Covid-19 Policy Update #665
Wednesday 6/14
You’re Invited
Tuesday, June 27, 5:30-7:30 pm at Yardbird DC.
Join us for cocktails and hors d'oeuvres as we publish the final Covid Policy Update and celebrate all the important contributions you have made in responding to the pandemic.
Top Three
Pandemic Schooling Mode and Student Test Scores: Evidence from US School Districts: New study via Rebecca Jack, Clare Halloran, James Okun, Emily Oster.
"We estimate the impact of district-level schooling mode (in-person versus hybrid or virtual learning) in the 2020–2021 school year on students' pass rates on standardized tests in grades 3–8 across 11 states."
"Pass rates declined from 2019 to 2021: an average of 12.8 percentage points in math and 6.8 in English language arts (ELA)."
"Focusing on within-state, within-commuting zone variation in schooling mode, we estimate that districts with full in-person learning had significantly smaller declines (13.4 pp in math, 8.3 in ELA). The value to in-person learning was larger for districts with larger populations of Black students."
Updated from their 2021 NBER working paper.
How Billions in COVID-19 Relief Aid Was Stolen or Wasted: Via the AP.
"An Associated Press analysis found that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding; another $123 billion was wasted or misspent. Combined, the loss represents 10% of the $4.2 trillion the U.S. government has so far disbursed in COVID relief aid."
How California’s Schools are Spending Billions in Federal Pandemic Relief: Many California districts yet to spend federal Covid relief despite deep, widespread learning loss.
"Districts so far have used only a third of the $2.7 billion that the federal government set aside to address the well-documented learning setbacks caused by Covid."
"Nearly a quarter of school districts and charter schools had spent none of the money that Congress said should be put toward tutoring, after-school and summer programs, additional school hours or days to the school year, and other interventions to address lost learning."
"The FutureEd study found that 19% of districts and charter schools had invested in tutoring, fewer than the 23% whose plans had earmarked money for tutoring."
"FutureEd found that spending on supporting students’ mental health had increased more than other areas, from $24 million in late 2021 to $66 million most recently."
Federal
IES: New grant opportunity: "Using Longitudinal Data to Support State Education Policymaking."
NSF: Selects 34 semifinalists for the inaugural NSF Regional Innovation Engines competition.
Covid Research
Updated Vaccines: FDA staff said updated Covid boosters should target XBB omicron subvariants for the upcoming fall and winter vaccination campaign. FDA Briefing document.
Former Anti-Vaxxers Lead Wary Parents on Path Back to Shots for Kids: Via Bloomberg.
"I cannot think of anything more terrifying than making medical decisions for a whole entire child that belongs to you, that you have to keep safe and healthy,” Simpson says. Anti-vaxxers, she adds, have made vaccines “such a life-or-death thing.”
"Her organization, Back to the Vax, aims to counter that narrative by supporting parents, educating doctors and creating online resources. The organization recommends parents call a doctor instead of searching for answers online, and also advises doctors on communicating with parents who are on the fence about vaccines. Simply dismissing their concerns, moreover, can further cement vaccine hesitancy."
Researchers Identify Type of Long COVID With Persistent Inflammation: Via CIDRAP.
"Long-COVID patients reported multiple symptoms or signs 60 or more days after infection, such as fatigue, fever, chills, abnormal heart rhythms, and brain fog. Among the 55 long-COVID patients, about 60% had signs of persistent inflammation, including elevated neutrophil activation, an important step in the inflammatory response, while recovered and uninfected participants did not."
"Long-COVID patients with lingering inflammation were further clustered into two subsets, depending on their dominant inflammatory markers."
Many Americans Who Lose Taste, Smell Over COVID-19 Don't Fully Recover: Via CIDRAP.
State
DC: Goldie, a 4-month-old lab, joins the Commanders from K9s for Warriors.
Illinois: NYT: "To Fight Book Bans, Illinois Passes a Ban on Book Bans."
Kansas: Important piece by the AP: ‘I have kids that legitimately cannot read’: Inside a Kansas school that was devastated by COVID lockdown
New Jersey: College Achieve Public Charter School in Asbury Park bet on High-Dosage Tutoring. It's working.
It used qualified tutors.
It maximized the schedule.
It aligned tutoring with core classroom instruction.
It kept tutoring groups relatively small.
It used students’ feedback to make improvements.
International
Students’ Reading Ability After COVID-19: Takeaways from PIRLS for Europe and Central Asia: Via the World Bank: "COVID-induced school closures seem to have impacted student learning in ECA, with exceptions."
