John Merrow is exasperated by the media narrative that it’s only the teachers’ unions that are blocking the reopening of schools.
Of course, students should be in real school, but schools must be safe for adults and students alike.
He writes that teachers should be vaccinated. And communities must prioritize what matters most in school, which is NOT testing.
He writes:
The giant lumbering beast known as the US Economy–akin to a conveyor belt with countless moving parts–wants public schools to reopen. The beast needs workers, but right now too many adults are at home, supervising their children’s ‘remote learning.’ Open the schools, and the adults can go to work: it’s that simple….
But of course it isn’t simple. Putting kids back in schools will allow adults to work, and that’s important, but it is what happens inside schools that matters more.
A quick history lesson: We’ve always sent our children to school for three reasons: 1) Acquisition of knowledge, 2) Socialization, and 3) Custodial care. The internet has turned that upside down because it puts infinite information at everyone’s fingertips wherever they happen to be and because thousands of apps allow for ‘socialization’ with anyone and everyone. That left only custodial care as a vital school function, until the pandemic made even that impossible.
However, students swimming in a sea of infinite information need guidance, because ‘information’ is not knowledge. It takes a certain skill set to distinguish between wheat and chaff, and a certain value system to choose the wheat over the chaff. Skilled teachers make that happen.
Socializing via apps, though convenient, is fraught with peril, because that person you believe to be your age and your gender might be an adult with evil intentions. Skilled teachers help students learn to discern. And skilled teachers see that students use this all-powerful technology for useful purposes.
But perhaps the major lesson of remote learning is that young people want and need to be with their peers. Apps don’t cut it…and the kids are not alright.
The mental health consequences of prolonged isolation are becoming clearer by the day. “Students are struggling across the board,” said Jennifer Rothman, senior manager for youth and young adult services at the nonprofit National Alliance on Mental Illness, to The Washington Post in January. “It’s the social isolation, the loneliness, the changes in their routines. Students who might never have had a symptom of a mental health condition before the pandemic now have symptoms.”
If you read my blog last week, you were shocked by one reader’s response: “John, I’m wondering if we could have a conversation sometime. I am passionate about this subject. Our 13-year old grandchild just committed suicide after return one single morning to virtual schooling. It was Monday, Jan. 4, first day back, after the holidays. They broke for lunch, Donovan wrote a note…. went outside, and shot himself.”
So when schools reopen, attention must be paid, not to catching up with the curriculum but to the needs of young people.
Now to the present: President Joe Biden has pledged to reopen schools by the end of his first 100 days, a monumental challenge. Reopening schools is a complex issue, but–sadly and predictably–opportunistic politicians and some in the media are framing the issue as a conflict between the needs of students and the selfish wishes of teachers and, naturally, their unions.
This false narrative hurts both groups...
What have school boards been doing? Not much. The San Francisco School Board has spent months arguing whether to rename schools for people more admirable than Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, instead of preparing for reopening or pushing to make sure teachers would be vaccinated. While that’s pathetically politically correct, the behavior of some school boards was borderline criminal, in at least one case allowing their family members to jump the vaccination line ahead of teachers!
And so, today, not even half of states have prioritized the vaccination of teachers and others who work with children in schools. That’s an absolute disgrace. As one teacher noted on Twitter, “…for us it’s been about the lack of care and preparedness of the school district, how they’ve treated the teachers and staff, the lack of communication, and the moving goalposts for how and when to reopen…”
So, yes, schools should reopen as fast as possible–but only after teachers have been vaccinated, classrooms have been provided with adequate ventilation and PPE, and schools have developed safety protocols. In some instances, this will require immediate attention to the physical condition of buildings, because there are public schools in America without hot running water!
Experts have voiced concerns about what they call ‘Learning Loss,” which they tend to measure in months and sometimes years. I hope that others find it offensive to define learning in terms of quantity rather than quality, but let’s save that for another day. That said, it’s absolutely essential that adults stop obsessing about ‘learning loss.’ Cancel the damn standardized tests. Meet the children where they are.
Our giant lumbering economy wants schools reopened for another reason: It needs what our schools produce: high school graduates. After all, America’s education system has been a reliable conveyor belt, moving students along for 12 years before dumping them out into society. Higher education has come to depend on a fresh supply of close to 2 million freshmen each fall. Branches of the military need recruits, and so on.
