Tonight marks the 600th Covid Policy Update which is a bit crazy (and exhausting) to think about.
As I've previously shared with you, these updates grew out of an effort to help make sense of the confusing - and at times conflicting - information related to our pandemic response and recovery. I checked my notes folder and believe we’ve shared more than 25,000 articles, studies, and resources along with 3,500 graphics, charts, and maps that chronicled the course of the pandemic over last three years.
Today’s milestone also offers the opportunity to pause for a moment and check-in to see if it makes sense continuing these updates going forward. We’re in a very different place today than even a year ago and I know many of you are moving on to other important and urgent issues.
I’m in a similar situation as I have some engagements winding down and am trying to map out my time next year. I’m a small (but mighty!) team of one and with travel picking back up, it’s been a bit more difficult to get these out every day given the time it takes to produce them.
I asked the CDC for some guidance as to what should trigger an eventual off-ramp and they suggested taking the daily positivity rate, index it to a 12 month rolling chain weighted CPI average, and divide it by 3. If the result is a prime number, I should keep publishing.
Instead, I have a brief survey that is anonymous and should take no more than 3 minutes to complete. Grateful for any and all feedback.
With appreciation,
--John
Top Three
Are Students Using Intensive Tutoring? What National Data Show: Via EdWeek.
"The 2022 NAEP survey finds significantly fewer 4th and 8th graders now attend schools that offer teacher-led tutoring in math. For example, 5 percentage points fewer 4th and 8th graders attend schools that offer teacher-led tutoring in math during the school day."
"And fewer students in either grade said they participate in intensive tutoring in math outside of the normal school day in 2022, compared to 2019. For example, 14 percent of 4th graders in 2022 said they receive math tutoring outside of school time at least once or twice a week—down from 16 percent in 2019. And the share of 4th graders who never got math tutoring rose from 60 percent to 62 percent during the same time. Reading was a bit better: the share of 4th graders receiving at least weekly tutoring rose since 2019, while the share at 8th grade held flat."
"In a survey earlier this year, National PTA found only 46 percent of parents reported that their child’s teacher had talked with them about a plan to correct their child’s learning loss."
Damage from NAEP Math Losses Could Total Nearly $1 Trillion: The 74:
"In a new study timed to coincide with the NAEP release, researchers found that the erosion of math skills experienced by America’s eighth graders may lead to hundreds of billions of dollars in lost earnings over the coming decades. Other important life trends, including high school graduation, college enrollment, and criminal arrests, are also likely to be adversely affected by years of thwarted schooling."
"Staiger and co-author Tom Kane, a Harvard economist and faculty director of the university’s Center for Education Policy Research, collected testing records for about 125,000 students attending nearly 4,800 schools over multiple decades. Next, they combined that information with representative responses from both the U.S. Census and the American Community Survey — which provided state- and year-specific data on income, educational attainment and teen motherhood — as well as FBI estimates of both violent and property crime arrests by age, year, and state."
“We’re still way ahead of where we were in the 1990s, even though some states have slipped back,” said Staiger. “This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be thinking about helping these cohorts, because we’ve now reset the norm. But we really should be celebrating the incredible things that schools and teachers have done over the last 30 years.”
"But the apparent influence of those gains on later-life outcomes was even more striking. After controlling for the possible effects of race, gender and educational attainment of parents (all of which could exert a powerful sway on young lives independently of their classroom learning) Staiger and Kane found that growth in eighth-grade math was positively correlated with high school graduation, college enrollment, and life earnings from age 28."
"The average decline of eight points would conversely imply a loss of 1.6 percent of earnings. Using existing estimates of Americans’ lifetime income, the authors present a rough calculation of what that would mean across 48 million public school students: $900 billion."
The Pandemic Generation Goes to College. It Has Not Been Easy: Via the NYT.
"Jazeba Ahmad was a junior in high school when Covid-19 hit and her math education faltered. Ms. Ahmad was enrolled in an international baccalaureate math class intended to provide a strong foundation in areas like algebra, geometry, statistics and calculus."
"But her high school in Columbus, Ohio, made a rocky transition to remote learning, she said, and soon, math classes passed with little to show for them. By her first year at Columbus State Community College, Ms. Ahmad, 19, found herself floundering in something that should have been mastered — algebra."
“I missed out a lot in those two years,” Ms. Ahmad said. “If I had learned those skills in high school, I feel like I would have been better equipped to do well in that class.”
"The swirl of issues “all demonstrate that we’ve got a crisis,” said Stanley Litow, a visiting professor of public policy at Duke University and a former deputy chancellor of the New York City public schools."
"Benedict College, a historically Black college in Columbia, S.C., is facing that reality. First-year enrollment there, which typically hovers around 700 students, was halved in the fall of 2020 and rebounded to just under 600 last fall, said the college president, Roslyn Clark Artis. But this term, administrators were stunned to see an enrollment of just 378, which Dr. Artis attributed to students’ concerns about the economy."
