A reader who is a scientist wrote to ask why I posted the views of an economist about children and COVID instead of those of a medical researcher. She sent me this interview of Angela Rasmussen that appeared in Science Friday. Rasmussen is a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
In the interview, she says:
ANGELA RASMUSSEN: Well, teachers and parents should definitely not think that children are immune or more resistant to the virus. Just because they don’t develop a severe of disease [sic], that doesn’t mean that they can’t be infected and it doesn’t mean that they can’t bring the virus home with them to transmit to other people in their household. It also doesn’t mean that they would be incapable of transmitting it to faculty and staff in schools.
And in general, we– I think a lot of the discussion about schools has assumed that schools are an isolated bubble that is separate from the rest of the community, and they’re really not. If children are getting infected, whether outside of school or in school, those children are still part of the same community and they’re capable of spreading the virus within that community.
So we need to stop thinking of schools as a separate space or children as a special population of people who are less susceptible. We need to take the same precautions with preventing transmission in schools as we do within the rest of the community.
The full interview is worth reading.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
The whole discussion of whether schools should be “open” or “closed” ignores the reality of what’s happening too.
Open The Schools is a good campaign slogan for ed reformers, but if you have a child in one of the open schools the virus issue doesn’t go away. We’re all patching together ways to keep our own kids and other peoples kids safer. There are periodic outbreaks, where a whole group of kids will be asked to quarantine. Parents have to weigh whether a kid with mild symptoms of something that might be covid should have the child tested, and whether the child should go to school at all.
Nothing about this discussion is real or helpful. They’re talking about our kids and schools as if we’re dealing with this every single day. It isn’t that parents “trust” the people who run and work in public schools- it’s that no one else has lifted a finger to even understand the issues or offer any assistance.
Once again we’re getting anti-public school slogans instead of real work. We have a huge group of professional full time public school critics instead of people who assist schools.
Right she is. As a matter of fact, where biology is concerned, school s about as close as you can get to the real world. When people have often criticized school for not being like the “real world” over the past few decades, I have usually pointed out that we are the only institution that is the real world when it comes to small infectious organisms. We have it all. Does this explain why teachers get auto-immune diseases at a rate 4 times the average of the general population?
Look at the US Department of Education today:
https://www.ed.gov/
Are these people even aware that 50 million public school children and families are dealing with a pandemic? The cluelessness is mind blowing.
Nothing. Not one practical effort to assist any of our kids or schools. They’re promoting borrowing money to attend college and running a political campaign to replace our schools with vouchers.
I get that they’re “federal” but does that mean “utterly irrelevant” now? Is this what happens when you hire people who didn’t and don’t attend public schools and don’t believe public schools should exist to set policy for public schools? You get no actual work? Because that seems like a bad deal for the public.
And this is why the “Great Barrington Resolution” makes no sense.
In Evanston, School Superintendent Dr. Devon Horton has a controversial in person school opening plan. 😐
If you can go a year in an unprecedented emergency without any effort or assistance from the US Department of Education or your state government, you should take from that none of these people are essential to your public school and you can stop hiring them and paying them.
If they didn’t show up for this, what are they there for? Anyone know? Are we paying them to run voucher campaigns?
It seems we’ve inadvertently identified the essential workers in K-12 public education and all of them work in the schools. The rest are extraneous.
If the US truly wanted standardized, federalized education, it would have done so in 1776 and/or 1789, when the country was still young and small. Back then, the country could have been divided into provinces (borders redrawn as necessary), which are more manageable than 48 mainland states and 2 distant states, with many cities, towns and villages. 😐
Eddie,
In Derek Black’s new book, “Schoolhouse Burning,” he documents that the Founders wanted state-supported public schools in every town. You would enjoy the book because it goes into fascinating detail about Reconstruction and the demand of freed slaves for public schools open to all.
Diane, thanks, I’ll seek the book. 🙂
While state supported public schools sound better than local city, town controlled schools, it’s still 50 states educating their own way. 😐
Respectfully,
Eddie 🙂
Eddie,
I am going to compare the US in 1776 to today.
The U.S. population was 2.5 million in 1776, and 6% of that population lived in urban areas vs 94% scattered throughout remote rural areas land most of them lived off the land and did not have jobs other than farming and hunting.
There were no roads or railroads
There was no electricity.
There were no telephones.
No TV
No mobile phones.
et al.
