Top Three
‘The Bottom Has Dropped Out’: Study Confirms Fears of Growing Learning Gaps: The 74 on a new NWEA report.
"Before the pandemic, the average fifth-grade class had students whose learning spanned seven grade levels. But in May 2020, NWEA, the nonprofit behind the widely used MAP Growth assessment, predicted that this variation would grow as the lowest-scoring students would fall two years behind. Because the exams are not given before third grade, the researchers warned then that their findings might not reflect students whose levels of understanding are even lower."
"New NWEA research finds this range has increased by 5% to 10%, with the losses disproportionately affecting low-performing students. While all pupils made less progress than they would have without COVID-19’s interruptions to instruction, children who were already struggling academically have fallen much further behind."
Chalkbeat: "Students who were already struggling were hit harder by the initial COVID disruptions and are now rebounding at a slower rate than their highest-achieving peers, according to findings from testing group NWEA."
“The ceiling stayed pretty consistent to where it was before, but the floor has dropped substantially, and I worry that we’re starting to push teachers beyond their capacity to meet that diversity of needs,” said Karyn Lewis, an NWEA researcher. “So I think this has less implications for what teachers should be doing, but more for what we should be doing as supporters of teachers.”
North Carolina Study on In-Person Learning: New study, "Our findings support the notion that in-person schooling during the pandemic may serve as an equalizer for lower-achieving students, particularly from historically marginalized or vulnerable student populations."
"A study led by a North Carolina State University researcher found that although there were steep learning losses in reading for elementary school students during the COVID-19 pandemic, in-person learning opportunities helped some of those students mitigate learning loss and accelerate gains in reading compared to online learners."
"Younger elementary students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, English learners and students with disabilities were particularly affected by the pandemic school closures."
Senate: Votes to end Covid-19 Emergency Declaration
"The Senate voted 62-36 to end the emergency declaration nearly three years after it was invoked. It’s unclear if the House will take up the measure."
"President Biden threatened to veto any congressional efforts to end the national emergency declaration’s status, said the Office of Management and Budget in a SAP."
"Action by Congress to end these authorities abruptly and prematurely would be a reckless and costly mistake. If Congress passes this resolution, the President will veto it"
Federal
Commerce: Update about the establishment of the National Semiconductor Technology Center (which includes some education/workforce implications)
"The NSTC will be a public-private consortium that provides a platform where government, industry, customers, suppliers, educational institutions, entrepreneurs, workforce representatives, and investors converge to address the semiconductor ecosystem’s most pressing challenges and opportunities."
White House: "Ashish Jha, the White House Covid-19 coordinator, predicted that the US will not be heading toward another Covid-19 surge driven by holiday gatherings akin to the Omicron wave in 2021"
“We are now at a point where I believe if you’re up to date on your vaccines, you have access to treatments … there really should be no restrictions on people’s activities,” Jha said. “I’m pretty much living life the way I was living life in 2019.”
Covid Research
Long-COVID Rate May Be Similar Whether Hospitalized or Not: CIDRAP: "Nearly 60% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients and 68% of their nonhospitalized counterparts seen at two healthcare centers in Madrid, Spain, early in the pandemic reported still having at least one symptom 2 years later, suggests a study published today in JAMA Network Open."
Failing the COVID Test: How Technocrats, Politicians, and We the People Let Us Down: Via Niskanen.
State
California: Report: California likely to have $25 billion budget deficit
"Democratic-controlled California taxes rich people more than other states, meaning most of its drop in revenue is because the uber-wealthy aren’t making as much money as they used to. That’s why California is often one of the first states to have budget problems when the economy starts to falter."
"The threat of a recession, revenue estimates represent the weakest performance California has experienced since the Great Recession."
Louisiana: Scores released today show that Louisiana’s statewide school performance score is now the same as before the pandemic — at 77.1 in both 2019 and 2022.
New York: Manhattan charter school goes temporarily remote because too many staffers out sick.
Resources
Mental Health of Teachers, Teens Takes Big COVID-19 Hit: CIDRAP:
"Teachers were at 40% higher risk of reporting anxiety within the previous 7 days than were healthcare workers, 20% more likely than office workers, and 30% more likely than workers in other occupations, such as military, farming, and legal professions. Teachers with a remote role were 60% more likely to report feeling isolated than their in-person counterparts, and female teachers had 70% higher odds of anxiety than their male peers."
"In the study on pandemic teen mental health, researchers from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) mined data on 9,720 US adolescents who responded to at least one survey fielded by the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, a sample of more than 10,000 US children 11 to 14 years old, from May 2020 to May 2021."
"Over 70% of adolescents said their families lost wages during the pandemic. Teens in families that sustained lost income were more likely to be Black (19.5% vs 12.2%), Hispanic (22.0% vs 12.9%), and living below the poverty line (15.2% vs 4.2%) than those without financial losses. These populations also reported higher levels of stress about the financial toll."
What If We Have the Narrative of Pandemic Learning Loss Wrong?: Tim Daly over at EduWonk
"Several plausible explanations have been suggested, from the lingering effects of the 2008 economic crash on lower income households to the introduction of Common Core. But I can’t stop wondering about one in particular: screen time."
"A separate study examined screen usage among children aged 9 and 10 using data collected between 2016 and 2018. The authors found average screen time was 3.99 hours per day. Notably, over an hour of that time was spent streaming videos, which makes sense given the technological innovations that had made streaming more accessible by 2016."
"One can’t help but notice that during the same span when screen time surged – particularly for less-privileged children – we found ourselves facing significant new challenges with struggling readers."
Assembly:Via Bellwether: "Let’s build high-quality, equitable, and individualized learning experiences for all young people."
"In Assembly Across Sectors, Kateland Beals, Liz McNamee, and Juliet Squire examine where Assembly-like principles have taken root in other industries or sectors — streaming media services, personal fitness, advertising, and health care — and the lessons they may or may not offer for Assembly in education."
"In Assembling Education: Infrastructure Needs to Support an Assembly-Based Ecosystem, Kateland Beals, Liz McNamee, and Juliet Squire highlight the infrastructure required for equitable access to Assembly-based learning."
"In Five Roles for Public Policy in Assembly, Lynne Graziano and Juliet Squire explain the most important ways policymakers can facilitate Assembly in education: providing agency, allocating funding, addressing barriers to equitable access, establishing guardrails for quality, and facilitating the translation of credit between contexts."
The Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic Recession on Less Educated Women's Human Capital: NBER paper.
"We project that wage losses one year out from 2020 are relatively modest on average but larger for married women than for unmarried women and for those working in COVID-impacted industries."
"For married women, it is more severe for younger married mothers, for younger and older married childless women, and for married mothers with older children."
"School closures are also important for married women with school-age children and increase negative wage impacts by 50 percent."
Convincing Students to Stay in School Post-Pandemic:Via FutureEd.
Artemis
Spacesuited Snoopy doll floats in zero-g on moon-bound Artemis 1 mission
Cellist YoYo Ma performed a rendition of “America the Beautiful” with the Philadelphia Orchestra to commemorate the launch of Artemis I to the Moon.