“We are now two and a half weeks past midterm, and our grades are telling the tale: students are struggling in math."
Federal
FTC: Accused Chegg of ‘Careless’ data security
"Chegg, a homework help app, exposed the data of 40 million users, including details about some students’ sexual orientation and religion, regulators said in a legal complaint."
"In a legal complaint, filed on Monday morning, regulators accused Chegg of numerous data security lapses dating to 2017. Among other problems, the agency said, Chegg had issued root login credentials, essentially an all-access pass to certain databases, to multiple employees and outside contractors. Those credentials enabled many people to look at user account data, which the company kept on Amazon Web Services’ online storage system."
"The federal complaint against Chegg represents the first case under the agency’s new campaign focused specifically on policing the ed-tech industry and protecting student privacy. In the Chegg case, the homework help platform is not aimed at children, and the F.T.C. did not invoke the children’s privacy law. The agency accused the company of unfair and deceptive business practices."
"Other online learning services may also hear from regulators. The F.T.C. disclosed in July that it was pursuing a number of nonpublic investigations into ed tech providers."
Covid-19 Research
Pandemic Update: Via Eric Topol.
"A well regarded group from Germany’s University of Tubingen published a paper in Science Immunology comparing various vaccines and booster impact on neutralizing antibodies and spike-specific T-cells. Complete vaccination (CV) with any of 4 vaccines (Modena, Pfizer, J&J, Astra-Zeneca, and mixing of these) achieved durable T-cell responses at 6-month follow-up (CVT2). A booster vaccine (BV)’s main effect was for increasing antibodies to the spike rather than augmenting the T-cell response. That is, as the authors concluded: “T-cell responses are not markedly boosted by a third vaccination.”
"So the current study helps us nail down the mechanism for what boosters accomplish and why they’re necessary—at least for now. As I’ve written previously, we can’t rely on boosters every 4-6 months as a long term viable strategy, so the findings also beg the efforts for next generation vaccines that are more durable, variant-proof, and block infections/spread (yes, nasal vaccines)—which boosters are not doing adequately."
"Now for the best news of the day, which is on the BA.5 bivalent booster, a reprint from Emory University that shows how well the bivalent held up to BQ.1. and BA.2.75.2, two of the most immune evasive new variants, compared with the original movement shot(s) via the live neutralization assay."
"This is the best data we have yet seen for the bivalent booster, since for the 2 earlier preprints by the Ho and Barouch labs, both did not show a big BA.5 neutralizing antibody response as was hoped. Now we have lab evidence that our defense against 2 of the worrisome variants with a growth advantage in the United States (especially BQ.1.1) should be bolstered with the new booster."
"All the more reason to get a booster!"
Could a Nose Spray a Day Keep COVID Away?: Via Nature.
"Now Moscona, at Columbia University in New York City, and her colleagues have homed in on a compound that might foil SARS-CoV-2. Even better, it’s simply sprayed up the nose — no needle required."
"The spritz developed by Moscona’s team is one of a raft of proposed nasal sprays to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection. The sprays would be fast-acting and would be applied frequently, perhaps once or twice a day, to the site where the virus first takes hold — the nasal lining and throat. Unlike vaccines, which train the recipient’s immune system to build long-lasting protection, the sprays are short-lived compounds that would directly block the virus’s ability to enter cells."
"The effort to develop prophylactic treatments against viruses long predates COVID-19, says Wendy Barclay, a virologist at Imperial College London. Such research has paid off with a range of medications taken by mouth, including oseltamivir (Tamiflu), which protects against influenza infection, and tenofovir–emtricitabine, which prevents HIV infection. But, Barclay says, there are no prophylactic nasal sprays except First Defence, which is designed to act as a physical barrier against common-cold virus particles."
"Prophylactic sprays have a simpler job than conventional antivirals, such as Paxlovid, that are used in the first days of an infection: preventing a single virus particle from infecting a cell is a “much easier ask than counteracting the effects of millions of viral particles” days after infection, Barclay says."
The Worst Pediatric-Care Crisis in Decades: Via The Atlantic.
"An early, massive wave of RSV, flu, and other viral infections is slamming kids and overcrowding emergency departments."
"Across the country, children have for weeks been slammed with a massive, early wave of viral infections—driven largely by RSV, but also flu, rhinovirus, enterovirus, and SARS-CoV-2."
"Many emergency departments and intensive-care units are now at or past capacity, and resorting to extreme measures. At Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, in Maryland, staff has pitched a tent outside the emergency department to accommodate overflow; Connecticut Children’s Hospital mulled calling in the National Guard. It’s already the largest surge of infectious illnesses that some pediatricians have seen in their decades-long careers, and many worry that the worst is yet to come."
"On the one hand, with all the talk of SARS-CoV-2 being “mild” in kids, some parents might ignore the signs of RSV, which can initially resemble those of COVID, then get much more serious, says Ashley Joffrion, a respiratory therapist at Baton Rouge General Medical Center."