The primary firearm for protection and hunting was muzzle-loaded muskets both pistols and rifles. A properly trained group of regular infantry soldiers was able to load and fire four rounds per minute. A crack infantry company could load and fire five rounds in a minute
To learn about education in the early 1800s American classrooms, click the next link and read this piece from History.com
… “But for several decades in the early 19th century, student monitors reigned supreme over their peers in American schools—because they were the de facto teachers.
” At the time, there were not enough educators to go around in America’s burgeoning school system, so the few teachers outsourced many of their duties to the students themselves. They did so with the help of “monitors,” a select group of students teachers allowed to instruct other students—and not just pupils their own age.” …
https://www.history.com/news/in-early-1800s-american-classrooms-students-governed-themselves
2019 population = 328.2 million
In 2019, there were approximately 57.8 million people living in rural areas in the United States, compared to about 271.73 million people living in urban areas.
Few Americans that own firearms today use them to hunt for their meat, but the most popular weapon is the AR-15 that is capable of firing fire 400 rounds per minute.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation has estimated that approximately 5 million to 10 million AR-15 style rifles exist in the U.S. within the broader total of the 300 million firearms owned by Americans.
Conclusion: The US K-12 education system today works with about 50 million children (20x the total US population in 1776) and most of the teachers are professionals that are college-educated. Life today is more complicated than in 1776 and our children must be offered an educated and all the studies for decades show that the best education system that is capable of delivering that education is the public education system controlled by elected school boards and taught by professional college educated teachers.
Hi Lloyd, thanks for the info. 🙂
Yes, I knew about arms, no tv, etc. in 1776. 😐
No, I didn’t know about 1800s’ student monitors. Thanks! 🙂
Respectfully, I’ll say we really don’t have US PK-12 schools. They’re all locally affiliated with cities and towns, managed by elected local school boards (excluding Chicago) and municipalities. 😐
To me, at least, it seems the Founding Fathers (no teachers?) left most things up to states. Maybe, that’s part of the reason the USA hasn’t been (that) unified. 😐
Respectfully,
Eddie
🙂
Eddie, I don’t see the connection with larger subdivisions such as provinces. Compare us to Canada—surely better-managed and more unified than US. We both have roughly 3.8 million sqmis of territory, yet they have only 10 provinces. Could that be what makes them more manageable by their fed govt? Manageability is a function of how many people you’re managing, and by what means. Our pop is 8.7 times theirs, with the densest population in the oldest [former colony] states. If New England were a province it would have 22% of US pop! The idea of ‘redrawing’ as reqd would have been almost impossible: (a) they would have had to be redrawn many times as states were added every few yrs between 1789-1889, & (b) that would have had to have been agreed upon democratically. Canada by contrast was divided into four big regions in 1867 after they were mostly settled, w/some subdivisions and add-ons, all by fiat for England’s admin ease.
As to whether we’d be more unified politically if fed didn’t leave so much control up to each state… Again, the tradition was a product of necessity: we had far-flung territories being administered by democracy, funded by our own taxes. And Canada had fewer cultural differences from the get-go. Though both countries conquered/ assimilated natives, Canada had few slaves, & the practice was legislated out before the 19thC. Their Can-Afr pop today is 3.5% (mostly Caribbean immigrants). In addition, their land was settled by mostly Brits & some French; we had those two plus a large Spanish contingent.
bethree5, I’ll accept your view. 😁
Eddie this little 7-line starter post plus the follow-ups are provocative! I learned stuff about Canada to bolster one response, & I’m still pondering other issues you’ve raised. Today I’ll be thinking about “If the US truly wanted standardized, federalized education…” Stay tuned if you can bear it 😉
“While state supported public schools sound better than local city, town controlled schools, it’s still 50 states educating their own way.” As of 2016, 23 of our states provided 51% or more of their public schools funding [VT & HI 89%!] The natl average over the last 50 yrs has crept up from 39% to 47%. So, state school control is a thing. And, since NCLB/ CCSS/ RTTT, fed increasingly controls state ed policy. Has that made things better?
Frankly as a NJ resident I feel it like a hot breath on our town’s neck: NJ may average only 47% state funding, but… Here’s the rub: NJ has Robin Hood funding of poor districts via redistribution of RE taxes. So in my town, the revenue breakdown is roughly 93% local, 5% state, 2% federal. We’re reqd to spend $$$ and narrow curriculum on state/ fed- imposed annual ESSA testing, warping our druthers to CCSS-aligned testing-based “accountability plan,” not to mention the odious Marzano growth objectives with their before/after tests and all the absurd data collection that comes with those things—subtracting from teacher time & energy. And yet we were one of best schsys in state before & since 20 yrs of ed reforms. And our per-pupil expenditure is $2k less than the state ave.
