Top Three
Schools, Parents, and Covid: Really great panel discussion yesterday on CBS's Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan; Laura Meckler, Washington Post; Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner; and Emily Oster. (Transcript)
"Emily Oster: Yes, so I'm an economist, but I'm also a parent. And I talk to a lot of parents. And what I can say is right now parents are very worried about the next steps for their kids. They see the historic test score declines. They see the declines in routine vaccination rates for kids. And they want us to be looking to solutions. They don't want to be looking to rehash the debates that we had two years ago. They want to know, what investments are we going to make as a policy group to fix the problems that they're seeing for their kids."
"Scott Gottlieb: Well, look, I think we need to distinguish - and [Emily] was at the vanguard, to your point, at arguing for schools to opened. A lot of kids got back in the classroom because of her efforts. So she's - she's advocating on behalf of others when she talks about amnesty. I think we need to distinguish between structural failures of institutions and mistakes that were made because we were in the fog of viral war and we didn't understand the - the virus itself. There were institutions that failed. CDC. There were a lot of systemic failures there. Even people talk about the teachers union not working to get people back in the classroom. And then there were things we got wrong. We didn't recognize the virus was airborne. We thought it was droplet transmission, so we advocated the use of cloth masks when they weren't effective. So, there were things we did wrong because we didn't understand the virus. We need to learn from that. But I think the - the structural features that we got wrong, where institutions failed, that we can't move on from because we need to reform those institutions."
"Scott Gottlieb: Yes, look, I think that there's a pervasive sense, rightly so, that public health institutions have failed the public and that they weren't equipped to tackle the challenges that people have been facing. We shouldn't have had this shortage that we had with the formula. We should have responded to it more adequately than we did. CDC didn't put out practical guidance, didn't advise families on what to do. They required them for six feet of distancing is what kept most schools shut well into the spring of 2021. So, there's a pervasive sense that public health institutions didn't work on behalf of families. They were slow to integrate new information. And there's not a - there's not real evidence that they've reformed themselves."
"Emily Oster: I think that the focus needs to be on what we need to do to move forward for solutions, and, you know, and -- to give you a concrete example, when we look at something like test scores, which many parents are very worried about, we see that over the last school year there's been some test score recovery, but that's uneven. Some school districts have recovered to where they were in 2019. Some school districts haven't recovered at all."
If You’ve Had Covid, Watch Out for Stroke Symptoms: Via the Washington Post.
"Doctors were starting to suspect Covid was not just a respiratory disease but a blood vessel disease. Larger studies now back up their suspicions and showed that Covid infections elevated everyone’s risk. That explained why younger people who should have had almost no risk were showing up with strokes, but they were just the tip of the iceberg. Patients who already smoked or had high blood pressure or diabetes went from high risk to even higher."
"One recent study, published in the journal Heart — associated with the British Medical Journal — tracked 54,000 people in the UK for four and a half months, and concluded that those who’d been infected were 2.7 times more likely to develop venous thromboembolism — a dangerous type of blood clot — than those who had never been infected."
"Al-Aly, who works at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System, was one of the first doctors to jump into studying long Covid and, more generally, the aftermath of infection. “Something about SARS-CoV-2 increases propensity to damaging the lining of the blood vessels and increases the probability of blood clotting,” he said."
Governors Should Stop Spinning NAEP Results and Start Proposing Solutions: Marc Porter Magee and Ned Stanley
"We know what interventions will work:
"Expansive summer programming to provide as many students as possible with remedial and accelerated learning activities across the calendar year, from programs like AZ OnTrack and Summer Boost NYC."
"Small group or individualized tutoring, provided free of charge to any student who wants it. Accelerate founder Kevin Huffman has distributed $10 million across twenty-eight states to launch and refine tutoring programs, TennesseeCAN and JerseyCAN have helped to secure legislative commitments to expand tutoring, and Teach For America launched the Ignite Fellowship to place college students as tutors for underprivileged children."
"Curriculum shifts and professional development to support educators in teaching the science of reading, which powered the Mississippi Miracle."
Election 2022
The 74: 16 Key Midterm Races That Could Impact Schools, Students & Learning Recovery After COVID
Whiteboard: Has a list of all the state education races.
Politico Education: Has a good breakdown of the federal races that could impact education.
WSJ: Theories on Race, Gender and Sexuality Are Pivotal Issues in U.S. School Board Elections.
Washington Post: Track your ballot online.
