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Top Three
NCES: New school survey data.
"56% of public schools are offering after-school programs for students who need academic assistance during the 2022-23 school year."
"48% of public schools offering this type of programming incorporate high-dosage tutoring into the programming, while 42 percent incorporate some other type of tutoring."
"As of September 2022, 85% of public schools had no COVID-19 vaccination requirements for staff to be in the school building for the 2022-23 school year"
"99% percent of public schools had no COVID-19 vaccination requirements for students to be in the school building for the 2022-23 school year."
"12% of public schools required that students wear masks inside the school building in September 2022, compared to 15% at the end of the 2021-22 school year."
47% of public schools reported having to quarantine students in September, an increase from the 34% at the end of the 2021-22 school year.
Covid-19 Vaccine Protection Among Children and Adolescents in Qatar: Study.
"Vaccination in children was associated with modest, rapidly waning protection against omicron infection. Vaccination in adolescents was associated with stronger, more durable protection, perhaps because of the larger antigen dose."
"Among children, the overall effectiveness of the 10-μg primary vaccine series against infection with the omicron variant was 25.7%."
"Effectiveness was highest (49.6%) right after receipt of the second dose but waned rapidly thereafter and was negligible after 3 months."
"Effectiveness was 46.3% among children 5 to 7 years of age and 16.6% among those 8 to 11 years of age."
"Among adolescents, the overall effectiveness of the 30-μg primary vaccine series against infection with the omicron variant was 30.6%, but many adolescents had been vaccinated months earlier." "Effectiveness waned over time since receipt of the second dose. Effectiveness was 35.6% among adolescents 12 to 14 years of age and 20.9% among those 15 to 17 years of age."
"In the pre-omicron study, the overall effectiveness of the 30-μg primary vaccine series against SARS-CoV-2 infection among adolescents was 87.6% and waned relatively slowly after receipt of the second dose."
“Our findings suggest the need to reconsider the value and strategies of vaccinating healthy children in the omicron era with the use of currently available vaccines”
Public School Enrollment Is Down by More Than a Million. Why?: Thomas Dee in EdWeek.
"The state-level losses in public school enrollment relate strongly to these underlying losses of their school-age population, as can be seen in the chart below. These data imply the pandemic flight from public schools was not only switching schools within communities but also reflect changes in where families with school-age children lived."
"Taken together, these patterns imply state and local education leaders should plan immediately for the serious challenges (and potential opportunities) enduring enrollment losses imply for their COVID recovery efforts. The financial implications of enrollment loss have already begun to pressure districts to discuss school closures as well as teacher layoffs."
Federal
White House: Fact Sheet: President Biden Celebrates New Commitments Toward Equitable Workforce Development for Infrastructure Jobs.
Also via Jon Schnur: "Through the new Catalyze Registry, initiatives focused on talent pipelines will have a new platform for sharing their ideas, plans and anticipated impact with audiences of potential funders"
"The registry will be a one-stop source of information for philanthropic organizations looking to connect with local and regional initiatives that are applying for funding from various public programs."
DARPA: "Can AI Teach AI? DARPA Explores How AI Tutoring Can Help Adult Learners."
Following the pitch event, DARPA will award a total of $750,000 to winning submissions to develop those concepts.
Congress: Via Punchbowl:
"Here’s our reporting, based on numerous conversations, about who will be the committee chairs if Republicans win the House majority. Remember – these are going to be the members drafting bills, leading investigations and controlling the debate on Capitol Hill if Republicans win."
"Education and Labor: North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx has been seeking a waiver to circumvent term limit rules. But McCarthy, under pressure from other members, has signaled he’s not interested in granting such waivers. If McCarthy sticks with this position, expect this gavel to go to Michigan Rep. Tim Walberg. Dark horse: If Indiana Rep. Jim Banks loses the whip race, he could end up as Education and Labor chair."
"Worth noting: Republicans have put education policy at the center of much of their campaign-season rhetoric, so this committee will be important."
Covid Research
COVID-19 Surges Linked to Spike in Heart Attacks: "New data analysis from the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai found that deaths from heart attacks rose significantly during pandemic surges, including the COVID-19 Omicron surges, overall reversing a heart-healthier pre-pandemic trend." (Study)
"Researchers found that although acute myocardial infarction deaths during the pandemic increased across all age groups, the relative rise was most significant for the youngest group, ages 25 to 44."
"By the second year of the pandemic, the “observed” compared to “predicted” rates of heart attack death had increased by 29.9% for adults ages 25-44, by 19.6% for adults ages 45-64, and by 13.7% for adults age 65 and older."
Thinking Through the Holidays This Year: Via Katelyn Jetelina
"It’s been a while since I’ve shared my own chronicles of navigating this pandemic. I dread doing so, because I receive so much hate after. But it’s getting harder and harder to ignore the questions as we navigate the “choose your own adventure” phase of the pandemic. We are all just trying to figure this out as we go. And, unfortunately, the “normal” viruses are back, too."
