September 21 School Opening and Unanswered Questions: Requiring Vaccinations, Remote Instruction, Teacher Accommodations, Summer School and “Catching Up” | Ed In The Apple

September 21 School Opening and Unanswered Questions: Requiring Vaccinations, Remote Instruction, Teacher Accommodations, Summer School and “Catching Up” | Ed In The Apple

September 21 School Opening and Unanswered Questions: Requiring Vaccinations, Remote Instruction, Teacher Accommodations, Summer School and “Catching Up”

As the COVID positive rates continue to spiral downwards and the vaccination numbers increase the State is moving towards a full school opening. Broadway can reopen on September 14th, large sports venues allowing larger and larger crowds and school districts are planning full reopening: with a host of issues to be resolved.

Will school districts retain a remote instruction option?

In NYC, for a subset of medically fragile children: maybe. It is highly unlikely that individual schools will operate in-person and remote; it is too complicated and there are other options. For example, children seeking remote option can be clustered in a district-wide remote school. The Department and the Union will partner in an in-person school initiative.

Can COVID vaccinations be required for students?

The NYS Department of Health currently requires vaccinations for school enrollment. See details here. 

Across the nation many states have vaccination requirements, and, in some states there is virulent opposition by anti-vaxxer parents. Some states have religious and medical exemptions. The decision would be made at the state level and it is highly unlikely for this September; a year or so down the road when vaccinations for children are available the state may develop policies..

 Can COVID vaccinations be required for CONTINUE READING: September 21 School Opening and Unanswered Questions: Requiring Vaccinations, Remote Instruction, Teacher Accommodations, Summer School and “Catching Up” | Ed In The Apple

National Summer Learning & Enrichment Collaborative to Help Students Impacted by the Pandemic + 'Help is Here' School Reopening Tour + Sec Cardona Holds Virtual Roundtable with Military Children | U.S. Department of Education

U.S. Department of Education Launches National Summer Learning & Enrichment Collaborative to Help Students Most Impacted by the Pandemic | U.S. Department of Education

National Summer Learning & Enrichment Collaborative to Help Students Impacted by the Pandemic

  'Help is Here' School Reopening Tour 

Sec Cardona Holds Virtual Roundtable with Military Children 

U.S. Department of Education Launches National Summer Learning & Enrichment Collaborative to Help Students Most Impacted by the Pandemic | U.S. Department of Education - https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-launches-national-summer-learning-enrichment-collaborative-help-students-most-impacted-pandemic

Secretary Cardona Holds Virtual Roundtable with Military Children During Month of Military Child | U.S. Department of Education - https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/secretary-cardona-holds-virtual-roundtable-military-children-during-month-military-child

Secretary Cardona Continues 'Help is Here' School Reopening Tour with a Visit to Ferdinand T. Day Elementary School in Alexandria, Virginia | U.S. Department of Education - https://www.ed.gov/news/media-advisories/secretary-cardona-continues-help-here-school-reopening-tour-visit-ferdinand-t-day-elementary-school-alexandria-virginia

Summer School & Learning Loss | Teacher in a strange land

Summer School & Learning Loss | Teacher in a strange land

Summer School & Learning Loss

It is with some trepidation that I put both ‘summer school’ and ‘learning loss’ in the title of this blog. Trepidation, because both terms have been widely and egregiously mis-used in the month that we’ve had an actual president again.

We are now discussing What to Do About School in terms of safety and instructional efficacy, rather than how to force ‘unions’ (another word deserving scare quotes these days) to push their teachers into a workplace where potentially lethal viruses may be circulating.

To clarify: When I say ‘summer school,’ what I mean is some kind of age-appropriate, enriching and FREE experience for kids, K-12. Things like music camp, Lego teams, outdoor sports and recreation, river canoeing, book clubs, arts and crafts, coding, Young Writers workshop–or volunteering to pull garlic mustard in conservation areas and getting school credit for your work.

