John Ogozalek teaches in rural upstate New York. He wrote to tell me what’s happening during the pandemic:
You can’t make this stuff up….
Schools in Western New York are facing shut downs.
They’re in a “microcluster yellow zone” which requires 20% percent of the faculty and staff to be COVID tested each week. Otherwise, in-person instruction is out the window.
The catch is: they don’t have the money to do the COVID tests! And, no cavalry is riding over the hill to help them.
Earth to David Coleman, Arne Duncan, John B. King, and all the idiot school “reformers”. We could sure use those billions of dollars you blew away on mountains of fill-in-the-bubble, where’s your #2 pencil “common core” tests.
BTW….”microcluster yellow zones”?
Does anyone other than people making these rules even have a clue what the hell is going on at this point?
I try to explain the constantly shifting “plans” to my students. Fat chance.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
These people are just trying to GET AS MUCH $$$$$ as they can before their GRAVY train runs out.
Sickening.
Coleman, Duncan, King and company are snake-oil salesmen, profiteers who have pillaged public schools for their profit.
On Fri, Nov 20, 2020 at 12:00 PM Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: ” John Ogozalek teaches in rural upstate New York. He > wrote to tell me what’s happening during the pandemic: You can’t make this > stuff up…. Schools in Western New York are facing shut downs.They’re in a > “microcluster yellow zone” which requires 20″ >
A representative of King’s Education Trust is on Biden’s education transition team.
I’d call the whole pandemic response a macro-cluster(&#@%)
And I seriously doubt that even the people making the rules know what is going on.
But lots of people pretend they do and that’s all that matters, right?
Well be happy they are “shutting down”. It’s the ONLY way we will ever BEGIN to get a handle on the epidemic.
They literally don’t care. We’ve just been hung out to dry. Sink or swim. Everyone, unfortunately, needs to take good care because we are all on our own.
Meanwhile, testing is questionable if you get results four days later. False negative testing gives a population too much of a feeling that they are virus free when their test is given just before infection. Relaxed and assured, the newly infected but symptom-free Covid carrier goes to a bar or a church or both, spreading the Covid around like smell out of a hog house.
I wish I knew the answer. What I do know is that Coleman has had very little effect on the Covid with his extensive expenditures on testing students. And I see the irony in the absence of money for Covid Testing.
False negatives actually don’t happen before infection. Those would be legitimate negatives.
False negatives are tests that come back negative despite the fact that someone is actually infected. They do tend to occur before the infection reaches a certain level, however.
This can occur even with the most accurate covid test (pcr) because the level of virus present in the body varies over the duration of the infection.
If a test is given right after initial infection, for example, the test will yield negative with fairly high probability. This probability of false negative tends to decrease as the infection progresses and the test is most accurate after someone starts showing symptoms, which normally occurs about 5 days after initial infection (on average).
One aspect of this that should be of concern is that people are actually most contagious (capable of spreading the virus) before they start showing symptoms at a time when the test can still yield false negatives at fairly high rate.
I said “should be of concern” because as far as I can see, many of the people using the test results to make policy (politicians and school officials) don’t even seem to be aware that there is such a thing as false negatives (or if they do, they don’t mention it).
They just quote positivity rates like 0.2% without even batting an eye, despite the fact that such a rate is far below the false negative rate of the most accurate test (pcR) performed when the virus is at its peak level in the body. In other words, a rate like 0.2% can’t legitimately be claimed. The science simply does not support it.
From Harvard Health blog
For PCR
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/which-test-is-best-for-covid-19-2020081020734#:~:text=False%20negatives%20%E2%80%94%20that%20is,high%20as%2037%25.
“False negatives — that is, a test that says you don’t have the virus when you actually do have the virus — may occur. The reported rate of false negatives is as low as 2% and as high as 37%.”
