MONDAY 8/3
FEDERAL
Phase 4:
- HEALS Act comparison to HEROES Act and current law from our partners at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.
- Negotiations continued over the weekend but the sides still seem far apart on expanded UI, school funding, and state stabilization. The goal of a compromise agreement by the end of the week seems less and less realistic given the vast distances. The protracted negotiations will help Democrats get more of their priorities in a final bill, which also will push up its price tag. Timing is still mid August but it could creep into September given recess.
- Interesting visualization from the NYT on the two plans:
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Positivity Rate Guidance: One of the major issues facing Governors, state chiefs, and superintendents is the level of community spread (positivity) that should trigger closing schools and switching to remote learning. Unfortunately, not only has there been a lack of federal guidance, but various federal officials have recommended different thresholds. The Surgeon General has said schools can open when the positivity rate is less than 10%. The WHO and several governors have said less than 5%. NYC has set a threshold of 3%. On Sunday during an interview on CNN's "State of the Union," Dr. Birx was asked about a recommendation from the CDC Director Robert Redfield who also supported a 5% positivity rate. "I certainly would endorse what Dr. Redfield is saying. In the areas where we have this widespread case increase, we need to stop the cases, and then we can talk about safely reopening." It looks as if there's a consensus forming that students can return to school if positivity rates are under 5%. Anything above should trigger online learning."
STATE
Teacher Protests:
California: Oakland School District and the teachers union are still at odds over negotiating distance learning for the fall. The district is proposing more time than the union for live (synchronous) instruction, as well as recorded lessons or other assignments (asynchronous) at all grade levels.
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Colorado: Parents agonize over decision about schools— especially those who feel they have no choice. "A lot of parents either are essential workers or they don’t have a flexible job,” Warstler said. “I wish the schools would try to create a more flexible plan for students. Of course we care about the teachers. We don’t want them to get sick. But sometimes we don’t have an option. It’s even harder when parents are single.”
DOD: Majority of DOD schools plan to reopen in person.
Georgia:
- Gwinnett County Public School, the largest school district in the state, reported that 260 employees have tested positive.
- A teenage boy lost both parents to COVID-19 just four days apart.
- Dozens of people were outside the Cobb County Civic Center protesting the move by Cobb County Schools to open the fall session in a virtual-only format.
- CDC study on COVID transmission within a Georgia camp. 260 campers and staff tested positive out of 344 test results available. Among those ages 6-10, 51% got the virus; from 11-17 years old, 44%, and 18-21 years old, 33%. Important to note that this was an overnight camp where "The campers did a lot of singing and shouting; did not wear face masks; and windows were not opened for ventilation." However the CDC did conclude that the virus “spread efficiently in a youth-centric overnight setting, resulting in high attack rates among persons in all age groups,” many showing no symptoms.
Maryland: On Friday, Montgomery County health officials ordered that all private schools would be required to remain closed through October 1 and should instead start the school year online. The order was criticized by private schools and the Governor. It led to the Governor issuing an emergency order on Monday blocking the Montgomery county order.
Mississippi: OpEd on the importance of closing the digital divide. "It is unacceptable that poverty has prevented our students from attending school fully this year."
Missouri:
- A group of parents within the have formed a “Reopen Springfield Schools” Facebook Group, planned a rally protesting the re-entry plans and three families are filing a lawsuit against the school. "The lawsuit petitions the court for temporary injunctive relief against the reopening plan. It asks for families to have the right to allow kids to attend in-person classes for five days a week. Springfield’s plan allows kids to only attend classes two days a week with three days as virtual learning. The lawsuit focusses on kids with disabilities."
- Republic schools superintendent Matt Pearce tested positive for COVID-19.
New York:
- NYC will only reopen schools if the positivity rate is below 3%. For context, Gov. Cuomo has set 5% as the target based on WHO guidance.
- As many as 17% of 1,707 public-school principals may call it quits this year. 403 NYC principals, or 24%, are over age 55 and considered at high risk for COVID.
Pennsylvania: A school is experimenting using a robot with UBC and UVC lights to clean rooms.
Utah: Data shows inconsistent closures of childcare facilities during COVID-19 outbreaks.
Virginia: Parents rally to open schools.
INTERNATIONAL
One Billion Out of School: New WEF paper:
- "COVID-19 is now mutating into a global education emergency. Millions of children, especially the poorest and young girls, stand to lose the learning opportunities that could transform their lives. Because education is so closely tied to future prosperity, job creation, and improved health, a setback on this scale would undermine countries’ progress, reinforcing already extreme inequalities."
- "Pathbreaking research on the impact of the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir, Pakistan captures the risk to learning. Schools were closed for three months. When they reopened, attendance quickly recovered. But four years later, children aged between three and 15 who lived closest to the fault line had lost the equivalent of 1.5 years of learning."
- "Increased international financing is critical. Most of the world’s poorest countries, especially in Africa, entered the economic downturn with limited fiscal space. That room for maneuver is now shrinking further as recession bites and external-debt problems intensify."
Canada: Elementary students in Ontario will be heading back to school full-time while most high school students will do a hybrid model. Students in grades 4-12 will be required to wear a mask.
Germany: Schools are beginning to reopen. Classes have been reorganized, creating so-called "cohorts" groups of several hundred students. The "cohorts" are advised to stay apart, but social distancing rules are being done away with within each group. Classes are being scheduled on a staggered basis. Each cohort has its own area in the school grounds, cloakrooms, restrooms and cafeterias. "The most important thing is to go back to school and avoid falling further behind, otherwise we risk having a lost generation" said Kay Czerwinski, a member of a local parents' association."