Economic Recovery
Inflation:
CNBC: “The consumer price index, which measures changes in a multitude of goods and services, increased just 0.1% for the month, bringing the annual level down to 4%... That 12-month increase was the smallest since March 2021, when inflation was just beginning to rise to what would become the highest in 41 years.”
"The “hawkish pause” heard ’round the world. "The Federal Open Market Committee decided to stop short of an 11th-straight increase to interest rates this afternoon. But Federal Reserve officials also made it clear that more hikes are on the way – likely two by the end of 2023 – for an estimated 50 basis points."
Resources
Students Give Schools Middling Marks, Gallup Poll Finds: Via The 74.
"In a new Gallup poll, middle and high schoolers handed out just-okay marks to their own schools, assigning them a B-minus for average performance. About two-thirds of those surveyed granted their local school a grade of A (22 percent) or B (44 percent), while 34 percent rated them a C, D, or F as the 2022–23 school year came to a close."
Science of Reading: Only 25% of teacher preparation programs cover all the core elements of scientifically based reading instruction, and another quarter do not cover any adequately, according to a report released by the National Council on Teacher Quality.
Evaluating 693 undergraduate and graduate teacher training programs, the council found that 40% of programs instruct aspiring educators to use debunked teaching practices, including so-called three-cueing strategies that urge children to guess at words they don’t know rather than sound them out.
More via Chalkbeat.
‘High-Dose’ Tutoring Boosts Student Scores. Will It Also Work Online?: Via EdSurge.
The Pandemic Wiped Out Decades Of Progress For Preschoolers. It’s Time To Get Them Back On Track: Via Hechinger.
How ESSER Funds Created an Explosion of Edtech in U.S. Schools: Via District Administrator.
Zūm’s Path to Product-Market Fit — How The Student Transportation Company Found Product-Market Fit Twice: Via First Round.
Related: Uber is letting teens under 18 request and take rides on their own for the first time. Uber page.
Absenteeism Data Is Inconsistent Across States. But It’s Improving: Via EdWeek.
Bending the Market: Via Katie Boody Adorno:
"Influence the flow of capital toward research happening in school systems—agile, applied and formative research on technology that is occurring in real school settings."
"Build a clusters of well-resourced testbed school systems in key go-to-market geographies (TX, CA, NY, etc) that effectively bend the market toward producing high-quality, evidence-based solutions that work to reduce educational inequities through the co-development and evaluation of tools in authentic and diverse learning settings."
How Choice Navigators at Nonprofit Outschool.org Are Helping Families With Decision Fatigue: Via ReimaginEd
How Our Careers Affect Our Children: 2018 HBR article that popped up again today. "It’s not long hours that hurts your children. The biggest impacts come when you’re distracted by work when you are with them."
AI:
Meta: I-JEPA: The first AI model based on Yann LeCun’s vision for more human-like AI
Google’s Bard AI can now write and execute code to answer a question.
Google CEO: Building AI responsibly is the only race that really matters
Great Lex Fridman interview with Mark Zuckerberg: Future of AI at Meta, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp
Klon Kitchen: "EU Risks US Vulnerabilities in Tech Race With China"
Ethan Mollick: "We came up with seven different approaches to assigning students to use AI in classrooms, and developed sample prompts. They have tremendous potential, but also require understanding the risks involved." More over at this substack.
Introducing ChatCSV. Your new data scientist assistant. Upload a CSV and ask it questions.
45 years ago today, Texas Instruments Inc. introduced Speak & Spell, a talking learning aid for ages 7 and up. Its debut marked the first electronic duplication of the human vocal tract on a single chip of silicon. This video of its voice brought back memories.
McKinsey: "The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier."
"Our latest research estimates that generative AI could add the equivalent of $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion annually across the 63 use cases we analyzed—by comparison, the United Kingdom’s entire GDP in 2021 was $3.1 trillion. This would increase the impact of all artificial intelligence by 15 to 40 percent. This estimate would roughly double if we include the impact of embedding generative AI into software that is currently used for other tasks beyond those use cases."
"About 75 percent of the value that generative AI use cases could deliver falls across four areas: Customer operations, marketing and sales, software engineering, and R&D."
"Generative AI can substantially increase labor productivity across the economy, but that will require investments to support workers as they shift work activities or change jobs."
Baseball, Swearing, Dippin Dots, and an Economics Lesson in Inflation: This interview had it all.
Schools Out For The Summer: Epic way to embarrass your kid.
Fist Bumps: Are getting complicated.