Covid-19 Policy Update #647

Thursday 4/6

Apr 06, 2023

Thanks to everyone for being a good sport with the April Fools jokes on Monday. The credit for the IKEA-inspired item goes to ChatGPT-4 and I used MidJourney to create the photos. And while I was just kidding, the idea of Study-Buddy Bots got me thinking— could this be the next big start-up? Maybe we should pitch it at ASU-GSV. Reach out if you’re attending!

In this special week of Ramadan, Passover, and Easter, I extend my best wishes to everyone celebrating — may your days be filled with light and blessings along with a spirit of renewal.

—John

Top Three

These 15 States Could Take the Biggest Hit as ESSER Funds Expire: Via EdWeek on a new ERS report:

"Those states—Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia—have:
- the highest ratios of federal relief funds to overall education spending,
- the largest shares of students who attend school in high-poverty districts, and
- the largest proportions of districts that have high percentages of students in poverty."

Students in 4-Day-a-Week Schools Can Suffer COVID-Level Learning Losses: Via The 74.

"We found that students in four-day school week districts fell behind a little every year. Though these changes were small, they accumulated."
"We estimate that after eight years, the damage to student achievement will about equal that caused, according to some estimates, by the pandemic."
"The potential long-term learning deficit in student achievement from the four-day school week is, our findings suggest, not trivial."

New Campaign Tries to Convince Parents That Their Kids Have Fallen Behind: Via EdWeek

"The advertising campaign will target the six cities—Boston, Chicago, Houston, New York City, Sacramento County in California, and Washington, D.C.—with displays of side-by-side data showing the percentage of students proficient in math or English in that city and the percentage of parents who think their child is at or above grade level in that subject."
"A recent survey by Learning Heroes—a nonprofit focused on ensuring parents have accurate information about students’ progress—found that 92 percent of parents believe their children are at grade level and doing fine in the classroom despite evidence that a majority of students are struggling."
More here: Go Beyond Grades.

Federal

Government Shutdown: PunchBowl's Canvass K Street shows 61% of respondents think the federal government is likely to shut down at some point this year. Of the Democratic respondents, 70% think there will be a shutdown in 2023.

Covid Research

School Closures During COVID-19: An Overview of Systematic Reviews: Via BMJ.

"Our framework for summarizing outcome data was guided by the following questions: (1) What is the impact of school closures on COVID-19 transmission, morbidity or mortality in the community? (2) What is the impact of COVID-19 school closures on mental health (eg, anxiety), physical health (eg, obesity, domestic violence, sleep) and learning/achievement of primary and secondary pupils? (3) What is the impact of mitigations in schools on COVID-19 transmission, morbidity or mortality in the community? and (4) What is the impact of COVID-19 mitigations in schools on mental health, physical health and learning/achievement of primary and secondary pupils?"
"Both school closures and in-school mitigations were associated with reduced COVID-19 transmission, morbidity and mortality in the community. School closures were also associated with reduced learning, increased anxiety and increased obesity in pupils."
"School closures during COVID-19 had both positive and negative impacts. We found a large number of systematic reviews (SRs) and primary studies. However, confidence in the SRs was mostly low to very low, and the certainty of evidence was also mostly very low. We found no SRs assessing the potential drawbacks of in-school mitigations on children, which could be addressed moving forward. This overview provides evidence that could inform policy makers on school closures during future potential waves of COVID-19."

Disparities in Implementing COVID-19 Prevention Strategies in Public Schools, United States, 2021–22 School Year: Via the CDC.

"Prevalence of prevention strategies ranged from 9.3% (offered COVID-19 screening testing to students and staff) to 95.1% (had a school-based system to report COVID-19 outcomes)."
"Schools with a full-time school nurse or school-based health center had significantly higher odds of implementing several strategies, including those related to COVID-19 vaccination."