It’s not that ‘we know how to school better’—it’s the usual case, pronounced in NJ: residential segregation by SES is so extreme it can be viewed from one tiny town border to the next. Not a good thing, but a fact on the ground. Ours is a wealthy town w/highly-educated residents. The pubschsys has been superlative for eons, we draw highly-qualified teachers & pay them well. We don’t need no stinkin testing/ accountability schemes yet we’re paying for them through the nose, $wise & ed-qual-wise. THIS is what fed/ state-controlled ed looks like. Same-same policy for everybody, despite wildly-different on-the-ground situations—more disparate now than 40 yrs ago due to spiraling inequality. And in poor cities, are these fed/state ed policies helping? It’s true—at least in northern inner cities– more per-pupil $ has been poured into areas w/bad scores [poor areas]. The zippo results suggest only that (a)the $ is not getting to the classroom/ facilities [still overcrowded/ crumbling], (b)test scores don’t inform/ help, (c)the problem is much bigger than ed (it’s about poverty).
Your premise suggests it’s somehow about how we teach [50 different ways]; I don’t think so. I’m guessing, but I don’t think states vary teaching methods or even curriculum that much. The disparities are gross indeed, but they’re among school size, class size, safety of school environment [re: quality of facility & also crime/ security], qualifications of teachers & admins, availability of supplies from ppr/ pencil thro textbooks & tech, & fine arts, & electives, & extra-curriculars. In the larger community picture, it’s about discrepancies in availability of adult help at home, food, shelter, healthcare.
Read and listen to public health professionals and teachers who are in the midst of implementing district policies. I recommend Mercedes Schneider who is blogging in detail about her classroom, how she and the students and principal responded to the first Covid-19 case in the school.
Economists are not authorities who have trustworthy and practical information of relevance to educators and parents/caregivers.
I see too little reporting on the legal issues in opening up schools. This is a big one. Are schools and school staff insured and specifically for liabilities associated with COVID-19? Are blanket policies in place for different classes of employees? Do teachers have their own insurance? Are union policies written to cover COVID-19? How is the issue of privacy treated, especially if there is contact tracing?
Corporations with insurance are now in courts to get reimbursement for losses due to COVID-19. In some of the first cases, now working their way through the courts, the judges and advocates are trying to determine if the virus is a physical source of damage to the corporation, or not. The cases are not just about the health of employees, but also the costs for disinfecting facilities, including workplaces, and loss of revenue. This issue came to my attention in the Cincinnati Business Courier where a major insurer could be facing bankruptcy.
“Economists are not authorities who have trustworthy and practical information of relevance to educators and parents/caregivers.”
The best way to keep economists out of education is to keep the private student and teacher data away from them.
Without the VAM and earnings data, for example, Chetty would never have been able to produce his BS “study”
And without covid data, Emily Oster would also be left high and dry.
Starve these people of data and they won’t be able to do any damage.
If data are given out, it should ONlY be under very carefullymonitored circumstances to ensure privacy and it should only be given to serious researchers in education and epidemiology, for example.
The current wild west mentality that every Time Dick and Henrietta economist who wants access to student and teacher data should get it needs to be ended ASAP.
Click to access astley-oster2013.pdf
Should have said “without the student test score and earnings data” since test scores are the actual inputs to the VAM
Response of the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome to Oster’s ignorant “advice” regarding alcohol consumption during pregnancy.
https://www.nofas.org/emily_oster/
This is the person who wants data on our school children and teachers so that she can “analyze” it and tell us if our schools are safe?
All I can say is” Yikes!!”
It turns out that Oster’s claims about alcohol and pregnancy (which conflict with the advice of the Surgeon General and virtually every other medical organization in the US) are not the only ones of concern.
Oster also published a paper in 2005 that she was later effectively forced (by dint of overwhelming evidence to the contrary) to retract.
https://voxeu.org/article/journalism-and-science-hepatitis-b-and-missing-women
The primary issue is actually not even that she was wrong, but that she and others (eg, Steve Levitt, an economist at U ofChicago who is also infamous for being taken to task for bullshit claims about climate science by climate scientist Ray Pierrehumbert) rushed to judgement and did not even wait to address criticisms of the preliminary paper before rushing to publish.
