How the Bad Old Third Grade Guarantee May Be Reborn to Hurt Children in the Post-COVID Era | janresseger

How the Bad Old Third Grade Guarantee May Be Reborn to Hurt Children in the Post-COVID Era | janresseger

How the Bad Old Third Grade Guarantee May Be Reborn to Hurt Children in the Post-COVID Era

On Friday, the Washington Post‘s Valerie Strauss republished an article about learning loss, an article that raises some very serious concerns about what will happen next fall when we can presume that most children will be back in school.

The article is by a former teacher, now an editor at a website called Edutopia.  Steven Merrill writes: “It’s perfectly sensible to worry about academic setbacks during the pandemic… But our obsessive need to measure academic progress and loss to the decimal point—an enterprise that feels at once comfortably scientific and hopelessly subjective—is also woefully out of time with the moment… If there’s a pressing need for measurement, it’s in the reckoning of the social, emotional, and psychological toll of the last 12 months.  Over 500,000 Americans have died.  Some kids will see their friends or favorite teachers in person for the first time in over a year…  Focusing on the social and emotional needs of the child first—on their sense of safety, self-worth, and academic confidence—is not controversial, and saddling students with deficit-based labels has predicable outcomes… (I)f we make school both welcoming and highly engaging… we stand a better chance of honoring the needs of all children and open up the possibility of connecting kids to topics they feel passionate about as we return to school next year.”

We know that Education Secretary Miguel Cardona is requiring states to administer the usual, federally mandated standardized tests for this school year. Cardona says he doesn’t intend for the tests to be used for school accountability, but instead to see which schools and school districts need the most help—a strange justification because the tests were designed for and have always been used for holding schools and teachers and even students accountable. And the punitive policies these tests trigger in schools across the country are well established. What if state legislatures and state departments of education merely use the test scores in this CONTINUE READING: How the Bad Old Third Grade Guarantee May Be Reborn to Hurt Children in the Post-COVID Era | janresseger

Kids need to play this summer, not catch up on school - The Washington Post

Kids need to play this summer, not catch up on school - The Washington Post

Kids need to play this summer, not catch up on school

Yes, the pandemic has been long and hard. That’s no reason to lock students in classrooms all year.

The global pandemic has taken its toll on families and children. Children have not been able to engage in their normal routines, sit in a classroom with friends and teachers, visit extended family or participate in social activities without a mask. Most parents are more concerned about their children’s emotional well-being than they were before the pandemic, a Pew Research Center survey in the fall found. And that situation may have grown more dire, as children have spent much of the school year online and maintaining social distance from other people.

Facing this year of loss, Democrats in Congress have framed the problem as primarily one of lower projected test scores; their solution is to make kids in high-poverty schools spend the summer inside preparing for standardized tests. This is exactly the wrong approach to the sadness and loss of the covid era: This summer, children need to do self-initiated activities that are rewarding for their own sake. This will create happier children now and, as research has shown, lead to improved physical, cognitive, social, emotional and creative outcomes later in life.

At the end of 2020, Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.), chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, explained how he wanted to address the learning loss caused by the pandemic: “You can’t just tell cash-strapped states and localities that they’ve got to cancel summer vacation. For the federal government, if we’re going to suggest that, we’ve got to help pay for it.”

So early this year, Scott introduced the Learning Recovery Act of 2021 to establish a grant program; the bill could become law by mid-March. It would authorize $75 billion over the next two years to address learning loss in Title I schools with high concentrations of economically disadvantaged students by funding school extension programs — including longer school days, an extended school year and summer school. It’s a lot of money: Congress allocated about $16 billion for Title I schools in 2019.

The money has strings attached. The bill stipulates that state educational agencies shall support school districts “to effectively use data and evidence-based strategies to address learning recovery needs for students.” To collect this data, a school district may administer “high-quality assessments that are valid and reliable to accurately assess students’ academic progress.” The bill also authorizes funding for the CONTINUE READING: 

The Whole Truth about Kids, Schools, and Covid-19 (Derek Thompson) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The Whole Truth about Kids, Schools, and Covid-19 (Derek Thompson) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The Whole Truth about Kids, Schools, and Covid-19 (Derek Thompson)

The following article comes from The Atlantic, January 2021. “Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he writes about economics, technology, and the media. He is the author of Hit Makers and the host of the podcast Crazy/Genius.”

