As the coronavirus surges across the nation, infections are returning to the east coast cities and states that hoped they were done with it.
After New York City suffered more deaths than many states, the city for months boasted a low infection rate. But that rate recently hovered just below 3%. Mayor de Blasio said he would close the schools and revert to remote instruction if the positivity rate reached 3%. It did and today Mayor de Blasio announced that he was closing the schools even though they have a positivity rate well below 1%, even below 0.2%. Strangely, the city is not closing indoor dining and gyms. About 300,000 students returned for in-person instruction. Their parents will now have to make arrangements for childcare.
It’s sad that the mayor is taking an all-or-nothing approach to closing the schools. Schools that have been successful in avoiding transmission should stay open. The data show that schools are not super spreaders.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is just too disruptive. Not sure I’ll send my son back whenever schools reopen, assuming that happens this year. I guess I’ll leave it up to him.
Flerp, I’m seeing the same sentiment expressed increasingly on comment threads at WaPo ed articles among families who have a parent working at home. They’re finding that just having a continuity of routine beats the experience of acquaintances going thro the stop-start-stop of unpredictable quarantines and closures.
I may be through with the public schools here in general. It’s like being on a bus that’s careening out of control, even in non-pandemic times.
De Blasio also said months ago that if the citywide positivity rate hit 2%, indoor dining would be shut down. We blew through that and now we’re through 3%, and indoor dining continues.
But schools are closed, despite a system-wide positivity rate of approximately 0.2%. Schools are less essential than indoor dining and gyms, apparently.
Adults just can’t stay out of restaurants, bars, casinos and gyms yet they want their kids back in school and playing youth sports like pre-pandemic times. People (and businesses) are making bad choices and ignoring/fudging the rules put in place to keep transmission low until a vaccine is available. We can’t have it all and adults need to sacrifice if they want their kids to have a more normal existence.
I think the more likely explanation is that teachers will be paid if schools are open or not, but restaurant works and owners, bar workers and owners, gym workers and owners will not be paid. The small business owners will lose a lifetime of savings, perhaps several lifetimes in a family business. They lobby in favor of staying open, teachers lobby in favor of closing.
I’m not sure about the lobbying angle, TE. Public school teachers with strong unions have a voice, smallbiz owners and staff do not. The primary distinction is that K12 instruction can be delivered remotely; indoor dining, gym exercise etc cannot.
The other element is that cities and states have had their budgets destroyed. More businesses closing means less tax revenue. So the state and local governments have a big incentive to open private businesses.
I thought the problem is that only Cuomo can call off indoor dining, but de Blasio can make the decision on all-remote schools.
To be fair, isn’t it this way in other cities? Or did other cities not even try a hybrid school program?
I thought the city had that power. I’d ask Cuomo but I’m afraid he’ll scream at me and tell me I’m asking obnoxious and offensive questions.
FLERP!,
Spot on! I guess if you really want schools to remain open, you should be celebrating that Mayor de Blasio decided to close them, because that insures that Cuomo will order de Blasio to reverse his decision so schools will remain open.
If Mayor de Blasio had said “schools will remain open”, then Andrew Cuomo would have immediately ordered all schools to close.
Sometimes I think Cuomo’s governing policy is to wait until de Blasio decides to act, then Cuomo will announce that de Blasio is an idiot and his policy is no good, and instead Cuomo will order a different policy.
^^^To be fair, I kind of got what Cuomo was saying in his uniquely obnoxious Cuomo way.
He was pointing out that this policy of 3% wasn’t new and that’s why some public schools in some neighborhoods in Brooklyn were closed last month when positive rates in those neighborhoods suddenly spiked high.
I would be interested to see a poll of parents: Would you rather know in advance that schools will be all remote for at least the next 3 months, or would you rather have schools open with the knowledge that any day they might have to immediately close?
I’ve seen that same debate with colleges. Half the parents are angry when the colleges make early decisions that spring will be all remote. They say “why not wait and see what happens?” But they are usually the same parents who were so upset in the late summer when colleges said they were opening abd then decided to delay opening. “Why did they keep us hanging, they should have just decided to close early and not wait so long!”
Good evening Diane and everyone,
My husband’s school just went 100% remote with 2 positive cases and 109 + students and teachers in quarantine. What’s going to happen when Thanksgiving break comes and people travel and visit relatives? Not to mention winter break in December.
People will get sick. They will not get sick in school. It is a place where there is social distancing and masks.
“They will not get sick in school.” That’s quite a declarative statement. Quite certain in these uncertain times. Don’t know how I missed this this morning. Is that was Dr. Fauci said? Dr. Osterholm? Any immunologist anywhere? Bueller?
The positivity rate for schools is determined by those who voluntarily test. There is no mandatory testing. People are volunteering to test multiple times. When the testers reach their quota, they move on. This makes the school rates inaccurate.
I’m a teacher in the Bronx. We had a student inform the school they tested positive 3 days ago and still came to school. Last week we closed for 1 day waiting for contact tracing. This week we were closed Tuesday and today due to positive COVID with several students.
I know people want to get on with their lives but this is too interruptive. Teachers and students who are doing all remote are able to meet five days a week and enjoy continuity of instruction.
We will eventually return to “normal” school. Let’s do so without any more school related deaths.
Thanks for real on-the-ground info. Some know-it-all commenter at the WaPo article on this subject was claiming “all students and staff are tested monthly, more often in the yellow zones.”
Bingo. The so-called positivity rates are completely misleading as they are based only on those students whose families give consent and many haven’t. Moreover, they are not tested nearly frequently enough.
Quotes of positivity rates like 0.2% are also misleading because even the most accurate covid tests (PCR) have a false negative rate between 10 and 185 times as large as that.(Reported at Harvard Health Blog as between 2% and 37%)
And some of the antigen tests have a false negative rate of 50% !!
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/which-test-is-best-for-covid-19-2020081020734#:~:text=The%20reported%20rate%20of%20false%20negative%20results%20is%20as%20high,a%20more%20accurate%20antigen%20test.
So it’s simply not possible to claim that the actual positivity is only 0.2% (because many of the negatives might actually have been false negatives)
But people are either clueless about these very basic facts or they simply ignore them because they do not comport with their preconceived notions.
So may we all just carry on in ignorance.
Ignorance is bliss, right?
I should clarify and say that the tests CAN have those false negative rates.
It’s actually possible that all of the tested individuals in a given test run were infection free in which case none of the negatives would be false, but the point is that one simply can not know that from the test results.
Thx
The virus is not the only thing that is spreading.
People are basing decisions on positivity rates like 0.2 %, but because of the false negative issue, it is possible that the actual infection rates might be higher and potentially much higher than the reported positivities indicate.
When people base potentially life and death decisions on unwarranted assumptions, it is a recipe for disaster.
Interesting to bring up the false negative rate, SomeDAM. I rarely if ever see it mentioned in the context of these discussions re policy, but doctors are definitely thinking of it. When my teen had symptoms in June but tested negative, our pediatrician said that she had to stay not only quarantined but isolated in her room for x hours (I have forgotten exact #) after symptoms were gone precisely because the false negative rate was too damn high and she could actually have COVID. Fortunately, the symptoms were not severe, but it upended our family for many days nonetheless. All the info about isolation mentions having a separate bathroom, etc. Not practical for those of us living in NYC apartments with one bathroom and siblings sharing bedrooms.
Kk
I don’t think most people even appreciate that the tests for covid are not perfectly accurate — and that they might actually be wildly INaccurate in some cases.
