Covid-19 Policy Update #622
Thursday 1/5
Top Three
Public Schools Lost More Than One Million Students During Pandemic: Via the WSJ:
"Public schools in the U.S. have lost more than a million students since the start of the pandemic, prompting some districts across the country to close buildings because they don’t have enough pupils or funding to keep them open."
"Districts in cities including Denver and Indianapolis have developed plans to shut down underused schools, and superintendents say more closures are inevitable unless enrollment drops are reversed."
"Enrollment fell in roughly 85 of the nation’s largest 100 public-school districts for which data was available, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Fort Worth, Texas, all saw school-system enrollment drops of around 10%, the analysis found."
"“Districts don’t want to shrink in the same way that we see in other industries,” Dr. Roza said. Schools with few students can become very expensive to operate, on a per-pupil basis, she said, leading districts to defer building maintenance and put off other investments."
Quarantines, Not School Closures, Led to Devastating Losses in Math and Reading: I have a piece over at The 74 that explores how quarantines disrupted student learning, in part because so few districts had plans to offer live instruction to quarantined students.
"Quarantine guidance from the CDC required an entire class of students to be sent home for as long as two weeks if they had close contact with a child who tested positive. The result was massive learning disruptions that occurred throughout the school year, even in states where schools were officially reopened."
"A bipartisan poll conducted by Public Opinion Strategies and Impact Research found that on average, children missed five weeks’ worth of school in the first half of the academic year, due in part to quarantines."
"Only four of the largest 100 districts promised live instruction for quarantined students, and just 36% of quarantined students reported having live classes with teachers."
"Even more devastating: a review of data from the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey from March to June 2022 found that on average, a staggering 16% of students said they had no live contact with teachers over the previous seven days."
"It’s little wonder then that 7 out of 10 students found quarantine to be disruptive to their learning. And it should not be surprising that so many disrupted school days and so little interaction with teachers would contribute to the academic loss reflected in the NAEP scores."
ESSER Funding: ED released: Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund Fiscal Year 2021 Annual Performance Report
In FY 2021, roughly 43% of expended funds from subgrants to LEAs were used to meet students’ academic, social, emotional, and other needs. This represents the largest category of LEA subgrant expenditures.
Over 2,700 LEAs expended ESSER funds on mental health supports.
For FY 2021, 44% of expended funds from subgrants to LEAs were used for personnel, including salaries and benefits for additional staff and additional staff time to address the impacts of lost instructional time.
Federal
Congress: McCarthy loses 9th vote for Speaker, even after making additional concessions to hardliners.
As of tonight, Politico reports "McCarthy and his conservative opponents have reached a tentative breakthrough after a days-long standoff, giving the California Republican’s speaker bid a needed momentum boost."
Covid-19 Research
XBB.1.5:
“We are concerned about its growth advantage,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist who is the WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19. “We do expect further waves of infection around the world, but that doesn’t have to translate into further waves of death because our countermeasures continue to work,” she said.”
The Atlantic: "Nor is XBB.1.5 a doomsday-caliber threat. So far, no evidence suggests that the subvariant is inherently more severe than its predecessors."
"With the world’s immune landscape now so uneven, “it’s getting harder for the virus to do that synchronized wave that Omicron did this time last year,” says Verity Hill, an evolutionary virologist at Yale."
White House Covid Director Dr. Jha shared what we know and don't know.
Covid’s Winter Surge is Poised to Exceed Summer Peak: Via Stat.
"The number of people hospitalized with Covid-19 is about to surpass the figure reached during this summer’s spike."
"Notably, the number of people hospitalized with Covid — roughly 40,000 — is still far below the winter waves of 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 (the wave driven by the original Omicron variant) as well as the Delta wave in summer and fall 2021."
More Than 1-in-4 Think Someone They Know Died From COVID-19 Vaccines: According to a new Rasmussen Reports poll.
"Seventy-seven percent (77%) of adults who have not gotten COVID-19 vaccinations believe it’s at least somewhat likely that side effects of COVID-19 vaccines have caused a significant number of unexplained deaths. Among those who have gotten the vaccine, just 38% consider unexplained deaths from the vaccine at least somewhat likely."
"46% of whites, 48% of blacks and 57% of other minorities believe it is at least somewhat likely that side effects of COVID-19 vaccines have caused a significant number of unexplained deaths."
"The documentary Died Suddenly has been criticized as promoting “debunked” anti-vaccine conspiracy theories but has been seen by some 15 million people."
The Inflated Risk of Vaccine-Induced Cardiac Arrest: Benjamin Mazer in The Atlantic, "Damar Hamlin’s collapse on Monday Night Football calls attention to a medical myth that will not die."