With Nature Study, Scientists Continue to Debate SARS-CoV-2 Origins: "Chinese researchers who isolated three live SARS-CoV-2 viruses and viral DNA from environmental samples at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, say the findings don't definitively show that the pandemic spilled over into humans from animals, according to a study published today in Nature."

"The origin of the virus cannot be determined from all of the analyses available so far," they wrote. "It remains possible that the market may [have] acted as an amplifier of transmission due to the high number of visitors every day, causing many of the initially identified infection clusters in the early stages of the outbreak."
NYT: "Scientists from the Chinese C.D.C. confirmed that DNA from raccoon dogs and other animals susceptible to the coronavirus was found at the market in early 2020."

STATE

Alabama: Via the Washington Post: "Two Alabama districts show stark divide in pandemic’s toll on schools."

"In Macon, a rural county east of Montgomery, students last year were almost a full grade below where their same-age peers were before the pandemic in math, and a half grade lower in reading, according to an analysis by researchers from Harvard and Stanford universities."
“We turned off schools and inequality grew a lot,” said Tom Kane, faculty director for the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University.
"Near the center of town, Tuskegee Public School, serving grades four to six, is flanked by public housing. In this county, 1 in 3 children lives in poverty, about 1 in 5 adults has a bachelor’s degree, and the median income is just under $40,000. Eight in 10 residents are Black."
"Schoolwide, 93% of students were below grade level in math during testing this winter, according to data posted on the whiteboard. The numbers were only slightly better in reading."
"The Education Recovery Scorecard project found that Pike Road students actually improved academically over the course of the pandemic. In 2022, they scored nearly a half-grade higher than their 2019 counterparts in math, and gained even more in reading."
"That may be partly because the district focuses on standardized test performance. Students take four practice tests over two years before an 11th-grade exam that determines school rankings, for instance. It’s also possible that wealthy new arrivals to Pike Road City are bringing up averages, as the portion of students in the district who are economically disadvantaged has fallen over the past few years."

California: Via LA Times:

"Enrollment for the 2022-23 school year fell 0.69% — representing 40,000 students — from the previous year, bringing the total to 5,852,544, according to newly released state data."
“I know the state frame is: Enrollment has stabilized. But at some level, that’s missing the point, which is that these kids aren’t coming back,” said Thomas Dee, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education. “We haven’t seen — and are unlikely to see anytime in the near future — a bounce back from the substantial loss in public school enrollment that occurred over the pandemic.”

DC: State of D.C. Schools, 2021-22: In-Person Learning, Measuring Outcomes, and Work on Recovery.

"On average, D.C. saw 317 cases of COVID-19 per day in school year 2021-22. During the winter, a spike above 2,000 cases spurred a temporary return to virtual learning."
"Schools in D.C. have received $540 million in ESSER funds. As of fall of 2022, 23 percent of these funds had been spent, with 73 percent of resources going toward learning acceleration and smaller shares going toward safe reopening and student and staff wellbeing."
"Almost half of students missed 10 percent or more of the school year. During school year 2021-22, chronic absenteeism, or the percentage of students missing 10 percent or more of the school year, rose to 48 percent (up from 29 percent in school year 2018-19)."

New Mexico: "Pandemic precautions like masks and contact tracing are now optional; school districts and charter schools can make their own rules above the Dept. of Health recommendations."

International

China:

Significant Progress for 98% of English Language Learners After 30-week Virtual Pilot: New results from a pilot that grew out of necessity due to Covid.

Economic Recovery

As Major Cities Struggle to Rebound, Remote Work Continues to Shift Population Growth: Via EIG.

The U.S. Built a European-Style Welfare State. It’s Largely Over: Via the NYT.

Resources

Lessons in Leadership: Transforming Struggling US K–12 Schools: McKinsey's Emma Dorn interviews Kaya Henderson.

Opening the Door to Faith-Based Charter Schools: Andy Smarick in The 74.

The School Where the Pandemic Never Ended: Via the NYT.