They just assume that the number of positive test results is equivalent to the total number of infected individuals, which is not necessarily true, of course, because some of the negatives may be false (ie, infected individuals)
I have tried here numerous times now (in several different ways) to explain this issue , but have obviously failed because the fellow i was trying to explain it to is STILL quoting positivity rates like 0.2% with no mention of the false negative issue. He is now willfully ignoring my warnings.
AND now even Diane Ravitch is quoting the 0.2% rate with no mention of uncertainty due to the false negative possibility.
I am probably starting to sound like a broken record, but I was educated as a scientist and in science, taking uncertainty iinto account is absolutely critical. In fact, “results” that are given without associated uncertainty/error are NOT science and are essentially meaningless.
I get a very bad feeling from the high degree of certainty being attached to positivity rates pecifically and to school safety in general.
Indoor dinning never should have opened. We easily could have supported several non essential industries with a properly designed rescue / stimulus.
With that said , I am not a big fan of the China hid the virus clan. You are not hiding something that can be seen by those you are supposedly hiding it from . Certainly on January 19 when they locked down an entire province (for real ) that was a five alarm fire siren for the world to hear.
However between New Years eve when they sequenced the virus and the time they shut down Hubei Provence how many known cases were we accusing them of hiding, 15, 50, 100. NYC has had over 1000 cases a day the state 5,000 cases mostly in down state.
There is no way to contact trace that number. How far are we from spiraling out of control .
The school districts don’t want to be sued and don’t want the associated bad publicity. ☹️
In Chicago, if one student caught covid, at least twenty students’ would sue and/or protest. ☹️
Diane,
You said that schools that have been successful in avoiding transmission should stay open. How do you know that they have been successful in avoiding transmission? At least where I am, there is no regular testing. How do we know that transmission is being avoided when much of the spread is asymptomatic? When we have a few positive cases in schools, we can be pretty sure that there are many other cases.
Agreed. Moreover, this opens the door to terrible inequity and expands the gulf between the haves and have nots. Schools in low-transmission zones like Park Slope will be open while schools in harder stricken (and often lower income neighborhoods) will remain closed. Not good at all.
I asked you this in the other thread, but just to ask again: If, hypothetically, it were safe to open schools in affluent low-transmission zones, and it were not safe to open them in less affluent high-transmission zones, would you close all the schools to avoid the inequitable result of wealthier schools being open and poorer schools being closed? If it were safe to operate public schools in Scarsdale but not in New York City, should Scarsdale schools shut down?
Best example of aggrieved white privilege I’ve seen in quite some time. Even considering how much we’ve been subjected to in the Age of the Idiot.
Really? You agree that if one school could open safely but another one could not, then neither should open, because it would be unfair if only one did?
Incidentally, if you want a policy that increases inequity, then across-the-board school closures is the way to go. One of my son’s best friends lives in a studio apartment (probably 600 square feet) with five siblings and his mother. His school just shut down today. Take a moment to consider how remote learning is going to go for him and his family. It’s worth weeping over. And realize that there are a lot of families like that in my city. I admit it bothers me a lot, apparently more than the average person.
Have to say I’m w/FLERP on this one. The inequity lies in govt policies that exacerbate rich-poor gap, and possibly some genetic variation in covid response [tho that’s more likely environmental]. Keeping privileged white kids out of school unnecessarily doesn’t fix anything.
Yesterday our nation crossed the 250,000 death count, “achieved” in just over 8 months, with more than 11.5 million infections. The virus is nowhere near being under control and, under the most rosy scenario, it will be more than a year before everyone in the nation has the opportunity to get a vaccine, which may or may not allow us to get back to normal life. I’m not even getting into the issues involving other nations. What happens when people can travel freely. Meanwhile the economy is suffering, people are losing jobs with no foreseeable hope of being employed again, families are being evicted from their homes and it may go up by the millions in the next six weeks.
Yet there are some middle-class and affluent people, living in secure circumstances, for whom the greatest existential crisis in their insulated world is that there kiddies can’t go to school. Those who have their children in public schools–who purport to care about public education–are ready to bail, because they CAN. They have given up on their principles and wish the forces that are destroying public education well if that means their kids can go back to school. Well boo freaking hoo. If that’s the biggest issue in your life in this day and age, you’re doing pretty damned well.
How’s about getting your kids some books and having them read, doing and engaging in arts or science activities by using the internet to connect with others? How’s about making a concerted effort to learn about something that schools don’t emphasize? I’m assuming that these secure middle class and affluent folks, unlike poor kids in Detroit or Appalachia, for example, have good internet connections and access to go hard- and software. Instead they ask inane questions like, “If my schools are fine, why should we care about poorer communities where things are bad?” Experience has demonstrated that what’s fine today can be really bad tomorrow. There is no such thing has hermetically-sealed security. Imagine if we, as a society, asked and addressed the question, “Why is it that rich schools are able to keep classes going and poorer schools in highly populated areas can’t? What should we be doing to address this situation?”
And these arguments are echo the segregationists’ as the civil rights movement was in ascendancy. “Our schools are wonderful, why should be bring them down with integration, restoring and rebuilding funding, and equal opportunity?” But no, my kiddies are suffering because they have security in a time of extreme chaos and that’s the great tragedy none of you understand. If that’s not the pinnacle of aggrieved white privilege, please let me know what is.
That’s a condescending and insulting reply, Greg. I get emotional on this blog sometimes, but I try not to make it personal, even though I take plenty of hits from my fan club here. But it is what it is, and I’m used to it.
I’ve tried to explain this before, including in the comment you’re replying to: yes, I am under stress and having problems, but my family has it so much better than most NYC families, who are absolutely drowning. People can minimize it all they want, but hundreds of thousands of students are at risk of being derailed in ways that may affect them for the rest of their lives. My “kiddies” may be fine in the end (thanks for your concern and suggestions, by the way), but a LOT of other kids will not be. Maybe that’s just the cost of a pandemic, but we shouldn’t pretend that cost doesn’t exist. If you can’t see that, then maybe you’re the one in a bubble.
There is no historical evidence whatsoever that “thousands of students are at risk of being derailed in ways that may affect them for the rest of their lives.” Privatizers want to make that argument, but we’ve had a whole of evidence that when they speak, it’s with greedy profit motives. What history has proven is that every generation before ours has faced great obstacles and progress has been spurred by countless individuals who didn’t have “formal education.” But somehow they learned and left the world a better place upon leaving then when they entered. Reading comprehension also seems to be a victim of this pandemic. Please show me where I “pretend that cost doesn’t exist” and that I’m “the one in a bubble”? Perhaps a group reading and discussion of books like Studs Terkel’s Working or The Diary of Anne Frank is in order to learn about the consequences of hardship and isolation really are. Or is that too condescending or insulting a recommendation?
“One of my son’s best friends lives in a studio apartment (probably 600 square feet) with five siblings and his mother. His school just shut down today. Take a moment to consider how remote learning is going to go for him and his family. It’s worth weeping over. And realize that there are a lot of families like that in my city.”
Take a minute to weep over people who think it is perfectly ok for 5 children and an adult to live in a 600 squ ft studio apartment as long some of the kids can attend in person school during a pandemic IF those 5 children happen to attend a public school that serves mostly affluent children. If not, well, I’m not sure if anyone really cares.