Those school boards and superintendents who continue to keep schools closed in light of this evidence have the duty of explaining to their patrons why district schools have not re-opened. Perhaps the rates of infection among adults in the geographical area are very high and they are waiting for rates to come down. Or maybe there are insufficient funds to prepare buildings to meet Center for Disease Control guidelines. Or there are too many teachers refusing to enter schools because of underlying medical condition. Or there is a lack of phase-in plans for younger children and then older ones attending.

Whatever the reasons are, district policymakers need to explain clearly and coherently why their schools have not re-opened in light of the preponderance of evidence for opening classrooms to in-person instruction. That is task number one.

Federal health officials at the CDC this week called for children to return to American classrooms as soon as possible. In an essay in the Journal of the CONTINUE READING; The Whole Truth about Kids, Schools, and Covid-19 (Derek Thompson) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The Whole Truth About Kids, School, and COVID-19 - The Atlantic

The Whole Truth About Kids, School, and COVID-19 - The Atlantic

The Whole Truth About Kids, School, and COVID-19

Federal health officials at the CDC this week called for children to return to American classrooms as soon as possible. In an essay in the Journal of the American Medical Association, they wrote that the “preponderance of available evidence” from the fall semester had reassured the agency that with adequate masking, distancing, and ventilation, the benefits of opening schools outweigh the risks of keeping kids at home for months.

The CDC’s judgment comes at a particularly fraught moment in the debate about kids, schools, and COVID-19. Parents are exhausted. Student suicides are surging. Teachers’ unions are facing national opprobrium for their reluctance to return to in-person instruction. And schools are already making noise about staying closed until 2022.

Into this maelstrom, the CDC seems to be shouting: Enough! To which, I would add: What took you so long?

Research from around the world has, since the beginning of the pandemic, indicated that people under 18, and especially younger kids, are less susceptible to infection, less likely to experience severe symptoms, and far less likely to be hospitalized or die. But the million-dollar question for school openings was always about transmission. The reasonable fear was that schools might open and let a bunch of bright-eyed, asymptomatic, virus-shedding kids roam the hallways and unleash a pathogenic terror that would infect teachers and their families.

“Back in August and September, we did not have a lot of data” to make a recommendation on schools, Margaret Honein, a member of the CDC’s COVID-19 team, told The New York Times. Okay, but September was 100 days, 15 weeks, and several dozen remote-learning school days ago! Meanwhile, anybody paying attention has long figured out that children are probably less likely to transmit the disease to teachers and peers. This is no longer a statistical secret lurking in the appendix of one esoteric paper. It has been the repeatedly replicated conclusion of a waterfall of research, from around the world, over the past six months.

In May 2020, a small Irish study of young students and education workers with COVID-19 interviewed more than 1,000 contacts and found “no case of onward transmission” to any children or adults. In June 2020, a Singapore study of three COVID-19 clusters found that “children are not the primary drivers” of outbreaks and that “the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission among children in schools, especially preschools, is likely to be low.”

By September, many U.S. scientists were going on record to say that transmission in schools seemed considerably rarer than in surrounding communities. “Everyone had a fear there would be explosive outbreaks of transmission in the schools,” Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told The Washington Post. “We have to say that, to date, we have not seen those in the younger kids, and that is a really important observation.” Throughout the fall, the evidence accumulated. “Schools do not, in fact, appear to be major spreaders of COVID-19,” Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University, wrote last October in The Atlantic, summarizing the conclusions of her national dashboard of school cases. CONTINUE READING: The Whole Truth About Kids, School, and COVID-19 - The Atlantic

Teacher Tom: What I Miss

Teacher Tom: What I Miss

What I Miss

Most of the time these days I manage to make peace with the pandemic, but there are other days when I wallow in what I miss.