"Anti-vaccine influencers have been fomenting fear about a supposed rise in COVID-shot-induced athletic deaths for a while. Fact-checkers have repeatedly assessed these claims and found them to be without merit. Jonathan Drezner, a sports-medicine physician who studies sudden deaths in athletes, told media outlets last year that he was “not aware of any COVID-19 vaccine-related athletic death.”
Related via the Washington Post: Covid misinformation spikes in wake of Damar Hamlin’s on-field collapse.
COVID Vaccines Appear Safe in Kids Who Had Post-Infection Syndrome: An observational NIH-funded study suggests that COVID-19 vaccination is safe for kids 5 years and older who developed the rare but serious post-infection multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C).
State
Louisiana: Louisiana’s education chief urged public schools and systems Tuesday to remove TikTok from public devices amid concerns about security and the privacy of users’ data.
Massachusetts: There are nearly 300 job postings for school nurse positions accounting for more than 10% of all school nurses in the state.
Michigan: 54 school districts and 112 schools entered into partnership agreements with the state to help improve academic outcomes for their students, state education officials announced in November — an increase over the previous year that reflects underfunding, a teacher shortage and the ongoing impact of COVID-19.
New Mexico: Students in Title I schools, including those in tribally controlled areas, will have access to 1:1 online tutoring services with Paper through a nearly $3.3 million investment.
Washington: The Washington Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee released a new report / PowerPoint Deck / dashboard: “Racial Equity Effects of Restricting In-Person Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic”
"Student assessment scores declined during the pandemic. School poverty level had the greatest association with assessment scores."
"OSPI has not yet established processes to monitor districts’ efforts to address the pandemic's academic effects or the outcomes of emergency spending."
"There is insufficient detail at the state level to identify how much money is being spent on specific interventions Districts spent $1.2 billion (as of September 2022). 74% of learning recovery funds reported in “other” categories."
New Mask Policies:
International
China:
China threatens ‘countermeasures’ over other countries’ Covid travel restrictions.
Senior WHO official faults China for undercounting Covid deaths.
China’s National Health Commission fears up to 37 million people a day are being infected.
Economic Recovery
U.S. Moves to Bar Noncompete Agreements: Via NYT:
“The proposed rule would ban provisions of labor contracts known as noncompete agreements, which prevent workers from leaving for a competitor or starting a competing business for months or years after their employment, often within a certain geographic area. The agreements have applied to workers as varied as sandwich makers, hair stylists, doctors and software engineers."
"Studies show that noncompetes, which appear to directly affect roughly 20% to 45% of private-sector U.S. workers, hold down pay because job switching is one of the more reliable ways of securing a raise. Many economists believe they help explain why pay for middle-income workers has stagnated in recent decades."
Inflation Takes Biggest Bite From Middle-Income Households: Via the WSJ.
"Many low-income households, benefiting from exceptionally low unemployment rates, have found jobs and experienced wage increases that lifted income more than the cost of living, according to studies by the CBO."
"The middle has been in a vise. Purchasing power from paychecks fell 2.9% for middle-income households in 2022 compared with 2021, while rising 1.5% for the bottom fifth of households and 1.1% for the top, according to the CBO study. A growing share of middle-income households say they are having more trouble making ends meet, according to Census Bureau surveys."
Resources
Future of Data Design Challenge: The US Chamber of Commerce Foundation has launched a design challenge, seeking creative thinking for the next iteration of federal and/or state K-12 assessment and accountability policy.
This design challenge is a part of the Foundation's ongoing partnership with its Future of Education Data Working Group.
Amid Pandemic Learning Loss, There’s an Urgent Need to Bring Parents and Teachers Together: Windy Lopez-Afilitto in Ms.
Poll Finds Youth Mental Health Crisis is Not Getting Better: Survey from Effective School Solutions (Axios).
"Educators say that districts continue to face significant hurdles when it comes to early identification of students with mental health challenges (52%), staffing (50%), and funding (47%)."
"Only 40% of administrators said they had a high level of confidence in their ability to deal with the mental health crisis in their schools, compared to 16% of parents."
"While 75% of administrators say their schools are implementing best practices around student mental health, less than half (45%) of parents feel the same way."
Five Education Innovation Trends Worth Watching in 2023: Via Julia Freeland Fisher:
Building relationships that power recovery
Rebooting career services
Scaling well-resourced conversations
Enlisting near peers for far reach
Pairing cash and connections to drive upward mobility
Dance Your Style:
D. Soraki wins DYS Final 2022 Johannesburg. It's fun watching the crowd's reaction.