Those concerned with the most severely at-risk students should be talking about expanding more Learning Bridges seats so that children in those situations have a place to go. Of course, that doesn’t help the fact that from 3pm on, all those children are hugely disadvantaged in their learning but hey, as long as their underfunded, falling apart school is open — or at least it is if they happen to go to school that serves primarily affluent children — it’s all fine.
NYC was seems to be the ONLY large urban public school system that brought back students 8 weeks ago. Now the same officials who are trying their best to look after children are TEMPORARILY closing because given two bad choices, it might make a difference.
FLERP!, do you know what also hurts those 5 kids? If we have a situation like we did in the spring with one of them getting sick and the hospitals and doctors offices are overwhelmed and the single adult in that household gets sick, and the people who work for the government agencies who might help also get sick.
This is a choice between two bad situations because we had a president who told half of America it didn’t matter if they took any precautions.
This is a choice between two bad situations because the president didn’t say “I am giving the poorest urban areas huge amounts of money to make schools safe”. He just said “go back”.
It seems so odd to attack the only big city Mayor who opened in-person schools 2 months ago (and was bashed for it).
Also, the Washington DC schools seem to be open the way Learning Bridges is — staffed buildings where students still take classes remotely.
Hi FLERP, I am only now able to look at these threads and will just reply here to say that I couldn’t have said it any better than GregB. So thanks for answering for me, GregB. I agree with NYC parent too. Heck, let’s take it all the way back to the second question of Rabbi Hillel: “If I am for myself alone, what am I?” To quote Marshall Ganz, it asks us to “recognize that we are in the world in relationship with others and that our capacity to realize our own objectives is inextricably wrapped up with the capacity of others to realize theirs.”
I had the same reaction, Mamie. Confirmed by RL’s reality-check on testing in Bronx schools. And the whole contact-tracing thing makes no sense to me in this context. Most kids are asymptomatic when infected; no one’s contact-tracing them : we’re not routinely testing 100% of the students or anything close to that. How on earth can they say the quick ramp-up of community spread we’re experiencing is not equally due to indoor dining/ gyms/ salons/ low-capacity non-essential shopping, and 300k kids doing in-person hybrid classes?
In my small NJ city the total numbers are much lower, so I have more faith in contact-tracing that pegs cases to small family/ social gatherings and school sports. They’re only dealing with at most 28 cases a week. They can even get into the minutia [the weeds], warning us that there are probably x% more cases out there that haven’t yet hit the labs. How do you do that w/a few thousand new cases in NYC?
My husband and I are both teachers and every day in school we see times during the day when covid spread can happen. This may be students and staff removing their masks, students not distancing in the halls and opportunity at lunch time for transmission of the virus, etc. Cleaning is another issue in both of our schools. So, I really wish people would not think that schools are “safe” and that students are following all the rules. They’re not. Also, it’s not mandated that students get tested if they have symptoms. It’s voluntary and they can opt to stay out of school for a certain period of time. But this still doesn’t take into account asymptomatic spread.
Hi Maime. Through contact tracing. I have been in touch with some superintendents in three states who explain how it works. What all of them (so far) have found, is that the source of infection was outside the school. Sometimes it is a carpool without masks, a family party, church, a wedding etc. If schools were “hotspots” places where the virus spreads, you would see for example a cluster of kids in the same class getting sick.
That’s interesting what you say about contact tracing, Carol. In a recent news report in my area, I think it was over half the positive cases could not be traced back to any known source. This doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in contact tracing. Although in schools it may be a bit easier since we only have certain people in the building at a specific time.
Carol, my district just closed after an entire Kindergarten class was told to quarantine because the students and teachers are sick. The virus IS spreading in our schools.
Please note that the CDC has just revised its guidance regarding SARS-CoV-2 and schools. Here, from an article in The Hill, today:
“It does appear that children can become infected,” [Michael Beach, the CDC’s deputy incident manager for the COVID-19 response] said, and “clearly can transmit.”
The CDC’s website now states that “the body of evidence is growing that children of all ages are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and contrary to early reports might play a role in transmission.”
The website also acknowledges that “teachers and students are in close contact for much of the day, and schools can become a place where respiratory diseases like COVID-19 can quickly spread.”
Read the entire article here: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare
/526370-cdc-quietly-removes-guidance-pushing-for-school-reopenings
I suppose that now that stable genius and ultimate science arbiter Donald Trump has clearly lost the election, the CDC feels emboldened to describe the actual risk.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/526370-cdc-quietly-removes-guidance-pushing-for-school-reopenings
True. You can catch Covid at school. I just hope to avoid it a second time
Good news from an immunity study today, Roy, suggesting that immunity after recovering from the virus is longer lasting than was previously thought–six months or so.
How are you doing, Roy?
It so tragic, Roy, that you and millions of teachers in the nation–not to mention the range from hospital to grocery store workers–are subjected to pay the price for certainty some claim in these wildly uncertain times. Wishing you, everyone, and all of us something better soon.
Thanks for posting this.
I love Diane but I think she’s wrong here. The way they’ve tried to shove us back into the classroom while making specious claims about infection based on very limited data is problematic.
I was tested two weeks ago and my district is saying I won’t require another test until January.
The thing is, my test results were worthless even before I got them because ten minutes later, I could come into contact with somebody who has Covid.
Yikes, Bill!!! So, 14 days have passed and you are symptom-free? Great. But these stories are very disturbing.
It will be a very good thing when the politicization of the CDC, the EPA, the FDA, the USDA, and other science-dependent agencies and departments ends. This aspect of the wannabe fascist Trump maladministration, taking its lead from our stable genius, science-denying President, has been an unspeakably awful disaster.
People will believe what they want to hear to satisfy their own agenda, regardless of trump. There were science deniers and flat earthers before trump and they will likely continue after trump.The Evangelical crowd will always try to “lay hands” or pray away the boogie man du jour.
Meanwhile, along with indoor dining and bars and gyms, the city’s Early Childhood Centers are staying open. Why? Science!
She Blinded Me With Science
Thomas Dolby (1982)
😐
As a teacher I don’t feel that schools should have ever been opened during the pandemic at all. Even if the data supports the assertion that schools aren’t super-spreaders, I don’t see the point in risking lives when distance learning – however imperfect – can keep everyone safe. I do understand where Diane is coming from and I also think the hybrid approach is viable as long as you give teachers a choice but I also think our government was far too eager to place teachers in harm’s way. I’ve been a teacher for more than fifteen years and had they tried to force me back into the classroom this academic year (I teach middle school) I would have resigned.
That said, I love you Diane and I love this blog.
Thank you for being the beacon.
Thanks Bill, concur about never having opened. Wrong dead wrong were those many decisions around the country. I said at the end of the summer for those advocating to open schools to take THE PLEDGE:
Safe Open Schools Pledge
I,__________, will publicly commit seppuku or agree to be guillotined on the School House lawn when the first innocent childrens’ Covid deaths and co-morbidities obtain from the opening of schools without all of the proper health safeguards in place.
The thing is, there is no way that those proper health safeguards could ever/can be put in place without a massive spending and public education campaign throughout the whole country.
Duane,
Will you sign a pledge to do the same when the first innocent children’ Covid death (or deaths from other causes) occurs from the closing of schools?
The causal arrow would be extremely difficult to prove! In contrast to opening the schools as we have.
Duene,
I think it would be very easy to prove a causal arrow. Think of all the Fox News watching grandparents now providing childcare for children who should be in school. Think about the high school students now providing childcare for their neighbors who have to work to provide essential services.
It is just the simple question you asked others here to answer. If a contract tracer establishes that a child has died from Covid and they contracted it from a caregiver who was taking care of the child because schools were closed, will you publicly commit seppuku?