I miss the feeling of little fingers exploring my knee cap through the holes in my jeans as I read from a story book.

I miss the blast of overheated breath against my cheek as they excitedly whisper their news in my ear.

I miss the warmth of tears spreading through the fabric of my shirt and onto my shoulder as I hold them after a fall.

I miss the dampness that soaks through the seat of my pants when I sit on wet ground in order to be eye-to-eye with them.

I miss being genuinely eye-to-eye.

I miss living my days in a place where whenever I need to CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: What I Miss

Kids Are NOT Falling Behind. They Are Surviving a Pandemic | gadflyonthewallblog

Kids Are NOT Falling Behind. They Are Surviving a Pandemic | gadflyonthewallblog

Kids Are NOT Falling Behind. They Are Surviving a Pandemic

Everyone is worried about how the Coronavirus pandemic is affecting children.

And it IS affecting them.  

But so much worry is being wasted on the wrong things. 

Instead of agonizing about kids being put in danger of infection at in-person schools where the virus is out of control, we’re told to worry about academic regression.

Instead of feeling anxiety about abandoning kids at home as outbreaks close their schools and parents still have to go in to work, we’re told to agonize over failing test scores.  

In nearly every case, the reality is papered over by concern trolls clutching their pearls and demanding we point our attention away from the real dangers in favor of CONTINUE READING: Kids Are NOT Falling Behind. They Are Surviving a Pandemic | gadflyonthewallblog

Richard Carranza, Austin Beutner and Janice Jackson | We need a Marshall Plan for our schools. And we need it now. - The Washington Post

Opinion | We need a Marshall Plan for our schools. And we need it now. - The Washington Post

We need a Marshall Plan for our schools. And we need it now

Richard Carranza, Austin Beutner and Janice Jackson are superintendents of the nation’s three largest school districts, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, respectively.

President-elect Joe Biden has described the crisis in public schools caused by the pandemic as a “national emergency.” As the superintendents of the nation’s three largest public school districts — New York, Los Angeles and Chicago — every day we grapple with the challenges that worry not just the president-elect but also the students and families we serve. Our schools, like thousands more across the nation, need help from the federal government, and we need it now.

The challenges school communities face aren’t for lack of effort by principals, teachers, staff, parents and students. Among our three districts, more than 2 million students and hundreds of thousands of educators have worked to transform teaching and learning from the inside out. We’ve seen teachers tackle long division from their kitchens and students debate the Constitution in Spanish from their living rooms.

But the fact is that for many — if not most — children, online and even hybrid education pales in comparison to what’s possible in a classroom led by a great teacher. Too many children are falling behind, threatening not just their individual futures but also America’s global competitiveness.

In Los Angeles Unified, where almost 80 percent of students live in poverty and 82 percent are Latino and African American, Ds and Fs by high school students have increased about 15 percent compared with last year. Meanwhile, reading proficiency in elementary grades has fallen 10 percent. In Illinois, students have lost more than a year of math progress. In New York City, 82 percent of students are children of color, largely from communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the virus, suffering tremendous loss and trauma that accompanies kids into the classroom. Across the country, math performance on standardized tests lags the prior year by 5 to 10 percentile points.

Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic

It’s time to treat the dire situation facing public school students with the same federal mobilization we have come to expect for other national emergencies, such as floods, wildfires and hurricanes. A major, coordinated nationwide effort — imagine a Marshall Plan for schools — is needed to return children to public schools quickly in the safest way possible. CONTINUE READING: Opinion | We need a Marshall Plan for our schools. And we need it now. - The Washington Post

MEGAN PRATHER: Grandparents raising students face extra challenges during COVID-19 - NONDOC

Grandparents raising students face extra challenges during COVID-19

Grandparents raising students face extra challenges during COVID-19

Linda Chambers has had guardianship over her two grandchildren for the past four years. There were new things to learn, like getting the hang of school schedules and navigating programs through the Department of Human Services.

