Schools are 2 months into reopening under Covid-19 and no one's officially keeping track of how it's going
By Annie Grayer, CNN A 6-year-old afraid to go outside. A mom scared to send her children back to school, then thrilled at how they've thrived. A teacher worried she'll be ordered back to the classroom and become...
A 6-year-old afraid to go outside. A mom scared to send her children back to school, then thrilled at how they've thrived. A teacher worried she'll be ordered back to the classroom and become some kind of test subject.
These are some of the stressed stories of the pandemic-hit school year so far -- but it's impossible to know how widespread the experiences are because there is no national tracking of what happens when children and staff return to schools.
And without that tracking, health and education experts say, there's no way to come up with best practices to restart schools, educate children most effectively and open up their parents to commit to their work lives.
"Unfortunately, some of our knowledge is really just derived from anecdote," said Dr. Susan Coffin, professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "We don't have any good strategies to systematically collect the experience across a swath of the US to actually be able to study the different approaches that have and, in some cases, not worked so well."
Kimberly Berens, a scientist-educator with a PhD in behavioral science, told CNN she sees that play out around her in Long Island, New York.
"In a five-mile radius around my office there are several public and private schools, and every single one of those schools are doing different things, which is crazy," she said.
"What I know as a scientist is, if I'm manipulating multiple variables at one time, I have no idea what variable actually produced whatever outcome I achieved, or didn't achieve. So, with schools in one district all doing different things, then we can't put our finger on what contributed to an increase in prevalence or a decrease in prevalence."
New research on children and Covid-19
Some scientific knowledge about children and coronavirus has increased since schools across the country shut down in March.
Coffin told CNN that while new research has shown that children can catch and transmit coronavirus, which previously had not been as certain, "on average, a child's ailment will be less severe than that of the adult, provided they don't have underlying conditions."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study in late September saying that the incidence of Covid-19 among younger children appears to be much lower than in adolescents, which could give confidence that elementary schools, CONTINUE READING: Schools are 2 months into reopening under Covid-19 and no one's - WRCBtv.com | Chattanooga News, Weather & Sports