I am sure that you would not ask others to do something that you yourself would not be willing to do.
Prove the causal arrow then.
You’re right I wouldn’t expect others to do something that I wouldn’t do. But you have it wrong. It is not me that is mandating (nor even advocating) for the return to in person learning. And I am not a godlike being to be held responsible for the actions of all others as it seems you want me to be for those children who happen to contract Covid (which there were hardly any when we shut down the schools in the spring, hence the false impression that children were not as adversely affected by the virus) outside the school environment.
Sorry TE, but your request is about as specious and inane as can get and a piss poor attempt to attribute a causal relationship to me of advocating for distance learning and/or home schooling and the harms caused by this viral epidemic. Sad, indeed, very sad!
Duane,
Not sure what you mean here. The scenario I am thinking about is
School closed so parent seeks out alternatives to help deal with childcare
Child is infected in these alternative settings because there is no attention to mask wearing and social distancing
Child dies
vs.
School open so parents never seek out alternative to help deal with childcare
Child is never exposed to contagious alternative settings
Child does not die
Do you think this is implausible?
As far as assigning blame to me, its not only implausible but is ludicrous and risible. I expect more “logical” analysis out of you TE. You’re better than the nonsense you propose. I have nothing to do with the first scenario and administrators and politicians, and those who have pushed opening schools, perhaps yourself, eh, have everything to do with the latter.
Duane,
I am a bit disappointed.
Your position appears to be that those that argue that schools should open because it is in the public interest SHOULD pledge to kill themselves if a single student dies as a result of opening schools.
On the other hand, those that argue that schools should be closed SHOULD NOT pledge to kill themselves if a single student dies as a result of keeping schools closed.
Am I mistaken about your view?
Please show me the causal arrow of keeping schools closed as a cause of Covid deaths.
Duane,
I will try again. Schools being closed causes parents to find alternative, less safe, child care. The student is infected.
Have any backup for your statement. As it is it’s just an opinion that does nothing to further your comment. There is plenty of data that supports the fact that opening of schools has resulted in many many cases of covid contracted at school and then the children bring it home.
Your insistence that someone like myself is responsible for those supposed parental choices is risible.
Really, you might be best by just letting your dog of an opinion lie.
American Casualties
Korean War, 33,686
Vietnam War, 47,434
World War I, 53,402
SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic, 250,081 (As of Nov. 18, 2020)
World War II, 291,557
cx: not Casualties, Deaths
Casualties’ causality.
lol
If a casualty is a death caused by casual behaviors and attitudes, I think that applies pretty well to the pandemic.
lol
Here’s some more science:
“While NYC is closing, D.C. Public Schools formally reopened school buildings today for the first time since March so students w/ high needs can do distance learning in classrooms. 450 students. 25 campuses. Zero teachers. 100+ support staff.”
They re-opened BUILDINGS for remote learning. Just like Learning Bridges.
de Blasio started doing hybrid learning like this 2 months ago.
FLERP!, honest question? Would you be satisfied with this in NYC? Because this seems like something de Blasio would want to do. But it is unclear how different it is from Learning Bridges.
You’re right, it does sound like Learning Bridges. Remote learning is generally terrible but at least this makes it possible for some students to have a place to log on. I wouldn’t say I’d be “satisfied” with it. There’s something fundamentally absurd about children going to into school to do remote learning from school.
Come to think of it, why isn’t Learning Bridges shut down? Why is it safe for them to operate but not for the public schools?
FLERP!,
I know you probably won’t believe this, but I truly sympathize with how difficult this has been for your family.
But I don’t understand why you are looking so hard for scapegoats like de Blasio. I get that you despise him, but really? If your goal really was to re-open, you should be counting your blessings you live in NYC instead of any other city.
Yes, you could have lived in an affluent suburb or rural area but part of the tradeoffs of living in NYC is that you are in a high density/high poverty school system.
Think about how you posted this link with what I assume was an intention to bash the NYC Mayor. But if you really felt that poor children were being irrevocably harmed and cared about them, you would have been bashing Washington DC (and every other urban school system) for not re-opening 2 months ago and cited how they were harming poor children and were evil and only Mayor de Blasio cared about those kids and the Mayors of every other city did not. But you didn’t.
And now you suddenly pivot to “why is Learning Bridges not closed?”
Really, you don’t know?
Learning Bridges isn’t closed because it serves the most vulnerable students and in a cost-benefit analysis, it is better for them to have a place to go.
But in a cost-benefit analysis, it is horrible for poor kids, middle class kids, and even rich kids if our healthcare system becomes overwhelmed and seeing a doctor for any reason becomes near impossible unless it is a life-threatening situation. No one wants that. We will likely get it, but how badly we get it depends on trying to flatten the curve now.
And flattening the curve means keeping places for the most vulnerable kids open while closing schools for the less vulnerable.
It’s a crappy choice. But all choices are bad.
NYC is lucky because public school kids spent the last 2 months getting some in-person learning, while students in other cities did not. I wish it could continue – and I expect it will as soon as it seems possible since de Blasio clearly is committed to it.
Thank you. I don’t really need sympathy, though. What I’d really like is if once in a while a commenter other than me would get really agitated about how horrible it is what’s happening to millions of students. After decades and decades of discourse about how critically important early education is, how important it is to reduce dropouts, how learning gaps must be reduced, I can’t believe how silence there is now, and even stuff like “oh, a year without school is no big deal!” And in the comments of an education blog of all places.
I assume Learning Bridges is open because it is being staffed by non-UFT workers who have comparatively little pull with the Mayor. I don’t see how it could be safer in those buildings than it is in the largely deserted schools where hybrid learners go.
FLERP!,
No doubt you don’t want to be associated with me, but I have made the point that “After decades and decades of discourse about how critically important early education is, how important it is to reduce dropouts, how learning gaps must be reduced, I can’t believe how silence there is now, and even stuff like “oh, a year without school is no big deal!”” in several threads about reopening schools.
In response to one, Bob did say that there is an argument to be made for having K-6 education in person. Perhaps there is some common ground there.
FLERP!,
“What I’d really like is if once in a while a commenter other than me would get really agitated about how horrible it is what’s happening to millions of students.”
(FYI, that’s how I feel about the lies of charter schools and what those lies are doing to millions of students.)
I don’t think that is a fair comment. First of all, Diane Ravitch and Carol Burris have been talking about that. And I see a fair amount of recognition of the harm it is doing to kids. But I feel as if you are blaming teachers unions or de Blasio and that’s what seems wrong.
For the record, this is horrible. Learning remotely is horrible. Hybrid school is horrible. Even before the pandemic, asking teachers to produce miracle results with large classes of the most highly impoverished and at-risk kids without giving them any resources because of the self-serving lie “our charters have high expectations and good teachers and if all those union teachers weren’t lazy, they’d all get those results” is horrible.
TE, I also made the suggestion yesterday about only returning elementary school age kids to buildings.
I know de Blasio is the favorite punching bag of both the left and the right and frankly, moderates, too, but one of the reason I appreciate him is that he always seems to be trying to do the right thing regardless of the politics, and not just the easy or political thing. (Contrast with Cuomo). He made a mistake in underplaying the pandemic in the spring, but it was not for nefarious reasons and he worked to correct it instead of doubling down. It is always possible to argue that had he not re-opened schools at all and simply focused on having the most robust remote learning, that remote learning would have been better. Because he is trying to find the best middle ground, everyone hates him, but I happen to think that his priorities are in the right place (and in this case, I do think his priorities are the most disadvantaged students).