But the biggest adjustment came this year, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and she found herself facing hurdles she could never have anticipated.

“This year has just been crazy,” Chambers said. “It’s obviously a mess. You want them to go to school and have the experience, but you also want to be safe.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has added a new layer of difficulty for all families, but grandparents taking care of children have faced some particular challenges. Helping students in a virtual school environment has been a problem for some. And sending children to school to potentially bring the virus home is especially risky when the primary caregiver is elderly. These families also have to consider some difficult topics, such as what would happen if the guardian becomes ill with COVID-19.

‘There’s nowhere to send these boys if they get sick’

Chambers has a grandson who graduated from Epic Charter Schools last year and a CONTINUE READING: Grandparents raising students face extra challenges during COVID-19

Stunningly Oblivious | JD2718

Stunningly Oblivious | JD2718

Stunningly Oblivious

On Thursday, November 19, all school buildings (NYC public schools) were closed.

Today, December 7, New York City elementary schools buildings are reopening.

This is not because the situation has gotten better. It has gotten worse. Much worse. There is a huge wave of COVID moving across the United States. The case rate in NYC was 3% when buildings closed. The case rate today is over 5%. Hospitals across the country are reaching capacity. Cities, states, regions are bracing for shutdowns. Indoor gatherings are being restricted. Outdoor gatherings are being restricted. New Jersey yesterday imposed a 25-person maximum on outdoor gatherings.

Not everyone is reacting with proper concern. Many Trump supporters are refusing social distancing and masks. In NYC a bar owner was arrested yesterday, not for flouting public safety (which he had done) but for trying to run down a deputy who was enforcing COVID restrictions. And there are some restrictions in place. But more are needed in New York State. And Andrew Cuomo has dithered. As the surge begins he has avoided updating the state’s color zones. And in NYC Carranza, de Blasio, and Mulgrew are sending children and staff back into schools.

We know that the virus spreads in schools. Masks, conduct, ppe can mitigate that spread, but they cannot stop it. I know in my school, in March, one room where a significant number congregated, and several became infected. With more care we can slow the spread. We cannot stop it. Testing is a CONTINUE READING: Stunningly Oblivious | JD2718

Growing Consensus that Young Children Can Safely Return to School | Diane Ravitch's blog

Growing Consensus that Young Children Can Safely Return to School | Diane Ravitch's blog

Growing Consensus that Young Children Can Safely Return to School

The New York Times reports that scientists are converging on a consensus that it is safe for young children to return to school.

After a summer of uncertainty and fear about how schools across the globe would operate in a pandemic, a consensus has emerged in recent months that is becoming policy in more and more districts: In-person teaching with young children is safer than with older ones, and particularly crucial for their development.

On Sunday, New York City, home to the country’s largest school system, became the most high-profile example of that trend, when Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that only elementary schools and some schools for children with complex disabilities would reopen after all city classrooms were briefly shuttered in November. There is no plan yet to bring middle and high school students back into city school buildings.

It was an abrupt about-face for the mayor, who had for months promised to welcome all of the city’s 1.1 million children — from 3-year-olds to high school seniors — back into classrooms this fall.

But the decision put New York in line with other cities around America and across the world, which have CONTINUE READING: Growing Consensus that Young Children Can Safely Return to School | Diane Ravitch's blog

CURMUDGUCATION: Back On The No-Longer-Trailing Pandemic Education Edge: Digging A Ditch

CURMUDGUCATION: Back On The No-Longer-Trailing Pandemic Education Edge: Digging A Ditch

Back On The No-Longer-Trailing Pandemic Education Edge: Digging A Ditch

I've been offering updates from my own small town/rural corner of the universe for just one more data point about how various school districts are dealing with pandemic education. We don't all need to write about New York City schools.

My region had a decent shot. In a county of 50,000 people, we had a total of 70 cases at the beginning of September. All schools opened for face-to-face instruction, with various precautions and protocols in place.

Things have gone south pretty rapidly. We just passed 1,000 cases. 

