Last chance to share your thoughts about the direction we should take the Covid Updates! Hope everyone has a great weekend.
—John
Top Three
$20 Billion of ESSER Funds At Risk of Not Being Obligated: Important new report from McKinsey.
A survey of district leaders found that more than 90% have faced challenges deploying stimulus funds effectively.
"By the end of the 2021–22 school year—halfway through the available funding window—districts had spent an estimated $45 billion of total available funds. That leaves $140 billion to allocate over the next three budget cycles, increasing districts’ near-term annual budgets by approximately 5 to 6 percent."
"Based on these findings, McKinsey projects that nearly $20 billion in ESSER funds may not be obligated by the deadline because of a variety of factors, including administrative hurdles, limited internal planning capacity, and talent and vendor shortages."
"Nearly three-quarters of district administrators said they had struggled to overcome administrative hurdles to receiving funds, navigating compliance, and finalizing procurement. To get approval, districts must submit plans to their state education agency (SEA) and show that these meet the standards of evidence defined in the Every Student Succeeds Act. But the act is open to interpretation, and states are balancing a desire to get funding out the door quickly with a need to minimize the risk of federal audits down the road."
Political Ideology of U.S. Elected Officials Linked With COVID-19 Health Outcomes: New study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
"The higher the exposure to political conservatism, the higher the COVID-19 mortality rates and stress on hospital intensive care unit (ICU) capacity"
"During the study period, the higher the exposure to conservatism across several political metrics, the higher the COVID-19 age-standardized mortality rates, even after taking into account the CD's social characteristics; similar patterns occurred for stress on hospital ICU capacity for Republican trifectas and US Senator political ideology scores."
"For example, in models mutually adjusting for CD political and social metrics and vaccination rates, Republican trifecta and conservative voter political lean independently remained significantly associated with an 11%–26% higher COVID-19 mortality rate."
"Specifically, the higher the exposure to conservatism on each political metric (political ideology of US federal elected representatives in the House or Senate, their lack of support for 4 COVID-19 relief bills, and Republican trifectas), the higher the COVID-19 age-standardized mortality rates, even after taking into account the districts' social characteristics, voters’ political lean, and vaccination rates."
"Additionally adjusting for baseline diabetes and obesity prevalence (potentially confounders or mediators of sociopolitical context) only marginally attenuated the associations of the political metrics with COVID-19 mortality and increased their associations with hospital ICU capacity."
Parents Differ Sharply by Party Over What Their K-12 Children Should Learn in School: Via Pew.
"Republican and Democratic parents of K-12 students have widely different views on what their children should learn at school about gender identity, slavery and other topics,"
One-in-five parents of K-12 students say their children’s school doesn’t spend enough time on core academic subjects like reading, math, science and social studies.
About two-thirds of parents say it is extremely or very important to them that their children’s school teaches them to develop social and emotional skills.
Covid Research
Study Shows New Booster Improves Protection for Older People: NYT: "A new study by Pfizer and BioNTech suggests that their updated coronavirus booster released in September is nearly four times as good as its predecessor at boosting antibodies against the currently dominant version of the virus for people over age 55."
Visual Interpretation of Brain Hypometabolism Related to Neurological Long COVID: Study and thread suggesting long-Covid patient brains have inflamation.
Pfizer, BioNTech Start COVID-flu Combination Vaccine Study: Via Reuters.
Flu Hospitalizations Highest in 10 Years: Reuters. “An early fall spike in influenza cases has pushed U.S. hospitalization rates for the illness to the highest in a decade for this time of year, U.S. health officials said on Friday, noting that vaccination rates are down.”
Oral Zinc Cuts Risk of Death, ICU Stay Nearly 40% in COVID-19 Patients: CIDRAP: "Tunisian COVID-19 patients given oral zinc twice daily had a nearly 40% lower rate of death and ICU admission, as well as shorter hospital stays and time to symptom resolution, concludes a randomized controlled trial published today in Clinical Infectious Diseases."
State
Georgia: Barbour County schools to be virtual due to rise in cold, flu cases.
Rhode Island: Math scores up, ELA down.
"The results show nearly 27% of public school students in grades 3-8 were proficient in math, a 7-point increase over last year’s result of 20%. However, the increased rate is still lower than the nearly 30% of students who were proficient in math in 2019, before the pandemic."
"In English language arts the scores dropped below last year, from 33% proficiency to 31%. Prior to the pandemic, 38.5% of students were proficient on the RICAS in English."
Virginia: Governor Youngkin announced a tutoring partnership between four Richmond and Hampton Roads-area HBCUs to employ their students as tutors and mentors for high school and middle school students.
Economic Recovery
Jobs Report: Employers added 261,000 jobs in October down from 315,000 jobs added in September and above the 205,000 consensus forecast. The unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 3.7%.
Forecasts may have missed, but the Kalshi prediction market almost nailed it.
Heather Long: "Good news: K-12 education gained +13,500 employees in October. These workers are desperately needed. Public K-12 schools are still down 296,000 employees versus before the pandemic. Education is one of the least recovered sectors."
Resources
Predicting Innovation Trajectories in K–12 Education: Via Thomas Arnett. "Analyzing a school’s value network reveals which types of improvements and innovations it will or won’t adopt."
How Do You Talk to Students About Their Networks?: Via Julia Freeland Fisher
Cross-class Friendships Are Foundation for Economic Mobility, Human Flourishing: Via Bruno Manno.
These 6 Strategies Can Help Schools Tackle Chronic Absenteeism: Via K12 Dive.
Provide transportation and a morning routine
Track the data and create attendance teams
Create connections with and among students
Forge relationships with parents
Don’t be punitive
Get creative with half days
Broadband:
New Maryland county grant tackles the ‘long driveway’ broadband gap. "long driveways account for about 30% of the approximately 4,800 unserved homes in Charles County. As noted in the Broadband Strategic Plan, however, these “homes are not considered ‘unserved’ under federal and state definitions,” a status which can be immensely frustrating for residents."
New hot job: State high-speed internet network director.
Perspective: Juggling balls as seen from above.
Why did they only report for 55+? Guessing that the WH (with whom they met last night) asked them not to, because the numbers were not impressive. Great partnership they have!