This has obvious implications for her current work on Covid and schools, where she ALREADY has drawn conclusions with just a few weeks worth of data. And actually, even back in early May (before much of anything was known ) she already seemed to have essentially concluded that school aged children were not a significant concern with regard to spread of the virus (see below*)
Here is my worst fear: we are going to have a replay of Oster’s 2005 retraction, only with regard to safety of schools. But in the current case the results could be devastating. What is she going to say “Oops, I got it wrong. My bad”?
Collection and analysis of epidemiological data is not simply some “game” to be played by any unqualified ignoramus who feels so inclined. As in the case of alcohol and pregnancy , it can have deadly outcomes if one draws the wrong conclusions and bases medical advice on such conclusions (in my book, when someone who is not a medical doctor gives out medical advice, it’s called quackery. But that’s just my opinion)
*Back on May 4, when the data on how the virus spread were extremely limited, Oster was already assuring parents that
“In practice it seems that infection among kids is simply very unlikely. It’s not that they are infected and don’t know it, it seems like they are just not infected very often. And when they are, it may be that the mild symptoms limit their viral spreading (like with the kid in the French example). ”
///
Contrary to what Oster implied on May 4 (with almost no data to back it up) a significant fraction of those getting Covid are children
https://www.uptodate.com/contents/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-clinical-manifestations-and-diagnosis-in-children
Can children get COVID-19? — Children of all ages can get COVID-19 [6-11]. Children appear to be affected less commonly than adults [6-11]. In surveillance from various countries children typically account for 1 to 8 percent of laboratory-confirmed cases [12-17].
“In the United States, children <18 years account for approximately 8 to 10 percent of laboratory-confirmed cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) [18,19].
And as far as children as spreaders
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/08/looking-at-children-as-the-silent-spreaders-of-sars-cov-2/
“Study found extremely high levels of SARS-CoV-2 in children’s airways”
“The most comprehensive study of COVID-19 pediatric patients to date, researchers provide critical data showing that children play a larger role in the community spread of COVID-19 than previously thought.”
“I was surprised by the high levels of virus we found in children of all ages, especially in the first two days of infection,” says Lael Yonker, director of the MGH Cystic Fibrosis Center and lead author of the study. “I was not expecting the viral load to be so high. You think of a hospital, and of all of the precautions taken to treat severely ill adults, but the viral loads of these hospitalized patients are significantly lower than a ‘healthy child’ who is walking around with a high SARS-CoV-2 viral load.”
“Transmissibility or risk of contagion is greater with a high viral load. And even when children exhibit symptoms typical of COVID-19, like fever, runny nose and cough, they often overlap with common childhood illnesses, including influenza and the common cold. This confounds an accurate diagnosis of COVID-19, the illness derived from the SARS-COV2 coronavirus
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé.
Children should be IN SCHOOL! If masks workz teachers should wear them and be safe. Of course, only n95s do, but facts don’t matter. So happy mine is back, not social distancing or wearing a mask. He’s doing better than he has in the last 7 months. Stop being insane!!!!
There have been other times kids haven’t been in school, such as blizzards, hurricanes, Scarlet Fever, Spanish Flu (1918), measles, mumps, chicken pox, TB, fire, etc. 😐
Depending on year and era, students had their books and homework, along with libraries, newspapers, radios, television and more recently, Internet. 😐
Here’s an interview with Alasdair Munro, an expert in pediatric infectious disease who’s been focusing on Covid-19. He lays out what we know about the virus’s risk to children and the risk of spread in schools. Take it or leave it.
Quite a few qualifications in his analysis “we don’t know how many children were asymptomatic and therefore never tested and found to carry the virus ” or close enough to that , as most young children are asymptomatic. Another gem was .” We do not know who transmitted the virus to whom did the child transmit to the adult or the opposite ”
And lastly is it that young children are less likely to be let out . Confession I stopped at those..
But we are circling back to what I said yesterday about Community infection rates .
” I think a lot of the discussion about schools has assumed that schools are an isolated bubble that is separate from the rest of the community, and they’re really not. If children are getting infected, whether outside of school or in school, those children are still part of the same community and they’re capable of spreading the virus within that community.”
But all the I don’t knows bring us to a more critical point epidemiology nor economics is a hard science both subject to the data inputted to reach a conclusion.