I don’t know if closing schools today was a good or bad choice but I am 100% positive that if he left schools open and hospitals become overwhelmed with an explosion of cases in 2 weeks he would be excoriated. And I know if he closes schools and rates stay low – or even if they rise – he will still be criticized because either it proved that there was no need to close schools, or it proved that since the virus was going to proliferate anyway, closing schools did no good.
I know people all over the country with kids, and almost all the school systems are experiencing things that are damaging to students. Do you know how many have opened and then shut? Or opened, shut for a while, and opened again, only to then shut? Then parents say “just make a decision to go remote, this is too difficult”.
If you are a private or a charter school, you can just say “We are all remote, take it or leave it. Or we are in-person but you must follow our protocols or your child will be kicked out.” Look at what happened to Jared and Ivanka when they blithely interacted in crowded indoor spaces without masks and sent their children to in-person learning. A public school would have to put up with them.
I see very few people saying that schools being closed isn’t damaging. The question is whether having 4 months straight of what we had in the spring, with overwhelmed hospitals and morgue trucks and only lifesaving issues being treated by doctors is also damaging, and what we do to prevent that when the federal government makes it near impossible and offers no help.
FLERP!, I don’t get your point since Washington DC is bringing back 400 out of 50,000 students FOR THE FIRST TIME. (Meanwhile, NYC schools have been open for 8 weeks for any student who chooses).
400 out of 50,000?? This is exactly what you have been critical of in NYC! I do not understand if you are bashing Washington DC as even worse than NYC? Are you?
“The returning students — most of whom are homeless, speak English as a second language or have special-education needs — will continue with virtual learning in their classrooms under the supervision of nonteaching staff. Their teachers will teach them from home.
More than 400 elementary students returned to school buildings on 25 campuses, the first time since March 13 that a child in the D.C. Public Schools system has entered a school building for a day of learning.
D.C. cancels plan to bring some students back for in-person learning Nov. 9
“I’m ready,” said 8-year-old Jonathan Escobar Cruz, wearing a mask with the FC Barcelona soccer team logo. He was the first student to arrive at Bancroft Elementary to receive his temperature check. “I’m excited to see my friends.”
The 400-plus students are a small portion of the 21,000 elementary pupils that the school system had hoped to return to classrooms this month. And they are an even smaller portion of the 50,000 students the public school system serves.”
Schools in Illinois’ more affluent suburbs have been closing–in the most affluent
suburbs, as positivity rates have climbed. So—no one is going to school. The bars, restaurants, gyms & casinos are closed, in addition to non-essential businesses.
In Flor-uh-duh, Trump Mini-me Governor DeSatan is pretending that Sars-CoV-2 doesn’t exist and hiding data about the disease. He’s refusing to order closures going forward and to mandate masks. The man has degrees from Yale and Harvard but behaves like a blithering idiot.
But independent reporting indicates that we are once again in the red zone. Infections and hospitalizations are climbing dramatically.
Pardon me for repeating this, but I think it important, and I want to get it right.
American Deaths
World War II, 291,557
SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic, 250,081 (As of Nov. 18, 2020)
World War I, 53,402
Vietnam War, 47,434
Korean War, 33,686
Under such circumstances, dramatic measures are necessary, and the precautionary principle applies.
Keep repeating it. If they’ve just gotta see it to believe it, then why not show it to them? Easy to computer generate images of what a body count actually looks like. Maybe a 24×7 Live Cam in a Covid Ward? How about a daily updated list of every school district in the USA that has had to shut it down and return to remote learning from today through February 2021. There is nothing inflammatory about Americans taking a look at what we have done to each other.
We people have., most of us, cognitive limitations that make it difficult for us to conceptualize large numbers. So, we need these reminders.
And sometimes a lack of the empathy that it takes to recognize that each one of those deaths is a relationship network of friends and families and co-workers and acquaintances with an irreparable hole in it.
I often think of this, Kathy, when our congresspeople are debating whether to go to war somewhere. Well, almost always, now, when we go to war, there will be civilian casualties, including the deaths of toddlers and babies. But they are not weighing that. Is this something so important and so intractable that we have no alternative but to kill babies? For that is what WILL happen. People don’t want to go there, despite the fact that it’s the reality.
Remember back at the beginning of the pandemic, when the CDC was saying that people didn’t need to wear masks? I do. I had a fight with my brother about this. But these are nano-scale particles, and masks won’t stop them, he said. Well, even given their size, masks will stop some of them, and you are safer wearing one, I answered. But the CDC says, . . . he replied. Well, the CDC soon changed the guidance, and I watched Fauci let slip that the original guidance was because they didn’t want to run out of masks for essential workers, not because mask wearing wasn’t SOME level of protection.
Common sense. The same is true of confining vast numbers of Americans in small spaces, breathing one another’s exhalations, in the middle of an airborne pandemic, and the CDC is now say, yeah, that’s right. Schools can easily become transmission hotspots.
Perhaps the CDC should have said, initially, masks offer some protection, but we need them for healthcare workers, so we’d like for you not to wear them right now. But I grok where they were coming from. The availability of masks for healthcare workers WAS a huge issue, and the folks at the CDC were dealing with a president who was saying that we would be down to zero cases in a few days who would have lashed out counterproductively, with ridicule, had they begun with a suggestion that everyone wear masks.
I agree with Kathy, keep repeating. I wish we would have more video and photos published actually showing how people die, and how some of the think it’s a hoax until their dying breath. Just like we should do with images of war casualties, of poverty (like Walker Evans), and famine. The example of Emmitt Till’s mother is a fundamental lesson.
We’ve gotten very good at keeping the real horrors out of sight, out of mind.
And yes, yes, yes. Emmitt Till’s mother, fundamental.
I agree Diane.
UFT and the mayor need to sit down, look at the data, and rethink their criteria.
People follow science until science disagrees with them.
The data is in … schools are not hotspots of transmission. Period.
We have studies from the US. A recent study from Scotland. Studies from Europe. Only outlier was Isreal when it took NO PRECAUTIONS and just opened up without distancing and masks.
There are children who will never come back and children who will come back only to find they are so behind they hate school more than they did before the pandemic.
Nationally, unions will be blamed. Teachers will be blamed. Public schools will be blamed. It is just a matter of time as the damage is assessed.
Learning gaps will be so huge that the pressure to test more will increase from civil rights groups.
In the spring it was absolutely the right decision to close schools but the resistance in areas where the virus was low this summer frightened parents and suppressed the return of kids who need school the most.
And that means that futures will be damaged more than they had to be for years to come. For many children, being in school, masked and socially distanced is safer than going out into the neighborhood.
Our nation’s children of color will pay the highest price.
Thank you.
Thank you, FLERP. You do not deserve to get blasted for your opinion or to have your motives doubted. Calling people “privileged” when they disagree is an unfair way to get them to shut up. I have read your comments on this blog for a while. You deeply care about ALL public schools and ALL public school children. We are all friends of public education. We should be able to express our opinions and disagree with tolerance.
