CDC Adds to Growing Body of Research Showing How Schools Can Reopen

On Tuesday, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network that summarized several studies related to reopening schools.

One study referenced involved 17 rural Wisconsin schools from three public school districts and two private schools. All students wore masks, practiced social distancing, and were organized in small cohorts of 11-20 to minimize mixing with other students. Researchers found COVID-19 incidence was 37 percent lower in these schools than in the wider community. And just seven of the 191 cases involved in-school transmission. They concluded that “there has been little evidence that schools have contributed meaningfully to increased community transmission.”

In sharing the study, President Biden’s new director of the CDC, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said “K-12 schools [should] be the last settings to close after all other mitigation measures have been employed and the first to reopen when they can do so safely.”

But the science has not swayed the teachers unions. AFT President Randi Weigarten says it still may be unsafe to resume in-person learning because “we don’t know whether a vaccine stops transmissibility.” The Fairfax Education Association went further and said it would only be safe to reopen schools after students receive vaccinations. That could mean schools reopening for in-person instruction in 2022, given that vaccine trials have not yet begun on children, much less approved. Meanwhile, it’s been 320 days since Chicago students have been in the classroom due to the deadlocked negotiations between Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU).

This has put the Biden administration in a bind. On CNN, the White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain was pushed to reconcile the CDC’s research with the opposition from the unions. He said, “I’ll give you a word: money.” He argued that Wisconsin schools could reopen because a private grant funded the safety measures. In order for other schools to open, Congress would need to pass the administration’s COVID package that includes $130 billion for schools.

While it’s true that Legacy Foundation of Central Wisconsin provided a grant, Klain doesn’t mention that it was just $150,000 to pay for masks at all 17 schools. The schools covered the rest of the costs with their own budgets and presumably CARES Act funding.

That should be good news for the Biden administration, who has pledged to reopen schools within the first 100 days. It’s the latest of a growing body of research showing how we can safely reopen schools (a forthcoming AEI paper summarizes more than 100 of these studies). And while some additional federal funding might be needed, much can be done with the $54 billion Congress passed last month to enact the protective measures used by these schools in Wisconsin and elsewhere. But instead, the administration has found itself in the uncomfortable position of playing down the science while drumming up support for its COVID relief package.

Our delay has grave consequences for children. Student learning loss is mounting, which will have long term consequences for students. McKinsey & Company estimates that the average student could lose $61,000 to $82,000 in lifetime earnings attributed solely to these learning losses. There are also tragic stories of suicides among children — some as young as nine — attributed to the social isolation caused by school closures.

It is very likely that we’ve overestimated the risk of sending children back into the classroom and underestimated the consequences of keeping them at home. It’s time to adapt our strategies to better reflect on the lessons learned over the last 10 months. It’s time to safely and responsibly give students the option of coming back to school.