In case you didn’t read my late response this morning. Here is the hard science
“Notably, the team found that infected children in the asymptomatic or early infection phase had significantly higher viral loads than hospitalized adults with severe COVID-19.”
If you would not want to be in an ICU without a moon suit you certainly would not want to be in a class of 20 -30 children when there is widespread disease in a community.
https://hms.harvard.edu/news/silent-spreaders
And as that we have never done preemptive random testing for this virus; you will likely not know how far the virus has spread till the refrigerator trucks line up. As in Corona /Elmhurst where 60% of the community may have been infected.
I recommend listening to the entire interview.
You seem to be FLERP!flopping on this issue.😀
Ultimately, parents and guardians make the final decision on covid public schools. If a public school is open (Aren’t most closed?), then parents and guardians opt for a remote learning, closed public school, private school or home school. 😐
NO most schools are not closed, especially in red states. Most schools in Utah, for example are full student full time or nearly full time. And that’s 30-40 (or more) kids per classroom.
What I hear in this is a) we don’t really know, b) there are some indications that it might not be all that bad to reopen schools, c) the evidence so far is scant, but d) I really want schools open and have been saying this from the beginning, so e) we should open schools.
What I don’t hear is gee, what if I’m wrong about this? In other words, I don’t hear the precautionary principle at work.
People want their kids out of their hair so they can go about their lives. And, to that end, they are willing to take enormous risks.
But the answer to that question–what if I’m wrong about this matter about which I really don’t know much yet?–is that a lot of people die who didn’t have to.
And after all the deaths, oopsie won’t cut it.
That’s exactly right, Bob
It’s all about making an informed decision in the presence of significant uncertainty in order to minimize risk of possibly dire outcomes (in this case death).
It’s bad enough when people who are ignorant of the uncertainty make absolute claims, but when people who actually know about the uncertainty do so , it’s really hard to understand.
I just wrote a few comments about that in regard to Emily Oster’s claims about alcohol consumption by pregnant mothers starting at the following link
https://dianeravitch.net/2020/10/11/wisconsin-south-carolina-two-teachers-die-of-covid-19/#comment-3122689
And, to anyone who may not be aware, economist Emily Oster is now weighing in on the school safety issue
https://dianeravitch.net/2020/10/10/emily-oster-schools-are-not-superspeaders-of-covid/
“What I hear in this is a) we don’t really know, b) ….d) I really want schools open and have been saying this from the beginning, so e) we should open schools.”
A bit more concisely:
“We should open schools so we should open schools”
Can’t argue with that logic.
By the way, Bob
Unfortunately, it looks like your original predictions regarding cover deaths in the US are probably in the right ballpark.
The “official” 230k estimate made by the Trump admin has already almost been reached with second waves starting up in many states and no end in sight. Some modelers have already predicted the deaths will reach half a million by February.
Some folks seem to be acting as if it’s all over and we should just return to normal.
Trump said in Florida yesterday that the US has turned a corner on COVID and that we are doing better than any other country. Just look at the numbers!
Reminiscent of NY Times Columnist Thomas Friedman’s years long prognostications on the Iraq war.
For years he kept repeating that in just six more months we would be turning the corner
We turned the corner so many times that we ended back where we started.
Or maybe it was a typo and he really meant “turning the coroner”
HAAA!!!
That’s not at all what I hear. But that’s instructive, I think. I think on this topic people tend to hear what they want to hear, to look for things that reconfirm their beliefs, and to ignore or downplay things that contradict their beliefs.
A few points that I think are, or should be, relatively uncontroversial.
First, the science is increasingly clear that children are not at serious risk (not the same as no risk) from Covid-19, despite the outright lies that many tell (I’m looking at you, Governor Cuomo).
Second, there is also a growing body of empirical evidence (from research and from real-world examples of school re-openings) that schools are not major drivers of infection. Of course this is not the same as saying that no infections happen in schools.
Third, there is the proposition—which apparently is much more debatable than I would have expected six months ago—that school is essential for the well-being and development of children, and that closing physical schools for six months or longer (a year? two?) is likely to have disastrous consequences for a significant number of children.
School closure policy should weigh those three factors. In that analysis, every good faith actor should be asking “what if I’m wrong about this?” And I don’t hear from school lockdown proponents say that much. I just hear them saying “what if you’re wrong about this?”
