N.Y.C. will eliminate remote learning for the fall, in a major step toward reopening. - The New York Times

N.Y.C. will eliminate remote learning for the fall, in a major step toward reopening. - The New York Times

N.Y.C. will eliminate remote learning for the fall, in a major step toward reopening.

New York City will no longer have a remote schooling option come fall, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced during a television appearance on Monday, a major step toward fully reopening the nation’s largest school system.

This school year, most of the city’s roughly one million students — about 600,000 — stayed at home for classes. When the new school year starts on Sept. 13, all students and staff will be back in school buildings full-time, Mr. de Blasio said.

New York is one of the first big cities to remove the option of remote learning altogether for the coming school year. But widespread predictions that online classes would be a fixture for school districts may have been premature. Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey announced last week that the state would no longer have remote classes come fall, after similar announcements by leaders in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

New York City’s decision will make it much easier to restore the school system to a prepandemic state, since students and teachers will no longer be split between homes and school buildings.

But the mayor’s announcement will no doubt alarm some parents who are concerned about sending their children back into school buildings, even as the pandemic ebbs in the United States. Recent interviews with city parents have shown that while many families are looking forward to resuming normal schooling, some are hesitant about returning to classrooms.

Nonwhite families, whose health has suffered disproportionately from the virus, have been most likely to keep their children learning from home over the past year. CONTINUE READING: N.Y.C. will eliminate remote learning for the fall, in a major step toward reopening. - The New York Times

C.D.C.: Schools in the U.S. Should Continue to Use Masks - The New York Times

C.D.C.: Schools in the U.S. Should Continue to Use Masks - The New York Times

Schools in the U.S. should continue to use masks, C.D.C. advises

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Saturday clarified coronavirus advice for U.S. schools, recommending the continued, universal use of masks and physical distancing, after the agency’s sudden announcement that vaccinated Americans could forego masks indoors.

All schools teaching students from kindergarten through grade 12 should continue to implement proper mask-wearing through the end of the 2020-2021 school year, the C.D.C. said. The agency also kept in place its suggestions to observe physical distancing and to test for coronavirus infections.

About 122 million people had been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 in the U.S. as of Saturday, but the average number of vaccinations per day has dropped since its peak in April, according to C.D.C. data. News of the C.D.C.’s sweeping change to mask rules that were introduced a year ago came suddenly last week, prompting elation among many Americans but also some confusion over how to respond to the new guidance.

The C.D.C.’s advice for schools attempts to clear up some of the confusion. On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration authorized the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds in the United States. But some parents are still hesitant about the vaccine. And no vaccines have been authorized yet for children under 12. CONTINUE READING: C.D.C.: Schools in the U.S. Should Continue to Use Masks - The New York Times

MICHELLE GOLDBERG | Why the Right Loves Public School Culture Wars - The New York Times

Opinion | Why the Right Loves Public School Culture Wars - The New York Times

Why the Right Loves Public School Culture Wars

There is a quote from Ralph Reed that I often return to when trying to understand how the right builds political power. “I would rather have a thousand school board members than one president and no school board members,” the former leader of the Christian Coalition said in 1996. School board elections are a great training ground for national activism. They can pull parents, particularly mothers, into politics around intensely emotional issues, building a thriving grass roots and keeping it mobilized.

You could easily write a history of the modern right that’s about nothing but schools. The battles were initially about race, particularly segregation and busing. Out of those fights came the Christian right, born in reaction to the revocation of tax exemptions for segregated Christian schools. As the Christian right grew, political struggles over control of schools became more explicitly religious. There were campaigns against allowing gay people to work in schools and against teaching sex education and evolution.

Now the Christian right has more or less collapsed as anything but an identity category. There are still lots of religious fundamentalists, but not, post-Donald Trump, a movement confidently asserting itself as the repository of wholesome family values. Instead, with the drive to eradicate the teaching of “critical race theory,” race has moved back to the center of the public-school culture wars.

I put critical race theory in quotes because the right has transformed a term that originally referred to an academic school of thought into a catchall for resentments over diversity initiatives and changing history curriculums. Since I first wrote about anti-critical race theory activism in February, it’s become hard to keep up with the flurry of state bills aimed at banning the teaching of what are often called “divisive concepts,” including the idea, as a Rhode Island bill puts it, that “the United States of America is fundamentally racist or sexist.” “We will reject Critical Race Theory in our schools and public institutions, and we will CANCEL Cancel Culture wherever it arises!” the irony-challenged Mike Pence tweeted last week.

As The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel pointed out, Glenn Youngkin, a candidate in Virginia’s Republican primary, recently released four anti-critical race theory videos in 24 hours.

Part of the reason the right is putting so much energy into this crusade is because it can’t whip up much opposition to the bulk of Joe Biden’s agenda. Biden’s spending plans are much more ambitious than Barack Obama’s were, but there’s been no new version of the Tea Party. Voters view this president as more moderate than Obama, a misconception that critical race theory scholars would have no trouble explaining. Republicans have groused about how hard Biden is to demonize. They need a more frightening, enraging villain to keep their people engaged.

Critical race theory — presented as an attack on history, a program to indoctrinate children and a stealth form of Marxism — fits the bill. The recent elections in Southlake, Texas, show how politically potent the backlash to critical race theory can be.

In 2018, the affluent Texas suburb was in the news for a viral video of a group of laughing white students shouting the N-word. Black residents told reporters about instances of unambiguous racism, like a sixth grader joking to a Black student, “How do you get a CONTINUE READING: Opinion | Why the Right Loves Public School Culture Wars - The New York Times