I guess I grew up on much different political turf than either of you, one in which results and brutal honesty matter. Perhaps this helps explain why public education has never gained traction as a national priority since the mid-50s (or why I have yet to meet a public school teacher who ever heard of NPE until I informed them about it). Politics involves bumps and bruises, victories and concessions. If I punch you with a point, I expect to get punched back with arguments that refute my point of view, not a handkerchief waving of “the vapors.” Flerp once again, on this post, explicitly states “What I’d really like is if once in a while a commenter other than me would get really agitated about how horrible it is what’s happening to millions of students.” Huh? Really? Where has he been since early March? He also recently commented that if things continue as they are, he would wish the privatizers well. In my book, that does not care for ALL public school children. When he implicitly supports current policy that does nothing about letting rich kids go to school in idyllic surrounding while not addressing the inequities in poor schools, it is not an example of caring about ALL public school children.
Lastly, the retreat into the rhetoric of tolerance reminds me to a great bit of by comedian (seemingly the only people who speak the truth anymore), who observed that there’s a difference between tolerance and to tolerate. “When, in the Middle Ages and Roman times someone who was tortured, if they survived, they tolerated it.” How about a little honesty instead of rhetorical parlor game? Go ahead, hit me with some factual arguments that refute my opinions. Unlike some others here, I can take it. And I’m happy to concede when proven wrong.
I’ve gone stretches without reviewing the comments here, Greg, so maybe I missed one. Can you point me to one comment by you since March about the awful toll that school closures are having on students?
GregB says:
“If I punch you with a point, I expect to get punched back with arguments that refute my point of view, not a handkerchief waving of “the vapors.”
This, this, this!
I remember when GregB said he would take pleasure from me dying from Covid. (What a great guy!) Should I have punched back with an argument that refuted that point? Is my mentioning that now “a case of the vapours”?
FLERP!,
You have every right to call that out when GregB does that. (I usually call it out when you belittle and insult me!)
But I ALSO address the points you make. I actually respect you (as I respect GregB and Duane) and so I try to respond to the arguments you are making even when I am annoyed at your insults.
I am very grateful that that you acknowledged my comment when you posted that link about what was going on in Washington DC, but I admit I was stunned because I’m so used to you responding by belittling me or my writing style. And I don’t care if you insult me or my writing style all you want if you ALSO respond to the content of my replies. And I think that is what GregB is saying.
Call him out if he says something rude but don’t keep bringing up something from a month or two ago to avoid addressing the points he made.
I apologized for that remark and have regretted it ever since. My shock at how so many were taking it lightly got the better of me. I was wrong and should have made my point differently and certainly don’t wish disease upon you, or anyone for that matter. I do, however, still disagree with your point then and would argue it hasn’t aged well.
As for posts about children, last I looked this entire blog is fundamentally about the fate of children and how their nurturing is as essential a public good as our nation has. Granted, there have been no posts titled, “The Children! The Children! My God, the Children! And We Poor Parents!” But here is a sampling of one from each of the first three months of the pandemic:
Sorry, I missed the apology. Accepted, although I was kind of hoping to hold that over you after I keel over, although I hadn’t worked out the mechanics of how I would do it. I can’t even remember what my point was. I can’t remember what I was doing yesterday.
I meant comments by you, not posts by Diane. But no need to dig. I’m tired.
Yes, NYPSP, we have rhetorically punched each other and taken them more than a few times and I would hope we’re both the better for it. We’re adults, we can both agree and disagree and not hold grudges. Mainly because we understand what the ultimate goals should be.
GregB,
I honestly believe it is because we both try to argue in good faith, not “win”. I want to hear the other side, but I also want those who take the other side to defend it as I am always happy to defend my own POV : )
Mostly, I often think the debate about many things is about choosing between options that all have some flaws or negatives. But my own view is that if someone is supporting a position by pushing false narratives and lies, then that position is clearly much worse. If someone can’t defend their position with honesty, then it is not a good position to hold. And if they disagree, all they have to do is be honest and demonstrate that it is a good position to hold.
CBK made a point that really resonated with me — how much of what I think of as propaganda isn’t blatant lying but is omitting lots and lots of things. They omit the facts that contradict their position, to present a false reality. And then when they are confronted with arguments that discuss what has been omitted, they don’t address them, but instead either change the subject or play the victim. But in any event, they ignore anything that contradicts their point instead of addressing it in reasoned argument.
I remember when I actually agreed with Republicans on some issues (decades ago!). I even agreed with pro-charter advocates. But when Republicans and charter school advocates devolved into only pushing false narratives and demonized anyone who contradicted them with facts, instead of actually addressing their points, I realized they actually had no positions they believed in so it was useless to talk about it.
It is good to discuss re-openings with Carol Burris and Diane Ravitch because they are interested in hearing all sides. It may not change their minds, but it may mean that a policy they advocate takes those new facts into account. Their posts never seek to demonize people who disagree.
FLERP! makes some very good points, but I wish he/she would also be willing to listen and respond when others disagree. Even if it is just to address the criticism while defending them.
And thank you to both you and FLERP! for your gracious apology and your gracious acceptance of the apology. A model for all of us.
I have to respectfully disagree, Carol. The CDC has just changed, in the last couple days, its guidance with regard to transmissiblity to and by children and within schools:
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/526370-cdc-quietly-removes-guidance-pushing-for-school-reopenings
Hi Bob,
the CDC came out to day and said schools should not close.https://www.nbcnews.com/now/video/cdc-director-redfield-says-it-does-not-recommend-closing-schools-covid-acquired-in-the-household-96256581558
Well, Carol, I wouldn’t want to be the person who was WRONG about this.
Who encouraged schools to remain open and so, we later found, contributed to the massive search in cases, deaths, and severe long-term complications resulting from the disease.
And Robert Redfield has a history of walking back public pronouncements after an outcry from Jabba the Trump. I trust what he has to say only slightly more than I trust, say, Kayleigh McInany.
Redfield is a typical Trump appointee–an evangelical Christian with an extremely troubling history in his own field. He is precisely the guy who has allowed the CDC to be politicized.
Carol, again, I think we need to apply to this the precautionary principle and some common sense. This is an airborne illness. In schools, people are confined in tiny spaces in which they rebreathe one another’s exhalations. Kids can be asymptomatic carriers. The masks available are better than nothing but are FAR LESS effective than are N95 masks. And when scientists at the CDC, emboldened by Trump’s loss of the election, moved immediately to change their guidance regarding school openings, the Trump Redfield, who has reliably led the politicization of the CDC for Trump, who has been Trump’s sycophantic water-carrier, walked back what his own scientists were saying. Entirely predictable. Entirely suspect.
And we are at the beginning of the absolutely predictable dramatic fall/winter surge, when precaution is particularly in order. I loathe closing schools. But I’m not willing to risk a lot of people’s lives and health on a hunch and a hope that somehow, despite the obvious, this might turn out to be hunky-dory. That sounds to me a lot like the kind of thing that Trump has been saying all along. Don’t worry. This is all gonna be just fine. I don’t buy it. Not at all.
My reading of the history of this with the CDC:
Trump pressured the CDC to post material supporting reopening of schools, which was part of his bigger reopen the country so I can be reelected strategy. Redfield, Trump’s toady, readily obliged, over the objections of his own people. He was just fine with turning the CDC into a political unit of the Trump Whiter House.
Emboldened by the defeat of Trump at the polls, people at the CDC moved immediately to reverse that DANGEROUS position on school openings that they had been strong-armed into taking.
Redfield, Trump’s do-be, held an entirely predictable news conference to walk back his own scientists’ guidance, as he has done so often before, because Redfield is an extreme right-wing yes man and is fine with doing the bidding of a guy who says that his intuition is so much better than science is.