COVID has stopped the conveyor belt entirely in some places, and slowed it down considerably elsewhere, but I believe that many who are demanding that the conveyor belt be restarted are not thinking about either students or teachers. They want to get back to ‘normal.’
That ain’t happening, and we must embrace that reality. This school year is unlike any other. For those students who have been able to stay on track, congratulations and Godspeed. But for those whose lives have been turned upside down, you have not failed! You shouldn’t have to go to summer school, have your ‘learning loss’ measured and published, or be held back.
You should get a mulligan, a blame-free, no fault do-over.
And finally, the interests of teachers and students are aligned. They may not sync up with the interests of higher education, restaurants, bars et cetera, but students and teachers are in this together.
John Merrowformer Education Correspondent, PBS NewsHour, and founding President, Learning Matters, Inc.
Merrow is correct. This is a false narrative that hurts everybody. School boards seemed transfixed. Apparently everybody is transfixed. At the rate we are going, vaccination will barely take place before next year is upon us. Everybody from Merkle in Germany to the hapless trump administration seems to have been ignoring the monumental task of getting people vaccinated.
Up until last year, I taught in a school built in 1976. Its HVAC system was never adequate, and I sneezed from the start of school to the closing bell on a daily basis. But my conditions were luxurious compared to some schools in parts of our wealthy country. If we really cared about the conditions of students and their teachers, we would not see students breathing air that promoted respiratory infections.
When the news announced that the high schools in north Florida has the highest Covid infection rates in the state, I started looking over some of the statistics on the various counties rate of infection and deaths. The statistics included information on schools which was disaggregated to include teachers and staff. I live in conservative Florida where masks in schools are generally not mandated. While the local high schools have some of the highest rates of infection in the state, the number of teachers that contracted Covid was relatively low at about five per school in a school of about 2,000 students. I attribute the lower rate of infection to a school staff that is likely wearing masks. Masks do work!!! While students in the high schools had between 140 and 153 cases. BTW high schools in the rest of the state averaged under 40 known infections in high schools Even here numbers were considerably lower in the middle and elementary schools where parents have more control over what their children do. There were still at least two teachers that got Covid in the middle and elementary schools. While they did not have statistics on how many teachers with Covid had died, I only know of two that died from Covid from the local news.
There are no easy answers to the opening of schools. Any teacher that dies from Covid results in a tragic loss to a family. In a move to win votes DeSantis placed the elderly ahead of teachers in the Covid line. If the state wants teachers to offer in person learning, it should be making the vaccination of teachers a priority.
Cx: While students the high schools here had between 140 and 153 cases, high schools in the rest of the state averaged under 40 known infections in their high schools.
Calling out that false narrative is so important because the laziest education journalists are obsessed with promoting that false narrative because it is so much easier than practicing real journalism.
For the NYT, it is always the teachers union versus those who care the most about the most vulnerable ask risk kids (i.e. the ones funded by billionaire ed reformers who donate to the Republicans who cut poor families’ health insurance and keep the minimum wage, and the billionaire reformers who insist all poor children should be judged by the results of their standardized tests, but their own privileged white children just need their private school to certify them as superior students to justify why they are admitted over Asian-American students with higher standardized test scores).
For NYT reporters like Eliza Shapiro, what matters more than presenting true facts is being able to present “both sides” in the way that is approved by the powerful billionaires — one side is those who care about the most vulnerable at-risk kids and their claims are “balanced” by a quote from a “union teacher” and no one else is allowed to challenge the ed reform narrative.
Please don’t put the blame on school boards. My school board has worked very hard with our administration and teachers to reopen our schools. We are in hybrid with our K-2 in 4 days a week full time, our 3-4 will be shortly and our 5-12 soon after. It has taken an enormous amount of work by all parties to make sure our schools are safe for students and staff
My town’s school board too. This is probably more typical of small-town districts like mine where board is elected, locals are invested & highly represented at meetings– & we are also so fortunate to have local reps of county public health dept who work hand in hand with our sch supt.
An absolutely excellent article/post. There is SO much about the public conversation around Covid that is SO wrong, the vortex around education being the worst of it all.
The problems plaguing education have always been understood as financial and a matter of priorities. There isn’t enough money, and that’s because of zero sum-ness. Which even though the government gets to print money, for all intents and purposes all this still is. There isn’t enough money devoted to our children, because instead we prioritize it elsewhere.