I know that a definition of ‘summer school’ generally comes with the stink of the punitive: having to go into a hot, dusty building to ‘catch up’ to your classmates while the custodians strip and rewax the floors outside your classroom. It’s not supposed to be fun, for teachers or pupils. The implication of summer school is that you screwed up—or, worse, were deficient—and need to be fixed.

I am also well aware of the fact that everyone, K-12, needs a break right now. A long, healing break. And what better time to take one than now, when most of the country can be outdoors, and vaccinated families will be able to re-unite and kids can run around and play?

It’s worth pointing out, however, that not all families will be vaccinated, come June, CONTINUE READING: Summer School & Learning Loss | Teacher in a strange land

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: 

It Doesn’t Make Any Sense To Give State Standardized Tests This Spring OR Any Kind Of Standardized Benchmark Assessments | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

It Doesn’t Make Any Sense To Give State Standardized Tests This Spring OR Any Kind Of Standardized Benchmark Assessments | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE TO GIVE STATE STANDARDIZED TESTS THIS SPRING OR ANY KIND OF STANDARDIZED BENCHMARK ASSESSMENTS

It’s a bit mind-boggling to me that we even need to discuss the topic of this post – of course we shouldn’t have standardized tests this spring and, of course we should have any kind of standardized benchmark tests (as our district is pushing).

The impetus for both of these efforts is definitely not coming from educators who are teaching students everyday and who understand the challenging circumstances our students – and we – are facing.

There are so many arguments against both, including they would take away from the already reduced instructional time we have with students now.

I am focusing, and I suspect this is the case with most teachers, on formative assessment – constant formative assessment.  Personally, I’m using Quizizz or Nearpod every class, along with almost constant check-ins at breakout rooms and fitting in short individual meetings with students.  Those actions are giving me accurate data I can use to modify my instruction everyday.

If you are in a situation where administrators are trying to foist this kind of education malpractice upon you and your students, and you would like more evidence (besides basic logic and common sense) to back up CONTINUE READING: It Doesn’t Make Any Sense To Give State Standardized Tests This Spring OR Any Kind Of Standardized Benchmark Assessments | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

It’s Nice That Gov. Newsom Is Proposing To Pay For CA Summer School, But Who’s Going To Have Energy To Teach It? | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... - https://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/?p=114726 on @Larryferlazzo

Pandemic Parenting Was Already Relentless. Then Came Summer. - The New York Times

Pandemic Parenting Was Already Relentless. Then Came Summer. - The New York Times

Pandemic Parenting Was Already Relentless. Then Came Summer.
A survey shows that parents feel increasing pressure to make up for children’s lost educational and enrichment time.

American parents spend more time and money on their children than ever — and that was before the pandemic. Now, with remote school ending for the summer and a far-from-normal fall expected, parenting is becoming only more demanding.

It’s not just that children need more supervision, with their usual activities closed. Unlike previous generations of parents, today’s feel pressured to use time with their children for active engagement and continual teaching. Now that pressure is compounded by fears about missing months of education, and about widening gaps between children whose parents can provide significant at-home enrichment and those whose parents cannot.

Three-quarters of parents of children under 12, and 64 percent of parents of teenagers, said it was more important to do parent-led educational activities with their children this summer than in previous summers, found a new survey by Morning Consult for The New York Times. Sixty-four percent of parents of children under 12 said they felt pressure to do this, an increase from 58 percent earlier in the pandemic. Just 17 percent said they did not feel this pressure.

These days, Madeleine Senger, 13, sets her alarm for 6:30 a.m. and begins the day reading, then practicing piano. Some days she has virtual classes from her home in Denver — online camps, book club and cooking class, in addition to online tutors for math, Spanish, piano and writing. Her parents hired a Spanish tutor based in Guatemala as well as several teachers from her school to do individual or small-group classes. Madeleine also joined a start-up children’s newspaper, the Corona Courier.