School districts had moved from face to face to hybrid elementary and distance high school. That lasted a few weeks, but there have been repeated multiple out breaks in schools. One district is still toggling between hybrid and distance--basically every time there's a confirmed case in the school, they go back to distance for a couple of weeks. Everyone else was in distance mode.

Last night several local boards (there are four districts in the county) met to decide what to do with the rest of December. The discussions were spirited but nuanced. Because we are so rural, there are some major issues with getting a wifi signal to some folks; there are a few hot spots set up, but (and this seems to escape some folks) a hot spot is basically a relay station, and you can't relay a signal you can't get. So folks who want to use the hot spots have to drive to them. Not everyone has vehicle access, and winter's moving in.

The local boards really struggling. Nobody thinks virtual school is best. Nobody. But now, really for the first time, people now people who have suffered or died from covid. Reliably Trumpy Facebook CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Back On The No-Longer-Trailing Pandemic Education Edge: Digging A Ditch

A Week in the Life of a Baltimore School Returning to In-Person Classes (Erica Green) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

A Week in the Life of a Baltimore School Returning to In-Person Classes (Erica Green) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

A Week in the Life of a Baltimore School Returning to In-Person Classes (Erica Green)

New York Times Journalist Erica Green spent a week in a Baltimore school where in-person instruction resumed. It is rare to get such a peek inside a big city district school during the pandemic–nearly all large urban districts are shuttered and rely upon remote instruction. This article appeared November 28, 2020

Zia Hellman prepared to welcome her kindergarten students back to Walter P. Carter Elementary/Middle School this month the way any teacher would on the first day of school: She fussed over her classroom.

Ms. Hellman, 26, dodged around the triangular desks, spaced six feet apart and taped off in blue boxes. She fretted about the blandness of the walls, fumbled with the plastic dividers covering name tags and arranged the individual yoga mats that replaced colorful carpets. Every window was open for extra ventilation, chilling the air.

“I wonder how they’re going to react to all of this,” she said, hands on her hips, scanning the room for the last time. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel, but it feels right.”

Ms. Hellman was among about two dozen teachers and staff members required to return to work on Nov. 16 for the first in-person instruction in Baltimore City Public Schools since March. The city was the first large school district in Maryland and the latest among urban districts in the country to tiptoe into one of the highest-stakes experiments in the history of the nation’s public education system: teaching face-to-face in a pandemic.

Returning to the classroom has not been easy; neither has remote learning.

Educators looking to get back in front of students have had to navigate CONTINUE READING: A Week in the Life of a Baltimore School Returning to In-Person Classes (Erica Green) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The importance of clean air in classrooms—during the pandemic and beyond - Brookings

The importance of clean air in classrooms—during the pandemic and beyond

The importance of clean air in classrooms—during the pandemic and beyond

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about an increased focus on public health, particularly in school settings. From social distancing to testing regimes, education leaders are making serious changes to ensure that schools are safe for students, staff, and teachers. As the school experience continues to be reinvented, research points to an overlooked but potentially critical factor when thinking about reopening: air quality. While we have known for some time about the negative effects of air pollution on child health, recent evidence indicates that pollution also has detrimental effects on student learning. In turn, these relationships suggest the potential for some highly cost-effective interventions to raise student performance—and keep kids safer during the pandemic.

EVIDENCE ON THE EFFECTS OF POLLUTION ON COGNITION

To date, most research has linked pollution to student learning using variation in outdoor air pollution. Researchers (see here and here) have documented significant declines in test scores when students take tests on days with high levels of particulate pollution. Another study compared students attending schools downwind relative to upwind of highways and found that increased air pollution from being downwind lowered test scores and raised behavioral incidents and absences. Similarly, in a recent working paper, a co-author and I use year-to-year variation in power production combined with wind direction to show that pollution from coal-fired power plants lower students’ test scores. CONTINUE READING: The importance of clean air in classrooms—during the pandemic and beyond

Schools bring mindfulness to the classroom to help kids right now

Schools bring mindfulness to the classroom to help kids right now

Schools bring mindfulness to the classroom to help kids in the Covid-19 crisis

Mindfulness in schools is increasingly being used to help students with mental health and academic performance, but research on its effectiveness is not yet conclusive

Doug Worthen guided his small class of ninth graders at Middlesex School through an exercise designed to focus their attention. On his screen, he saw the students sitting outside or at desks and lounging across their beds as they joined their weekly mindfulness class online. One by one the students clicked off their cameras, each square became a white and gray icon and Worthen began the meditation.