UK: COVID-19 puts a strain on private schools. "This summer Eton College—the boarding school famous for having produced 20 British prime ministers—began offering free video courses to teenagers at state schools, via EtonX, its online platform. Eton’s headmaster has told Tatler, a high-society magazine, that “the right thing now is to share our wealth, resources and expertise”. Harrow Online too will go some way to opening up the most elite institutions to a wider pool of students (though, at £15,000 a year, it is hardly widely attainable)."
Zambia: Policy brief on the impact of COVID-19 on students. "The risk of gaps widening in learning is higher now among children from families that can afford and those that cannot afford to access facilities that enable distance learning modalities. Poor and vulnerable children will continue to lag in education access."
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Visualizing Vulnerable Jobs Across America: A new interactive tool from Brookings to help local policymakers better understand job vulnerability by sector and subsector for 380 metropolitan areas and 50 states.
Entering the Job Market: Meet the 2020 grads entering the bleakest economy in decades. Fascinating profiles of how grads are experiencing this period.
UI Dashboard: The Century Foundation and New America Foundation have released a UI dashboard tracking claims, delays, and other impacts.
RESOURCES
Learning Pods:
- Richmond: Sabrina Gross, "the PTA president at Barack Obama Elementary, launched a podding effort for Northside schools after Richmond Public Schools voted on July 15 in favor of an online-only fall semester. While working remotely in the spring, Gross struggled to keep her daughter engaged with her online schooling. Eventually, we just kind of fell off,” she said. “Obviously that’s not an option for the fall. … Parents are going to need additional support.” Parents interested in podding can fill out a survey distributed by the Barack Obama Elementary PTA, and their names will be added to a spreadsheet with potential matches for their pod. From there, parents can pick and choose who they want to group with.
- Austin: As parents rush to form pandemic learning pods, some kids are left behind. "The Austin district would lose about $8,100 for every student who opts for at-home learning without using district resources." Prices vary to hire teachers as a tutor or a full-time educator, and can range from an hourly rate of $15 to $50 to a weekly rate of $200 per child, according to parents, teachers and social media sites.
- Some parents want to hire tutors, start mini schools this year. Most can't afford to. "Kids who are disproportionately low-income are at highest risk for learning losses," said Ariel Kalil, a professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. "When these gaps in learning open up, absent some really serious and sustained intervention, the kids won’t (catch up). That will result in less academic achievement, lower lifetime earnings and even lower productivity in adulthood."
- Kansas: Parents team up to form pandemic pods.
- One room schoolhouses make a comeback (including a dome tent used at Burning Man)
- Churches plan to host students in learning pods.
Back To School Spending:
- Research from PayPal finds that 40% of parents and 35% college students actually plan to spend more on back-to-school shopping this year. First-year college students, especially, plan to spend 39% more ($732) than the average K-12 parent ($444) on back-to-school shopping this year. 63% say they plan to spend more on remote learning furniture and home goods and 59% indicate spending increase on remote learning and tech.
- The National Retail Federation estimates parents with kids in K-12 will spend an average of $790, up from $697 last year, while families with college going kids are forecast to spend an average of $1,060, up from $977 in 2019. As a result, total back-to-school and college spending is projected to reach $101.6 billion, topping last year's $80.7 billion and crossing the $100 billion mark for the first time."
- Deloitte projects that $28.1 billion will be spent on back-to-school items this year, roughly flat compared to 2019. The consultancy estimates that stronger spending on technology will largely offset steep reductions in spending on clothing and traditional back-to-school supplies.
- The new school shopping, via Axios.
Grant Opportunity: New $2 million grant opportunity from Schmidt Futures. The Futures Forum on Learning: Tools Competition invites teachers, students, researchers, technologists, and ed tech leaders to propose a tool, technology, platform, or research project that can accelerate recovery from COVID-19-related learning loss for students between grades K-12, and advance the field of learning engineering. Projects should address one of the following:
- Increase the number of students who are reading by 3rd grade
- Increase the number of students on track in middle-school math
- Expand the number of students gaining data and computer science skills in high school
- Driving more students into college through academic and nonacademic supports
- Another pressing learning goal identified by the team that is related to COVID-19.
Drawing On Lessons From Summer Camps to Reopen Schools: National Geographic article on the lessons learned from summer camps that could apply to reopening schools.
Higher Education: A new modeling study published by researchers at Harvard and Yale Universities concluded that a safe way to bring college students back to campus this fall would be to test them for COVID-19 every two days using "a rapid, inexpensive, and even poorly sensitive" test. The authors estimated the per-student cost over an 80-day semester of implementing "the preferred screening strategy" -- a test with 70 percent sensitivity every one, two or seven days depending on the rate of transmission -- were $910, $470 or $120 respectively.
Online Tutoring: Useful overview from Ulrich Boser covering the research around effective tutoring and various providers.
Parents Struggle as Schools Reopen Amid Coronavirus Surge: Via AP: "Putting your child on the bus for the first day of school is always a leap of faith for a parent. Now, on top of the usual worries about youngsters adjusting to new teachers and classmates, there’s COVID-19."
Pandemic Notebook: Via The 74: 13 students about COVID-19, their disrupted school year and the disorienting new normal
OpEds:
You Made It To August! Good job team. Just finished my CrossFit workout and jumping into the week.
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