I do understand and respect your very good reasons for wanting schools open, but I think that the dangers outweigh those, as serious as they are. There aren’t good solutions here, but on one side of this dilemma is a lot of people dying.
cx: do-bee, ofc
“The data is in … schools are not hotspots of transmission. Period.”
Wrong, wrong, wrong!
I don’t know what else to say other than are you willing to sign THE PLEDGE and then follow through, because those deaths and concomitant health complications, some which will be lifetime have already been occurring?
Safe Open Schools Pledge
I,__Carol Burris________, will publicly commit seppuku or agree to be guillotined on the School House lawn when the first innocent childrens’ Covid deaths and co-morbidities obtain from the opening of schools without all of the proper health safeguards in place.
Schools actually can be .. and are .. sometimes hotspots of transmission. They might not be the primary means, but it’s unhelpful to claim categorically that they are not when that is actually not true.
Fve new COVID-19 outbreaks associated with in-school transmission have been reported in New Jersey this week, state officials said Wednesday.
https://dailyvoice.com/new-jersey/union/schools/covid-19-5-nj-schools-report-outbreaks-this-week-including-one-with-23-cases/798194/
It may well be the case that such outbreaks in schools are rare, but i am not particularly impressed by statements that indicate certainty (“schools are not hotspots of transmission. period”) because if anything is certain about this pandemic, it is that nothing is certain.
The uncertainty issue is far too seldom discussed in my opinion, particularly in regard to the very low positivity rates that people have been quoting, rates like 0.2% which are far below the uncertainty deriving from the false negative rate of even the best covid test (off) under the best circumstances.
Uncertainty is not your friend and you have to factor in when making decisions. If you don’t, you might be making assumptions that simply are not true. Which in this case could quite literally kill people.
I appreciate your using rationo-logical thought to these discussions. What you point out, so many have never heard of or begun to think about. Thanks!
You are right, Duane. I should not have been so absolutist. I should have said… given social distancing, masks and other safety precautions schools have not been shown to be hotspots.
Thanks for the clarification! But even not being so absolutist, I still believe, due to the stubbornness and obstinate attitude of far too many about Covid, the opening of schools this fall was the wrong choice. I’m glad my children are grown. But then again we might have had one long campout/float/outdoor adventure for the semester!
Duane. Come on man.
You suggesting that we go on those outings. Sounds fine to me!
If you have the kayaks, I have the beer.
No, no kayaks but a canoe that can easily hold you and me, and all the beer we might need and anything else. And you even get the queen’s seat!
We’re going into a period of the year when people will be spending more time inside during cold and flu season. People will be traveling for the holidays. Students will be coming home from college. There is no way that these factors will not affect schools. Even in areas that are not hard hit right now, their time will probably come.
More science at work: the city just banned all outdoor sports at city park fields. Sorry, kids.
https://www.silive.com/youthsports/2020/11/nyc-park-dept-pulls-athletic-permits-for-outdoor-fields-until-further-notice-because-of-covid-19-uptick.html?outputType=amp
CB repeats many of the talking points of our school leader Janice Jackson and Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Studies in Europe show this, studies in Europe show that. I might be wrong but I don’t think kids are in school for seven hours there. Parents have other child care options and better workplace protections in general. Shorter school day and a family with more of a safety net count for something in this instance. My benefits as a public school teacher seem to be precisely what scares me the most about returning: no new hires and no extra monies. Actually, less money than last year. We’ll have sick or asymptomatic kids roaming freely, an inability to enforce mask wearing or distancing, teachers taking off in falling domino fashion because they know there is no cavalry, stress levels in the stratosphere. The new civil rights issue of our time? I see it as a proxy to fix issues in CPS that weren’t resolved in our most recent strike – staffing.
Everything you write is correct. Everything.
I would take CPS’ call to have k-8 schools in session by Feb1 and HS all remote more seriously if they put some meat in their plan. Keep in mind they are planning all day all students for k-8 and learning via computer for 9-12, same goes for City colleges. How much of a HS budget can be shifted to help staff the Elem schools? Off the top of my head I am thinking of some building operation savings, extracurricular club savings, sports program savings, security savings. Not a small amount. Shove that money into the elem school budgets that gets spent on long term subs, hall staff, playground staff, extra security, etc. My hope is that someone at CPS is working on this, my fear is that they just want to play divide and conquer and then blame us (and save $$$$) when we all strike.
Here’s a UNICEF report released today about the impact of the pandemic, lockdowns, and school closures on children.
Click to access Averting-a-lost-covid-generation-world-childrens-day-data-and-advocacy-brief-2020.pdf
I will read this once I get a break this weekend, but please remember, European and Japanese children in WWII built strong, enduring, and prosperous nations. Korean children who endured war built one of the most innovative nations in the world. The children of the Depression served in WWII and built the most powerful and prosperous nation in the history of the world. My hope is that today’s children will learn from this experience to make a more rational, humane world in their adulthood–as long as we adults don’t continue to mess it up for them.
I will read this. But, hmm, let’s start with the title. “Averting a Lost Covid Generation.” A generation is typically thought of as about 20-30 years. We are not talking about closing schools for a generation.
So, from the very beginning, from the title, the authors are exaggerating in support of a position. This is not promising.
I offer it for people to read or not, to accept or dispute, not for me to defend it. But the authors are referring to people who are children right now. That definition could range from ages zero to 18. This fallout isn’t limited to Western K-12 education. It includes global poverty on a staggering scale.
Yes. It’s important, and thank you for posting it, Flerp. The consequences for children, globally, are devastating.
Wow. This report is shocking in its descriptions of the devastating toll on children, worldwide, of this pandemic. Thanks for posting it, Flerp. Important. Still reading it. Still definitely not convinced about keeping schools here open.
I agree, just read the first few pages, but it does make very good points. Agree with your final sentence as well. Will revisit when I have time to digest the entire report…Unicef, another thing the Idiot and his cult this is socialist and un-Murican. Thankfully, FC Barcelona promotes them like crazy, and they have much more influence than the Idiot.
I guess I would ask Diane and Carol the following. When is it appropriate, if ever, to close schools in a pandemic? Children aren’t the only consideration. Older teachers and staff who work there need to be considered, too. Are two or three positive cases enough to close? Our cases nationwide are increasing by the day. We have no federal leadership. We’re going into a time of the year that will present many problems. We don’t even know how this disease will affect people over the course of their lives. Do these things matter? I understand the excruciating problems on both sides of the issue. But I don’t think Carol’s answer, “People will get sick” is enough.
Hi Maime. In NYC as well as other districts that I know, allow older teachers and those with pre-existing conditions to teach online. I fully support that. If there are a few cases in a school it does make sense to close the school until they can contact trace and quarantine. That is what has been happening in NY, Pa and Conn at least. The school may close for a day or two and then it re-opens. Sometimes schools just have those who were near the infected child or adult to quarantine.
That is very different than what just happened in NYC which is all schools closing down because the test positivity rate in the city (not the school) hit 3%. Sorry if I was not clear.
Mamie, you are right on the mark. Carol will try to equivocate, but it does nothing to diminish your accuracy.
Until today, I actually thought NPE could be a thing. But the standard school administrator CYA “comments” I saw today made me finally understand why it will likely never be anything of consequence and confirmation of the fact we are an insular debating society that has no impact whatsoever on the issues that drew us here in the first place.