“Notice where your attention is,” he said, prompting them to guide their attention back to their “home base” — the sounds around them or body sensations — when it drifted.

At the end of the meditation, the students were guided to open their eyes. They turned their screens back on and Worthen posed a question to the group. “I learned that my attention isn’t very stable,” a student said. She estimated that her attention was focused on her home base 14 percent of the time.

In this required 12-week “Introduction to Mindfulness” course taught by Worthen, a full-time mindfulness instructor, students at the private boarding school in Concord, Massachusetts, will learn how to develop awareness of their thoughts and body sensations, sit with difficult CONTINUE READING: Schools bring mindfulness to the classroom to help kids right now

NYC Educator: A Lesson for Those Who'd Vilify Teachers

NYC Educator: A Lesson for Those Who'd Vilify Teachers

A Lesson for Those Who'd Vilify Teachers

It's always edifying to get the libertarian point of view, and it's not at all surprising to find it in the pages of the NY Post. Writer Matt Welch sheds copious crocodile tears over how schools are failing poor children. You know who they are. They're the kids UFT teachers wake up every single day to help and serve. Meanwhile libertarians fight to make sure they don't get health care, because that would be the end of western civilization. 

Welch is horrified that school buildings are closing. Why? For one thing, it's clearly inconvenient for him to care for his children:

I would have reacted sooner to the news that New York City is planning to shut down its public-school system, perhaps sometime this week. But there is a small kindergarten class in my house today, and I have a bunch of parent-teacher Zoom meetings scheduled for the middle school that my eldest has attended all of seven days this year.

So it's November now, and evidently Welch will be burdened with caring for his child even more than seven days over the next few months. Obviously, that's intolerable for a guy who needs to sit around and think of Very Important Stuff for Reason magazine. But his outrage doesn't end there:

Over the past month, the New York City school system has randomly tested more than 71,000 students and 42,000 staff, from 3,000-plus schools. Only 189 came back positive.

I'm thinking the libertarian press hasn't got time to research this stuff to thoroughly, and relies on publications like the NY Times (which Welch quotes). For some reason, the Times has a reputation as liberal, but for decades I've felt they hate teachers and everything we stand for. They have a history of hiring reporters who can't help but editorialize in news articles, and who never, ever talk to working teachers.

In fact, there has not been random testing in New York City. There's been voluntary testing, and every teacher in New CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: A Lesson for Those Who'd Vilify Teachers

Justin Parmenter: Don’t Blame Educators Who Get COVID | Diane Ravitch's blog

Justin Parmenter: Don’t Blame Educators Who Get COVID | Diane Ravitch's blog

Justin Parmenter: Don’t Blame Educators Who Get COVID

Justin Parmenter, an NBCT teacher in North Carolina, published this article in the Charlotte Observer.

As COVID-19 rates skyrocket in North Carolina and more educators lose their lives to the virus, an unmistakable trend is starting to emerge: school districts falling all over themselves to claim the infected employee didn’t get the virus at work.

When Stanly County teacher Julie Davis died last month, superintendent Vicki Calvert quickly issued a statement saying, “there is no information from the local health department indicating Mrs. Davis contracted the COVID-19 virus from any staff member or student on campus.” 

Davis’s family spoke of her extreme vigilance in avoiding situations where infections could occur, wearing a mask whenever out of the house and doing all of her shopping by curbside and drive-through. She was apprehensive CONTINUE READING: Justin Parmenter: Don’t Blame Educators Who Get COVID | Diane Ravitch's blog