The final national NBC News poll of the 2022 midterms finds a highly competitive campaign landscape ahead of Election Day. Story / Poll / Deck
What Will the 2022 Midterm Elections Mean for Education? AEI event on Wednesday, November 9, 2022 | 10:00 AM to 11:15 AM ET featuring: Derrell Bradford, Rick Hess, Bethany Little, Nat Malkus, and Andy Rotherham.
Important Congressional dates post-election:
Week of November 14:
House New Member Orientation Begins on November 13
Organizational Meetings for the 118th Congress
November 15: House GOP Leadership Elections
November 16: House GOP Consideration of Conference Rules and Steering Map
To be scheduled: House Democratic Leadership Elections
November 15-17: Senate New Member Orientation
Week of November 28:
House New Member Orientation Continues on November 27
Organizational Meetings Continue: House GOP Steering Committee Considers Committee Chairs; House Democrats TBD
December 6: Georgia Senate Runoff (if needed)
December 16: Continuing Resolution Expires
Federal
GOP's Post-Pandemic Playbook: Via Axios.
"A GOP committee aide told Axios that returning to "normal" is a priority, namely by ending the public health emergency, stopping unnecessary pandemic spending, and reversing any worker COVID mandates."
"Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the top Republican on the committee, has repeatedly called for the Biden administration to provide a plan to unwind the public health emergency."
"The aide also said the panel's COVID top oversight targets are the virus' origins, policies around school shutdowns, and Democrats' pandemic spending."
"A list of COVID-related oversight targets provided to Axios includes relief money to schools, lost learning from school closures, government teleworking policies, pandemic-era child nutrition regulations, and the public health emergency."
"Ways & Means: Republicans are getting creative to claw back leftover COVID aid, pressing a handful of states with outstanding federal unemployment trust fund loans to pay back what they owe with unused American Rescue Plan money — rather than spend it on projects Republicans say amount to "waste and abuse."
ESSER Spending: Burbio with a new analysis of the pace of spending:
"The average percent spent difference from the states below is 3.36%. That figure would average down to districts spending just under 3% of their funds per thirty day period if you were going to estimate how much ESSER III funding districts are spending monthly."
"This analysis indicates that in addition to having the majority of ESSER III funds still available, districts are spending at a deliberate pace and the funding will last well into calendar 2024."
Schools Aren’t Spending Their COVID Catch-up Funds Fast Enough: Via Axios.
"The NAEP scores ... really raised that question about whether or not the money is aligned in a way that's going to fix this problem," Marguerite Roza, the director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, said."
"I'm seeing recovery efforts, I'm just not seeing ambitious recovery efforts that are designed to match the magnitude of the losses," Thomas Kane said.
Covid Research
Paxlovid and Long Covid: Via Eric Topol.
"Here is the graph of the occurrence of Long Covid over time, a 26% reduction for Paxlovid. The curves are continuing to diverge over time so it will be quite interesting to see more extended follow-up."
Via Axios: "The study of 56,000 veterans who tested positive for the virus found those given the medication in the first five days of infection had a 25% decreased risk of developing 10 of 12 symptoms, such as heart, kidney or liver disease."
Thanks Covid: A lot of discussion and debate over this SNL sketch.
State
Iowa: Gov. Kim Reynolds will appeal a federal court ruling that enables school districts to impose universal mask mandates on students and staff.
Nebraska: Via EdurecoveryHub: "Nebraska Invests in K-8 Math Acceleration [With Zearn] and Analyzes Impact"
North Carolina: School bus driver shortages impact families at 5 schools.
Economic Recession
Recession: Goldman: "We still see a 35% probability that the US economy will enter a recession in the next 12 months. However, our 35% recession probability is well below the 60-70% consensus in the latest Wall Street Journal forecaster survey because we still see a very plausible four-step path from high inflation of the present to a low-inflation economy of the future without a recession.”
Resources
Innovative Schools: NSVF is awarding $4 million for new innovative schools.
Why It’s So Hard to Weave Social-Emotional Learning Into Academics: Via EdWeek.
"Nearly two-thirds of educators said that weaving SEL skills into academic subjects is challenging, according to a survey of 824 educators conducted by the EdWeek Research Center from Sept. 28 to Oct. 17."
"More than 40 percent of principals and district leaders who participated in the EdWeek Research Center survey said that parents have raised concerns with their districts that social-emotional learning teaches children values they don’t approve of. But only 14 percent of that group said that this pushback caused their school or district to put less emphasis on SEL."
"Nearly half of educators in the EdWeek Research Center survey—46 percent—said finding time to focus on SEL amid the drive to help students make up academic ground during the pandemic is a major barrier to teaching those softer skills."
Just a Bear: Catching snowflakes.