Did a Google search on “NPE” tonight. The one we thought we cared about came up on the fourth page. It’s not the trade show for the annual plastics convention (Dustin, baby, the advice you go was correct–don’t be a teacher, go into plastics!). It’s not a Non-Paternity Event. It’s not even North Pole Engineering or a NullPointerException. Or even Nether Providence Elementary School or the Norton Power Eraser or the NPE-A Tankless Water Heater or the National Publishers Exchange.
Is it any wonder that that the Biden education transition team could give a damn about the Network for Public Education? Worst contributions I made since I invested in the abacus. I’m glad you (and me for too long a time) feel satisfied and smug about being NPE supporters, but please let me know if it squawks in the woods that it will make a sound that anyone of consequence will hear. Can’t believe I fell for this mirage.
Wow–this comment surprised me, GregB! Kinda jibes with my comment on the Erin Brockavitch post yesterday, about the possible EPA appointment. (It was written just now, & is the last comment, but I
have a feeling it won’t stay that way.)
GregB, brother, every movement starts small, and network effects can be enormous. I’ve seen ways of phrasing particular arguments originate with people on this blog and then go viral. And Diane’s books sell extremely well. I don’t know what particular frustrations led to this post, but I suspect that you will want to roll it back. There’s a growing resistance in the country to standardized testing, charters, vouchers, VAM, virtual learning, and a lot of that begins right here.
I suspect, for example, that the demise of Gates’s Orwellian InBloom had its origins right here, on this blog.
And the end of that monstrous initiative was far, far more important than I think most people recognize, even people who are part of the Resistance to Deform and Disruption. Yes, the privacy issue was large and important, but the centralization of power over curricula that InBloom would have led to is HUG, and most folks don’t understand why and how that would have taken place. If InBloom had become the nation’s gradebook–and that was the goal–not only in K-12 but beyond, in college and in the workplace–for that was the vision–then the people running it would have become the ones who decided who played and who didn’t in the area of curricular development. That would have been inevitable and horrific.
cx: Huge, not hug, ofc.
My take: InBloom was a powerplay for monopolistic control over US curricula. If everyone were using this as the major institutional record of student results, any curriculum developer who wanted to play would have had to pay InBloom and operate according to its rules. It would have been the educational equivalent of some other monopolies I could mention.
Maime,
I would use the same criteria that we use for other parts of society: if the social benefits of staying open outweigh the social costs, it should stay open.
We have insisted that the food supply chain stay open, despite the fact that this can increase transmission. Do you think that unwise?
I am wondering which data you are referring to. Is it the self-report data coming from school admin – we know for a fact that school admin across our state (PA) are definitely covering up cases – in fact probably covering more than cases than they are reporting. We also know that the current tracking does a very poor job of identifying asymptomatic spreaders. Also, I would point out that even Oster’s numbers point to 14 high risk cases per 100,000 per day. I am wondering how many teachers and staff should be unnecessarily sacrificed in order to reopen and who is really going to be monitoring the actual case numbers. Also, it is my understanding that in Illinois schools and universities are the largest spreaders now.
Ms. Ravitch – are you in schools daily? Are you teaching kids in this pandemic? It’s frightening and the truth is not being told. We need to make sure virtual learning is the only option until vaccines are readily available. We need your support after years of getting ours!
Where is the UNICEF report Flerp! posted? I just open this post now, & it seems to have disappeared from the comment–just a lot of white space until GregB’s reply.
Click to access Averting-a-lost-covid-generation-world-childrens-day-data-and-advocacy-brief-2020.pdf
BTW–“Texas Kindergarten Student Who Died of Covid Complications was “Perfectly Healthy’ Before Death, Says Mom.” “She had just started kindergarten at Coronado Elementary School in Amarillo, TX…” She died on Friday, October 30th.
A 5-year-old in Michigan died from covid. An infectious disease specialist from Seattle said, “The numbers are low…until it’s your child.” (Dr. Janet A. Englund).–story from WaPo.
“Until it’s your child.” That is the point.
Or your mother. Or your sister. Or your brother, father, uncle…adults who work in schools.
People who have no access to PPE. Lidless toilets. Schools w/no hot water. Cold weather, no opportunity to get fresh air.
As I said in an earlier post, even the newest green-certified schools in the wealthier suburbs (Chicago area) have opened…then closed: increased covid cases in the suburbs, covid positives in the schools. 2 grandparents (in their late 70s/early 80s) watching their 6-year-old granddaughter allowed the neighbor’s 6-year-old over to be babysat, as well. The little girl became ill–sore throat, fever: tested +. Both grandparents then tested positive, & so did the granddaughter. The girl’s father also tested +. Luckily, after 2 weeks of exhaustion & constant sleep, they tested negative. Very lucky: 70’s/80’s w/covid? No.
It is horrible. Heartbreaking and tragic. But you are making an assumption that she caught COVID in school, and there is no evidence of that. Pediatricians in NYC are arguing kids are safer in school…. to avoid your second story which is kids at home inviting others to play. If kids are home you cannot assume they are isolated. They are not. They are often with others and they are unmasked. https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-straight-talk-on-nycs-school-closure-20201119-iugx7h2ns5csbgdmd4wsoxq7eu-story.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cb_bureau_ny
Remote learning isn’t even close to the learning that takes place in schools.
Schools provide important safety checks for kids by being places where horrors occurring at home are identified and dealt with.
Many kids from food-insecure home environments depend upon getting breakfast and lunch at school.
Many kids are from single-adult homes in which there simply isn’t someone to watch the kid while Mom or Dad is working.
Many kids are from two-parent homes where both parents at low-paying jobs for the family to be able to subsist.
Many kids are from home environments where Covid-era rules aren’t followed–where they routinely run about playing with groups of other kids–environments that are less safe than schools are, where at least the rules are followed, sort of.
Having kids at home makes it far more difficult for even for people who have jobs that they can do remotely to do those jobs well, and in an economic downturn, this can put them high on the list for layoffs or dismissals.
We’ve seen a lot of contradictory reports about transmission rates among children, transmission from children to adults, schools as disease hotspots, school-based origins of outbreaks, and some of these suggest that at least for children under 10, rates of infection, serious results from infection, and transmission to others are low.
I understand these arguments. They are rational and powerful. But, . . . we are at the beginning of a surge in a disease that has already claimed about 5 times as many U.S. lives as did World War I, and it looks as though we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. We now know that having the disease often has nasty long-term side effects, a toll we have yet begun to count. The masks that students and teachers are in fact wearing at school are typically not very effective. K95 masks are expensive. We’re not doing much testing in schools, and we know that at least 20 percent of SARS-CoV-2 infections are asymptomatic but at the same time contagious. Almost every teacher will tell you about daily slips in the already loose precautions being taken in their own schools. And, of course, schools put people in confined spaces in which they rebreathe one another’s exhalations constantly in the middle of an airborne pandemic.
There are no easy answers here. But given the consequences of contracting this disease, I think we should err on the side of caution, and I’m furious that all this talk about “safely opening schools” has distracted from actually putting our heads together to try to address the issues raised above.
Idiot that I am, I left a couple really important issues off the list above:
Remote learning is particularly bad for particular groups of kids: English-language learners and kids with special needs.
Remote learning is challenging for kids without good computers and Internet connections and separate work spaces at home, many of them are from families too poor to provide these.
Kentucky and Michigan just announced closures of all schools due to the surging pandemic and unacceptable numbers of teachers falling ill or being quarantined.
Taking the opposite stance, the governors of NY, PA, DE, CT, RI, and MA issued a joint statement on the importance of continuing in-person, in-school learning. I suspect that they will live to regret this.
Steven Singer.