"This is what my little family is doing this holiday season to stay healthy and enjoy time with our loved ones. I hope it’s useful."
The New Covid Boosters Are Incredible, and Everyone Should Get One: Bryce Covert in the NYT.
"When the first round of Covid shots became available, income disparities in vaccination rates quickly reared their heads. Instead of throwing every idea at the problem, by mid-2021 the Biden administration had started to grumble that people who hadn’t gotten the shot were “unbothered and unconvinced,” arguing, in essence, that every American was individually responsible for seeking out the shots. And yet at that time three-quarters of unvaccinated adults lived in a household earning less than $75,000, and many of them said they wanted to get vaccinated."
A Multinational Delphi Consensus to End the COVID-19 Public Health Threat: Nature
Nature brought together a multidisciplinary panel of 386 academic, health, NGO, government, & other experts from 112 countries/territories in a Delphi study, a strong research methodology that aims to garner consensus on answers to complex questions.
The result is 41 statements and 57 recommendations across six major areas: communication, health systems, vaccination, prevention, treatment and care, and inequities - each directed at governments, health systems, industry & other key stakeholders.
Stat: "So why bother to assemble a global panel and then run ourselves through the rigorous hoops of the Delphi method (a process developed in the 1950s to create agreement on military threats) to come up with still more recommendations on a topic that most people seem inclined simply to wish away?"
"Another unanimous agreement: Communications about Covid-19 have been ineffective from the start. To end a pandemic, information about the disease, its transmission, prevention, and treatment must be clear. To do this, health education messages must be tested for accuracy and impact. Spokespersons must be trained and culturally sensitive. Community leaders must be identified, and communities everywhere must be engaged."
Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Outbreak: Collection of essays over at RAND.
International
China: FT: "I spent 10 days in a secret Chinese Covid detention centre."
Resources
How to Love People Who Love Conspiracies: Via Arthur Brooks.
"A big mistake we make in confronting conspiracy theories is assuming they provide nothing but harm to those who hold them. In fact, a tendency toward these beliefs may be wired into us, because they could have been helpful to our survival at times."
"Conspiracy beliefs can also bring tangible benefits for well-being. For example, they can provide a sense of control in a chaotic world. Research has shown that people who feel they have little control over their lives are more likely to hold superstitions (for example, that the number 13 is unlucky), see spurious correlations (in, say, the stock market), and believe in conspiracies. Similarly, people with a need to feel unique and special may gravitate toward unusual beliefs, such as conspiracies, held by a minority of people."
"Resist the urge to debunk."
"Focus instead on what you have in common."
"One last point worth considering is the costs and benefits to you of focusing on a loved one’s conspiracy beliefs. Something that astonishes me about humans is our capacity to ruin things we love by focusing exclusively on what we hate. I understand this from an evolutionary perspective, of course: Survival often requires attention to the speck of threat in a vast space of comfort. I also understand it from a practical perspective: It is terrible to see someone you love in the grip of something you consider insane or even dangerous."
The EdTech Evidence Exchange and InnovateEDU: Announced they are merging.
Student Survey Finds Higher Ed Online Learning Experiences Improving: GovTech on a new WGU Labs study / press release.
23% more students this year citing that EdTech has enhanced their learning, and 23% more students reporting that they feel more prepared for the next steps in their academic journey.
Students perceive online learning options to be less effective and lower quality than in-person learning, with a corresponding perception that credentials earned via online modalities are of lower quality.
Two-thirds of surveyed students feel positively about institutions offering more fully online courses and fully online programs, but nearly one in five students feel negatively about the shift to fully online courses and programs.
Strategies For Addressing The Comprehensive Needs Of Students And Families Through Community Schools And Wraparound Supports: Via NGA.
Parent Polling: Via EdChoice/Morning Consult. Report / K-12 Parents Crosstabs / Adults 18+ Crosstabs
Back to School, but Not Caught Up: New report that is part of the American School District Panel, a research partnership between the RAND Corporation and CRPE.
Student absences and staff shortages have sidelined the adoption of academic acceleration strategies.
Districts are working hard to rebuild teacher capacity and collect better data on student performance.
Some districts are turning back to familiar instructional strategies developed before the pandemic. Others are offering different types of support for student academic recovery to address learning loss.
The pandemic has changed district priorities and reshaped the work of superintendents and senior administrators.
Whee: Better hold on.
The fact that the Delphi thing didn't produce an overwhelming recommendation that we need to get better vaccines at...Warp Speed...discredits the rest. Then there's the masking nonsense. I wish they had just said "we should reinstate the pandemic playbook that we threw out when we allowed the grotesquely wrong Oxford model to panic us".