Here’s a link to an article that references some studies that tracked false negative rate over the course of the infection
https://www.healio.com/news/primary-care/20200616/us-taking-wrong-approach-to-covid19-testing-expert-warns
The district in which I teach is bragging about their testing of students. But the tests are the rapid kind that have a lot of false negatives. If the kid tests “negative,” they can go back to school after one week instead of two, but must quarantine from everything else for the full two weeks. How does that make sense?
Some of the “rapid” (antigen) tests can have false negative rates of 50%(!!) because the sensitivity of the tests is pretty low so one has to have a pretty high viral level to yield a positive.
Elon Musk was experiencing some covid symptoms recently and had 4 “rapid” tests done by the same machine at virtually the same time and 2 came back positive and 2 negative, highlighting the “issue” with the tests. (Musk has been foolishly downplaying the danger of the virus, but that is actually irrelevant to the point highlighted by his tweets: that the tests can say that one is not infected when one actually is)
The false positive rates of covid tests is generally significantly lower than the false negative rate and that Musk was actually infected was subsequently confirmed with a more accurate test (pcr) , so the two negatives from the rapid test were very likely actually false negatives.
Which begs the question: If there is no concern about a possible 50% false negative rate and one desires a really rapid result, why not just flip a coin?( I am being facetious, of course — or am I?)
I would point out that even the most accurate test for covid can have a fairly high false negative rate early on in the infection.
What concerns me is that very few people even seem to be aware of these facts and some of them are claiming positivity rates like 0.2% which are completely nonsensical given that the false negative rate of the most accurate test (PCR) can be greater by a factor of 10 or more.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/which-test-is-best-for-covid-19-2020081020734#:~:text=False%20negatives%20%E2%80%94%20that%20is,high%20as%2037%25
John. Just develop a taste for Theatre of the Absurd.
Absolutely, Bob.
And, thanks , Diane.
Luckily, my corner of the Catskills has been in relatively okay shape -until now.
Take care, everyone.
Sure, teachers should buy their own Covid kits for kids. That’s the answer. I mean they are great at testing! Just like I had to buy art, cleaning, playground equipment — you name it I purchased it to make “things go” or be poorly evaluated. Sure, yeah, that’s the ticket. Free means free! Theatre of the Absurb at its best.
I hope the b on the end of absurb was intentional because that’s perfect. Yeah, I wish I had back a fraction of the money I spent on kids from my meagre teacher’s salary.
Theater of the Absurb!
Ha ha ha.
I’m definitely going to steal that for a poem
This theatre of the absurb
Is worth a blub.
Just need to show it
To SomeDAM Poet.
With so many states trying to operate public services on a shoestring, it seems ridiculous to spend money on unnecessary standardized testing. Districts should put money into keeping students and staff safe. Without a stimulus bill, it would be silly to make testing a priority. There are many in class tools teachers can use to determine how students are doing that are far more useful to teachers and students. Years ago New York State only had testing in grades 3, 6 and 8, and the students were fine. Standardized tests are not essential to education.
The testing industry, right now, is lobbying for more money so they can make more tests. During the pandemic. During the Biden administration’s first 100 days. They want MORE money. They want more NOW. They do not care how much death, destruction, misery, and suffering they cause. They are foul excuses for human.
Over my lifetime, since President Reagan, I have seen the world “welfare” become and persist as a slur, as though it were not the noble mission, the purpose, of government to work toward ensuring that the people are faring well.
We must change this. We must. Or we will persist in being that strange thing, that abomination: a breathtakingly wealthy country full of sick, struggling people.
The irony is that the biggest Welfare Queen’s of all are the corporations and billionaires.
The corporations because they get bailed out whenever they make risky and even fraudulent “investments”.
And the billionaires because their wealth empires are built on the backs of publicly funded infrastructure: Fakebook, Amazon and Apple on the internet and Amazon distribution on our roads. Plus, were it not for the fact that the American public are a huge ready market, these companies (and others like Microsoft) would never have become what they are.
The billionaires literally owe everything to the American public, but they act like we owe them. It’s insane.