, where 7% of students met state standards in reading on the 2022 test and 3.5% did in math, earmarked a portion of the latest COVID package to address learning loss as required by the feds."
New York: NAEP scores show record drop in math for New York City’s fourth graders, but not in reading.
North Carolina: BEST NC launches updated per-pupil expenditure data explorer tool.
Pennsylvania: "After a comprehensive review by Chalkbeat and an independent investigator, we found 24 Chalkbeat Philadelphia articles containing verbatim language from previously published works and press releases without the proper attribution."
Tennessee: To address teacher shortages, Tennessee may drop major test for many teacher candidates.
International
China: Output of Apple iPhones at major China plant could fall 30% amid COVID curbs.
Resources
Early Enrollments: Burbio looks at 2022/23 enrollment summaries from two states, plus data related to last week's release of NAEP Assessments.
A Better Way to Read The Nation’s Report Card: Via Mathematica:
"Consider the suggestion that NAEP’s urban districts outperformed the national trend in reading because, compared to states, cities had a lower proportion of statistically significant declines. But statistical significance is affected by the number of students tested as well as the size of the effect. Fewer students take NAEP tests in cities than statewide, which makes it inevitable that cities will be less likely than states to show statistically significant changes, even if their actual score declines are the same."
"We can see how this is misleading by looking at the overall average results for the urban districts versus the country as a whole. In grade 4 reading, 58 percent of states had statistically significant declines, compared to only 35 percent of NAEP’s urban districts. But this does not mean that more of the urban districts “held steady.” The average grade 4 reading scores declined by 3 points nationwide and 3 points in the urban districts—a wash."
"The fact that fewer districts had statistically significant declines is a result of smaller sample sizes in districts versus states, not better performance."
'Shades of Badness' in Math, Reading Scores: Via Joanne Jacobs.
Don’t Panic Over the Latest Student Test Scores: Argues the Chicago Sun Times.
"Test scores, of course, do not tell the whole story about a child’s educational achievement. But low scores cannot be ignored either, especially when they show that only 1 in 5, or fewer, students are performing at or above academic standards."
"Chronic absenteeism, as well, remains unacceptably high. Statewide, 48% of Black students and 36% of Hispanic students were chronically absent, defined as missing 17 days or more of school. In CPS, just over 54% of Black students and about 44% of Hispanic students were chronically absent."
"It would be wise, we think, for policymakers, politicians, educators and other stakeholders to put aside any handwringing or finger-pointing about the bad news. Accept the good news. Use it as motivation to focus on doing what it takes to get students, especially lower-income children and students of color whose communities and schools were hardest hit by COVID-19, back on track."
A School District Guide to Advocating for Equity in American Rescue Plan Spending: Via EdTrust.
Broadband: Via the Washington Post, "U.S. aid program to keep people online was riddled with deception, fraud."
"The story of the government’s roughly $17 billion effort to close the country’s persistent digital divide is one of great promise and costly peril. Under the program, Washington offered to pay stipends directly to internet providers that lowered Americans’ monthly broadband bills — potentially to zero. But this simple premise at times brought complicated, undesirable results."
"Telecom giants soon subjected their customers to a patchwork of inconsistent speeds and price points. AT&T, for example, told some subscribers with premium service — ultrafast fiber connections with download speeds up to one gigabit per second — that they could receive the subsidy only if they changed to service that was one-third as fast with possible monthly data caps, according to complaints filed with the FCC."
"The details are laid bare in a trove of new data obtained by The Post under the Freedom of Information Act. The records illustrate how mishaps and missteps at the start of the broadband program — from aggressive telecom sales agents to faulty government technologies — may have put taxpayer dollars and innocent Americans at risk."
"More than 143,000 of those beneficiaries signed up for monthly stipends on behalf of a student whose name they never supplied, the records show. Nearly 20,000 applicants — some including children’s names, some not — also named a school 50 miles or more away from their home address, a distance that federal investigators would later identify as suspicious."
Thriller: Thriller night.
Rotherham Outdid Himself This Year: Kicking it up a notch by adding drones to his lightshow.
Happy Halloween: From the Three Bears.