"The burden of navigating Covid’s risks now falls on the individual, and what “post-pandemic” means for one person or community, like Ninety-Fifth Street Elementary, looks wildly different than it does for others. In the United States, more than 200 people are still dying of Covid every day, and thousands are still being hospitalized for the disease."
"Los Angeles parents fell into two camps on the issue of school reopening. It was obvious that the school closures L.A.U.S.D. ordered on March 16, 2020, set students back academically and socially, and some parents protested and even tried suing the district to force reopening, while others preferred not to send their children back."
"The two camps often reflected socio-economic divisions: Many families, often from white, affluent neighborhoods, wanted their kids back in person, according to a parent survey the district sent out in the spring 2021 semester. But families in low-income neighborhoods, where death rates were high and vaccination rates were low, were hesitant."
"In this new phase of Covid, what constituted safety was still up for debate, leading to a vague sense of disquiet among the teachers."

Hospitals Are Increasingly Crowded With Kids Who Tried to Harm Themselves, Study Finds: Via NYT. "Hospitalizations for pediatric suicidal behavior increased by 163% over an 11-year period, an analysis of millions of hospital admissions in the United States found."

Getting Students To (and Through) Advanced Math: New report from RAND (and USA Today story)

"Rural high schools, small high schools and high schools that serve historically marginalized students don't provide the same access to advanced math classes as other schools, new research shows."
"Math teachers in high-poverty schools reported skipping standards-aligned content more frequently and were more likely to replace what they skipped with content from prior grade levels compared with teachers in low-poverty schools."

What States Can Do to Support Districts Through the COVID Recovery Window to Accelerate Student Learning: Via ERS.

The Federal Government Is Underinvesting in Education Research: FAS's Daniel Correa over at Fordham.

Taking Stock With Teens: Piper Sandler's annual survey.

"Weekly usage of VR devices stayed flat vs Fall 2022 at 14%; 29% of teens own a VR device."
"68% of teens have used Spotify for streaming services over the last 6 months, with 44% of teens opting to subscribe/pay for Spotify service."
"Teens spend 31% of daily video consumption on Netflix and 28% on YouTube.”
"87% of teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone; 35% own an Apple Watch"

AI:

Great podcast with Sam Altman and Lex Fridman, including the discussion if GPT-4 has a consciousness. It’s amazing how so much of the discussions around AI are philosophical, not technical. (Video / Podcast / Transcript)
Also a great podcast with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Hard Fork’s Kevin Roose and Casey Newton. (Podcast / Transcript / Article)
- “I feel like we took a souped-up Civic and kind of put it in a race with more powerful cars.” (He also broke some news: Bard, which currently runs on a version of an A.I. language model called LaMDA, will soon be upgraded to a more powerful model, known as PaLM.)
- “You will see us be bold and ship things,” he said, “but we are going to be very responsible in how we do it.”
- “When is it A.G.I.? What is it? How do you define it? When do we get here? All those are good questions. But to me, it almost doesn’t matter because it is so clear to me that these systems are going to be very, very capable. And so it almost doesn’t matter whether you reached A.G.I. or not; you’re going to have systems which are capable of delivering benefits at a scale we’ve never seen before, and potentially causing real harm. Can we have an A.I system which can cause disinformation at scale? Yes. Is it A.G.I.? It really doesn’t matter.”

Puppy Thinks He's A Bunny: Hop hop.

New Orleans Teens Make Mathematical Discovery Unproven for 2,000 Years: Via 4WWL:

Calcea Johnson and Ne'Kiya Jackson gave a presentation at the American Mathematical Society's Annual Southeastern Conference.
What they were able to do is find a way to prove the Pythagorean Theorem using trigonometry without circular logic - something mathematicians have been trying to do for nearly 2,000 years.
Alluding to how St Mary’s slogan is “No excellence without hard labor,” the two students credited their teachers at the all-girls school in New Orleans’s Plum Orchard neighborhood for challenging them to accomplish something which mathematicians thought was not possible.

COVID-19 Policy Update

Discussion about this post