Which means the problems that plagued the schools before, like everything else about this pandemic, is accentuated now, during it. There wasn’t enough money before; we need more of it now just to come up to the starting line. It’s the money, stupid, that’s preventing our schools from opening. It’s a commitment to providing the societal needs for our working class – housing, healthcare, education.
Our schools here in LA are beyond-filthy. One school my middle-class white child attended was so beyond filthy it was toxic. A school that had a decade earlier employed 14 janitors by the time we got there post-Grand Recession had 4. Part time. The HVAC was broken in some buildings, absent in others. etc etc etc. This was in a “Good” school. It goes downhill from there and not in a trickle, in a torrent.
Infectious disease spreads via unhygienic conditions. Our schools need upgrading to look like every $65k/annum private school all around us. We’re a rich country, we can do this. But we are NOWHERE near being willing to commit those resources to the poor among us. And if we do not, when we do not; when the least among us is unable to exist hygeniecally, in the context of a novel, lethal virus, we all of us will succumb.
That’s just the bottom line.
It drives me, as a biostatistician (a public health professional) completely crazy hearing this amped-up rewarming-over of the framing of our education wars as a labor-proxy. And if it were, then there should be wave upon wave of liberals rushing to “our” side. We’re just not doing this, not seeing this. This is a class war, and fighting it through disingenuous avenues is wrong, In this case it’s dangerous. The issue at hand in opening schools involves the web of interconnections we humans all have as reservoirs for the propagation of virus. Children are relatively – just relatively, mind you – less affected by the disease manifestation. And there remains some remote possibility they are somehow transmitting less efficiently (doubtful). But the point is that opening schools increases population mixing and reverses the one and only strategy we know to halt transmission, slowing the spread of intercommunications. This vaccine doesn’t change any of this. At least we do not know so now (some small amount of data is trending in the right direction however).
OK, we can do this. But this vaccination-bit is not the focus that’s important. Our current PCR-based testing protocol is just absurd. As has been observed, there is no comfort regarding, say, unwanted-pregnancy, instilled by testing for it once per year. Or even “2-3 times per week”. Impregnation is a point-event, and so is viral transmission. Information, delayed, acquired discontinuously about a continuous, air-borne event (or whatever, physical intimacy in the case of pg), is very nearly useless.
Schools need to be clean, they need to have state-of-the-art air-filtering capacities. They need to have numerous, clean, cleaned, well-maintained bathrooms. They need to have space for children to remain physically distanced and enough teachers to staff cohorts of small-enough size to maintain cleanliness. Not to mention functional pedagogy.
And every single person going in and out of the building needs to test themselves for infectivity every morning, before leaving for school. Attendance must be contingent on daily (possible every-other-day) clearance of antigen-testing. Not PCR-based amplification of RNA’s mere presence. Its presence is not the issue. Biological activity of the virus is.
So this isn’t and shouldn’t be about vaccinating teachers. Yes, their health should be protected before forcing them into an environment relatively more dangerous for them than for, say, their kids (in general). But their presence there in schools, and the whole endeavor of reopening the schools, is an issue of transmission, not personal-health-protection.
A matter of transmission, a matter of priorities, a matter of money. Just like before. Have we progressed from our previous leanings and priorities? I seriously doubt it.
There is a tremendous disparity among states and communities about how modifications for Covid are handled. Some of the red states are making very few changes in class size and in how the virus is treated. Many school buildings are antiquated with very little additional ventilation. Some states and communities have plans, but all of them are suffering from a lack of tax dollars during Covid. Mitch McConnell’s big contribution was to tell states to declare bankruptcy. Thank you for your insights based on science.
Yes, this lack of a coordinated federal, not to mention public-based, plan (parallel but equally imperative concepts), is a real problem.
Then again, it has always been. From the start of our Republic on up to the present day, “States rights” and separate ways of conducting the business of basic human rights has been permitted to stay in place. I won’t say unchallenged, because that’s been pretty much the story of all civil struggle: inequity in basic human rights. But how one can codify that in law across separate confederated entities – heck if I get it.
But I suppose that is transcendental.