State
California: "What Will It Take to Keep SF Students in School Amid the Spike in Absenteeism?"
"Chronic absenteeism in the San Francisco Unified School District has more than doubled from pre-pandemic levels, rising from 14% to 28%, according to preliminary data for 2021-22. A student is considered chronically absent when they miss 10% of the 180-day school year."
DC: The D.C. Council is considering suspending the city's student COVID vaccine mandate as vaccination rates lag.
"I was surprised that we are one of three jurisdictions in the country that has a vaccine mandate for kids for COVID," D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson told reporters Monday. “There is now discussion ... that maybe the virus is evolving into something more like the flu, which is serious, but we don't have a vaccine mandate for the flu,” he added.
International
China: Via Axios, "Workers in China fled the world's largest iPhone factory over the weekend after days of partial COVID restrictions had forced workers into a "closed loop" inside the facility."
"Trash piled up and employees began to worry about access to food, as well as the risk of infection, Bloomberg reports."
Economic Recovery
JOLTS: The number of job openings rose by 437,000 in September, and the August revisions showed a smaller drop than first reported.
CNBC: "Fed policymakers watch the JOLTS report closely for clues about the labor market. The latest numbers are unlikely to sway central bank officials from approving what likely will be a fourth consecutive 0.75 percentage point interest rate increase this week. September’s data indicates that there are 1.9 job openings for every available worker."
What Workers Want is Changing. That Could Be God for Government: Good McKinsey article for state and federal policymakers.
"Closing the talent gap is a top priority for senior leaders we’ve spoken to across all levels of government. Although the public sector has unique challenges in attracting and retaining civil servants, it also has unique strengths it could leverage. Because what workers want from a job is changing."
"Most government leaders cannot easily change compensation levels—a disadvantage when inflation is high and private-sector employers are raising wages to partially offset that blow. However, our survey found that the public sector has advantages over the private sector that it could leverage in the race for talent."
"Both our global and public-sector surveys reveal that today’s workers want more than just a paycheck. They want their jobs to have meaning and purpose—that is what public service is all about. Indeed, it is why 40 percent of our survey respondents said they plan to stick with the civil service."
Resources
What to Expect When You're Electing:
The NBC News political team produced a 62-page Election Book to assist the network’s anchors and reporters ahead of Election Day. Some interesting sections on issues (including Education and Covid), races to watch, trends, election night timeline, and a 2022 timeline at the end.
How Parents and Schools Can Get Chronically Absent Kids Back in the Classroom: Via the Conversation.
"Some schools – including those in San Francisco and Baltimore – look more closely at the reasons students miss class. They have found some problems schools can help solve, such as replacing unreliable transportation with carpools or providing information about local bus service."
"Four Georgia school districts reduced chronic absence by 8% by simply texting parents when their children were absent and warning them that kids who miss school are less likely to graduate."
"If students have a close contact at school – a teacher, another staff member or even a fellow student – that person can encourage them to stay in school. A mentoring program launched in New York City saw students who missed school frequently gain almost two weeks of instruction because of mentoring connections and creating relationships with adults."
"My own research, co-authored with social psychologist Chris Kearney, has found that school counselors can also be crucial to providing the support students need to stay in school. Often this help is not academic but rather involves connecting students with therapists to deal with trauma or food banks to reduce hunger, for example."
America’s Falling Test Scores and the Power of Parental Anxiety: Jay Caspian Kang in The New Yorker.
"What we seem to have, then, is as close to an equal-opportunity problem as one can find in this country. Everyone’s scores are down, and the relatively small differences between racial groups on one test could very well be attributed to a whole range of inputs, including the fallibility of standardized testing."
"For better or worse, the universality of this decline is what will move the needle politically. It’s one thing for parents who have every reason to be confident in their child’s advantages to worry that poor minority kids in their cities aren’t measuring up to standards; it’s quite another for those same parents to suddenly get told that their own kids are behind, too."
The Long-Run Impacts of Same-Race Teachers: New study.
"Leveraging the Tennessee STAR class size experiment, we show that Black students randomly assigned to at least one Black teacher in grades K–3 are 9 percentage points (13 percent) more likely to graduate from high school and 6 percentage points (19 percent) more likely to enroll in college compared to their Black schoolmates who are not."
"Black teachers have no significant long-run effects on White students. Postsecondary education results are driven by two-year colleges and concentrated among disadvantaged males. North Carolina administrative data yield similar findings, and analyses of mechanisms suggest role model effects may be one potential channel."
AERDF: Map of the education R&D ecosystem.
Broadband:
Rural Communities and theNational Broadband Imperative, from Rural Rise.
Governor Hochul Issues New York State Challenge to FCC Broadband Data
NACo urges counties to participate in the FCC's Broadband Map process.
Things Got A Little Rowdy: At last weekend's Tennessee vs Kentucky football game.
At first, I thought this was David Harbour from 'Stranger Things'
Another view of the scene.