“We want her to be happy and at the same time learn and avoid the summer slump, and the slump from the end of last year and what we expect in the coming year,” said Madeleine’s father, Joel Senger, a school librarian.

Madeleine already excels at school, said her mother, Alexis Senger, a consultant and lecturer on higher education budgeting policy. But, she said: “We want to prepare her and keep her active and engaged. College is going to be the only way to survive in this future where none of us know what will exist.”

Social scientists call this intensive parenting. They have found it has become the expectation of most parents, across race and class divides (although richer parents are more able to carry it out). Unlike helicopter parenting, which was more about keeping children physically safe, intensive parenting is about enriching them with one-on-one attention and extracurricular activities.

Intensive parenting grew in part from discoveries about how much children’s early experiences shape their outcomes. It’s also fueled by financial anxiety, with more pressure to get a degree from a good college and land on the right side of the economic divide amid rising inequality — a competition the economists Valerie and Garey Ramey termed “the rug rat race.” CONTINUE READING: Pandemic Parenting Was Already Relentless. Then Came Summer. - The New York Times

SSO COVID-19 Protective Mask Supply Survey - Nutrition (CA Dept of Education)

SSO COVID-19 Protective Mask Supply Survey - Nutrition (CA Dept of Education)

SSO COVID-19 Protective Mask Supply Survey

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Main Web Page

This is the second survey being sent to our Seamless Summer Option (SSO) sponsors in order to assist our sponsoring agencies who are serving their community during the 2020 summer season. The California Department of Education (CDE) Nutrition Services Division is assessing the protective mask needs for SSO program operators who will be providing meals this summer.

The CDE wants to provide every opportunity for you to receive the protective masks you need as soon as possible, so please complete the survey by Friday, June 26, 2020. You are required to answer all questions in this survey unless they are noted as optional.

The survey is available at the CDE COVID-19 Protective Mask Supply Survey web page.

After completing the survey, you will receive an email confirmation.

For more comprehensive COVID-19 guidance, please visit the CDE School and Child and Adult Day Care Meals web page.

Contact Information

If you have any questions regarding this message, please contact Sean Hardin, Staff Services Manager II, by email at shardin@cde.ca.gov, or by phone at 916-323-7175.

Questions:   Nutrition Services Division | 800-952-5609

SSO COVID-19 Protective Mask Supply Survey - Nutrition (CA Dept of Education)

New research evidence for summer school programs

New research evidence for summer school programs

Research evidence for summer learning
Disappointing results for in-person summer school programs hint that short virtual programs may not be successful

On June 10, 2020, as the U.S. Capitol remained partially shut down amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a virtual hearing on what schools ought to do. Speaking over a video feed from his home in Silver Spring, Maryland, former Obama administration Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. called for “summer distance learning” as one way to mitigate the months of lost learning from school closures.  

Summer school is on many policymakers’ minds. King, who is now the president of Education Trust, a nonprofit that advocates for low-income students, and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, a national teacher’s union, jointly argued for additional funding for summer schooling in an April editorial in the Hill newspaper.  In June 2020, the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a think tank based at the University of Washington, posted a survey of summer school plans around the country. Only slightly more than half of the 100 U.S. districts the organization is tracking were planning to offer summer school for elementary and middle school students in 2020, as of the latest update, on June 9. (Summer school is more prevalent for high schools students to retake failed classes.) For the schools that are holding summer school, instruction in most cases will be exclusively virtual — over the internet. But the type of instruction, hours and curriculum vary wildly, depending upon which city or town you happen to live in. 

I was curious what lessons we could take from previous research on summer school to guide us during this unprecedented summer. I could find only one large, well-designed study, published in 2016, that tested how much kids actually learn in voluntary summer school programs. It was targeted at 3,000 low-income children in five cities in 2013. Most of the CONTINUE READING: New research evidence for summer school programs