An important piece to the entire cogitation on vaccines, who gets them and when is that time is a component in all of this. The rollout as someone noted above, has been “slow” for vaccines (though I would argue this is entirely a relative term and a judgement call I wouldn’t make under the reality of these miserable political exigencies. But whatever)…. time matters. Look to these slownesses to change and be alleviated. At least two more vaccines are imminent. Likely more. Not all vaccines’ capacity to scale up is created equal; the newer ones were slower to develop but more facile in distribution. That too will change and increasingly so in the going. Likewise distribution of what we have already will change tremendously, quickly. From supplies to resources, federally directed. This will all change, quickly. There are many bottlenecks but many of them will be mitigated, and soon.
So …. part performance is more definitely not a reasonable expectation of the future in this case. Just saying.
But this all matters in the context of who gets what first and why and the implications for underlying policy.
Anyway, as I said, the whole conversation has been kerfunked from the get-go, continues to be and has as well been manipulated – deliberately and only just stupidly/accidentally – by the forces we’ve long been pushing back against. Labor is not your enemy unless you happen to be a plutocrat. Teachers are not antagonists of parents – even while their perspectives and imperatives are wholly different, sometimes. Education may be a commodity but it’s not measurable like a glass of milk. Don’t get me started on the bullshit about “days of learning lost”. That was infuriating when applied to chimeric CS benefits. All the same stuff has been rewarmed over now. Only different bat channel and somehow non-perception of the manipulation.
Curious, I Googled “How many states have added teachers as an eligible group for vaccines and found this from CNN, 26 states and DC.
If you click the link, scroll down. The Gold colored states and DC are the states that did it. How many of the 24 gray-colored states are controlled by the GOP and/or voted for Trump?
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/05/us/teacher-vaccine-states-list-trnd/index.html
Without looking two bits says the Show Me State hasn’t put teachers in an available category yet.
Yep! I was correct, but then again this is the state that voted in Hawley, so no surprise, especially with a former sheriff-Parson as governor. Can you say law and order? (at least the kind that can be bought by those with the means.)
“Information is not knowledge.” Write that on every billboard and doorpost across the land.
Despite all my other problems, I am thankful that I can afford an apartment and the technology that lets both my children do remote school as well as possible. I’m thankful I can afford math tutors to supplement their education. I’m thankful that I can afford to pay for my son to play (well, practice) hockey and get exercise and socialize. I’m also thankful that my son doesn’t have to rely on the sprawling NYC public school system to ensure he can actually attend school in the fall. I feel absolutely terrible for all the kids who don’t have any of those things, and I wish them the best.
Some people handle adversity better than others. Here’s wishing you the best. Bless you.
👍
Just read an article in our local online that tells about “50 new Covid cases & 130 quarantined” at one of the most well-funded (would be cleanest, newer buildings, HEPA, students tested, etc.) public schools in IL–on Chicago’s North Shore–big $$$$. Being honest, officials stated it is not known whether this was a result of events outside of the school or originated w/in the school building(s) itself. A nearby private school closed down for a week after + covid cases found (this was the 2nd time the school had opened/closed, opened/closed). All of which is telling. We don’t know what we don’t know. Just as in the whole of the U.S, LOTS of people have to get sick & die (nearing half a million now) before we Americans do what we need to do to keep EVERYONE safe.
I don’t see the U.S. covid situation here as much different from the Jan. 6th insurrection.
The same “people” who don’t wear masks, who still support it45, etc., have stupidly (not ignorantly…stupidly. Stupid is stupid.) said, “Well, only 5 people died.”
What happened to the sanctity of human life? “Well, only 5 students died…well, only 5 teachers/school staff died…”
(&–BTW–more re-openings, amidst the arrival of new strains, about which we know…very little, & if the existing vaccines can handle them.
Open/close, open/close…wait for it…
Very astute. If I had a nickel for every time my head explodes whenever the word “only” is used in the context of death…
Only an economist could use only in the context of death.
Got to economize on life you know.
And even then, only certain economists.
Not that I have anyone specific in mind, of course.
As someone who has been a classroom every day since September, I want to thank Mr. Merrow and all of you for keeping this concern alive and kicking.
And, to quote from The Merrow Report: “So when schools reopen, attention must be paid, not to catching up with the curriculum but to the needs of young people.”
Absolutely.
Did you see how Stacey Plaskett stole your inspired connection between United flight 93 and January 6? I bet she reads this blog!
And I agree completely with your comment above.
You know, I thought of you when she said that.
And, there were some great presentations on behalf of the prosecution. Jamie Raskin’s summation yesterday was one of the best live speeches I’ve heard in my lifetime.