And I believe the burden of proof and persuasion should fall on those who want to keep schools closed. Closing schools should require a growing body of evidence that schools are major drivers of infection (which is very different from “children CAN transmit the virus, or ten students at a high school tested positive for the virus”).
Apart from the actual merits of the school closure arguments, there is something that bothers me. I don’t read the comments here as much as I used to, but as far as I’ve seen, there are only three longtime commenters who have seriously questioned the wisdom of school closures. There’s Dienne, who is largely a pariah here. There’s me, and I’m probably a pariah to many here. And there’s Carol Corbett Burris. When pressed, commenters will acknowledge that of course it’s terrible what’s happening to students, but then immediately transition to explanations of how Trump and the Republicans are responsible for that, or how “there are no easy choices,” or how lives are at stake. And then it’s back to nonstop commentary about Trump, the election, school vouchers, standardized testing. These are not trivial topics, but families and kids are drowning. Why is the blog not deluged with comments voicing the anguish that so many parents are going through? How is this possible on a site dedicated to “a better education for all”?
As always I appreciate your comments and your brilliance, Bob, even if I disagree with you on this.
Flerp,
I post different points of view about whether schools should be open or closed. I don’t know the answer. My grandsons are now going to school 2-3 days a week and they are very happy about it. So are their parents.
I know you do. And I’m glad you posted the Oster piece the other day. I’m talking more about the comment section, which you don’t have much control over.
Same, Flerp
FLERP,
This is the point I have made several times, most recently here: https://dianeravitch.net/2020/10/12/a-medical-scientist-speaks-out-about-children-and-covid/#comment-3122587
I have been forced to conclude that the folks that post here, admittedly a tiny fraction of the teachers in the country, do not think that a year in school is very important, or at least not important enough for teachers to have even the smallest risk of infection in school. I hope this will end the comparison of teachers to health care professionals. Obviously even teachers hold health care professionals to a far higher standard than they think should be applied to teachers.
In the end, I disagree. That is why I am in the classroom.
The irony is getting pretty thick down here.
What Stefan Baral has to say here about the lack of investment into interventions for the poorest among us is profoundly disheartening. It’s no secret that I’m a strong advocate of not holding in-person school until we have testing or, at least, N95 masks for everyone going into school buildings. But such a position also absolutely demands enormous investment in the poor–in home health checks, in supplemental food services, in computers and internet services, in home study materials such as notebooks and books and pencils and pencil sharpeners, etc. Almost none of that is being done, and it’s horrific.
Had I been in a position to make the response at the federal level, it would have been a) to do schooling from home for a while and b) to pass a massive one-time wealth tax to pay for those home-based interventions for the poor. That’s what I think should have been done. But instead we have wasted precious months trying to figure out how to “open schools safely.”
I agree with you completely.
In six months, we could have mounted a massive effort to ensure that every child (no matter how poor their family or what their family’s situation ) had internet access to online learning, health and food services and the other things you mention , which would have had benefits long after schools opened up again for in person learning.
But of course, there was no political will for that on the part of either Republicans or Democrats, so here we are six months later with even fewer choices than before.
Our country is doomed.
Our leadership class is almost completely dysfunctional.
And in fact, it’s never too late to do all those things.
It will not only help students and families now, but prepare them for almost certain pandemics down the road.
If it is the social consensus that losing any year of K-12 education has little impact on students and their families, than by all means cancel a year of school in this year of the pandemic. I also think that means we should really rethink senior year of high school as any given year of education could be seen as pointless.
If, on the other hand, the social consensus is that a year of education is valuable, we need to balance the risk of infection against the harm of students not receiving a year of education. As retired teacher said in another thread, ” There are no easy answers.”
Here is what’s happening with covid infections in Montana schools:
https://www.mtpr.org/post/schools-take-different-approaches-covid-19-numbers-grow
This is chilling.
Whats the concern?
I’m sure that shutting a school down for a couple weeks and then opening up until another outbreak occurs in the community will work just fine.
The Yo-yo
A school is like a yo-yo
A rather pleasant game
You open it and close up
The viruses to tame
It’s open for a week
And shuttered up for two
If yo-yo’s what you seek
Then public school will do
The Click Clack
The school is like a click-clack
A rather pleasant game
You treat it like a paddy-whack
The viruses to tame
You whack it in the butt
When virus comes to town
And open it back up
When virus ain’t around
The UK also has its issues. But over there, pols say it’s a “moral duty” to start up schools:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXdd8WzaK-Q