I am very depressed. The presentation of the House Impeachment managers was riveting. There is no question that Trump inspired and incited the Insurrection. He invited the Insurrectionists to come to DC on January 6. He told them to march on the Capitol that day and “fight like hell” or they would have no country any more.
The Capitol was breached and he watched the show on TV, doing nothing to send help. He put the lives of the members of Congress in danger. He enjoyed the devastation.
Yet the Republicans who are judging him are unlikely to convict him. Some say they are certain to clear him.
This is a disgusting stain on our country and our history.
Trump will be remembered forever more as the president who tried to stage a coup using his troops from across the country. And who got away with it scot-free.
I am disgusted.
I was just following the direction of your inspired comparison. Still one of the best, most incisive observations I’ve heard about Jan 6.
Comment above meant in response to John’s.
Although I missed most of the presentations today (missed is charitable, I was driving a long distance and tuned in for 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there until I had enough), I did catch the questions. It’s the hypocrisy and the sneeriness of van der Wiener that was a bit much. They claim the managers’ videos where selectively edited and then follow up with even more selectively edited garbage. They claim lack of due process like it’s a legal case and then say nothing about how part of the jury pools is hopelessly corrupted. They claim collusion between Dem questioners and managers, but then hobnob almost in the open with Blanche, Cruz and Lee. It is depressing because we know it will be back. McCarthyism never died, it just went dormant for a while. Raskin made the point many times this evening.
But Raskin has made us proud. He’s been exceptional. When van der Wiener said “This is about the most miserable experience I’ve had down here in Washington, DC,” Raskin’s response, “You should have been here on January 6” was just too damn delicious. As has Stacey Plaskett. Let’s get statehood for DC and make the Virgin Islands next as a tribute to her. Her eloquent response to the blatant racism of the Idiot’s team was one for the schoolbooks.
I mentioned in the “About” section the one question/topic I wish had been raised, the scarring of DC itself. Kind of like having a forum on the history of post WWII communism and never mentioning the Berlin Wall. But I’ll be interested in Raskin’s final comments tomorrow. The esteem I have for him cannot be measured.
One more thing: van der hate’s “reasoning” that “there is an entire body of law” that politicians have “enhanced free speech rights because [they are] elected officials[s]” has been written before. I think it goes a little something like this: “four legs good, two legs bad.”
John:
Thank you so much for your teaching (I’m sure you’re an inspiring & wonderful teacher) & your words/comments here.
You’re one of the reasons I read this blog.
Stay well, & let’s all do the same so we can be here–& not more technology–to pay attention.
John, thank you for what you have been doing in an extremely difficult time.
It’s easy to give “advice” to open up all schools without being in them day after day, as some love to do.
But it’s an entirely different thing to be in your shoes.
Hey, this is wonderful. I got home from school not that long ago. (Of course, Diane’s blog is like a magnet for me.) It’s really nice to read these comments. It was a long week. But as I reminded the kids, March 1 (the meteorological definition of spring) is only a bit more than two weeks away! Take care!
There was a good little 1/2-hr segment on this issue on CSPAN Wash Jnl today (Thurs 2/11). The guest was from American Enterprise Institute so I was expecting the worst, & indeed got hot under the collar during his broad-brush opening remarks, but as host questioned him I found him to be better informed & more perceptive than one might expect.
Further refinements in his position developed as he responded to call-ins. There was only time for about 5 citizen call-ins, but magically they brought out all the key points. He was reduced to admitting that the appropriate degree of in-person teaching depended entirely on %community spread, & ability of building to accommodate top-notch ventilation, PPE, distancing.
The 5th caller put the kabosh on any hemming & hawing: she had just buried her best friend, mother of a high-needs child who’d benefited from in-person teaching since November, twice quarantined due to exposure to a covid-pos classmate. The family survived the first round, but 2nd time, he passed it to his mother– who died. I clicked it off when the AEI guy tried gamely to go to Las Vegas juvenile suicides (18 this yr vs 9 last yr) in response… !!
Ginny, that’s a powerful story.
Of all the wanker tanks, AEI is probably the worst.
One has to be a total sellout to work there.
Either that or completely brain dead.
Aggrieved Expounders of Idiocy
Betsy DeVos underwrites the education policy studies at AEI.
No need to be repetitive, Diane! 😆
Man, I’m glad to see this. Thanks to all involved.
Reading this and the comments made me feel like some common sense and discernment remains in the world. Thank you.