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This is our weekly briefing on how the pandemic is shaping schools and education policy, vetted, as always, by AEI Visiting Fellow John Bailey. Click here to see the full archive. Get this weekly roundup, as well as rolling daily updates, delivered straight to your inbox 鈥� sign up for 麻豆精品 Newsletter.

Schools Can Now Safely Make Masks Optional With the CDC鈥檚 New Guidelines:

• “Respirators and other high-quality masks are highly effective at protecting their wearers, regardless of what people around them are doing. 鈥� As a result, schools can finally safely make masks optional for students and staff.”
• “Maintaining aggressive mitigation policies, including strident mask rules, also sends children, families and staff the message that schools are not safe. This is simply not true.”
• “Everyone now has tools to protect themselves from severe disease, or any infection, if they so choose. Making this shift [top optional masking] also respects that people will have different risk tolerance levels.”
• “It鈥檚 time we stopped worrying about what others are doing and started focusing on protecting ourselves. We have many more tools in 2022 than we did in 2020, and our policies should shift to reflect these advances.”
• More from The Atlantic:
  • “We reviewed a variety of studies 鈥� some conducted by the CDC itself, some cited by the CDC as evidence of masking effectiveness in a school setting and others touted by media to the same end 鈥� to try to find evidence that would justify the CDC鈥檚 no-end-in-sight mask guidance for the very-low-risk pediatric population, particularly post-vaccination. We came up empty-handed.”
  • “This isn鈥檛 to say that these studies conclusively demonstrate that masks have no benefit in schools, but that any effect they have, if they have one, is tangled up in these other variables.”
  • “Imposing on millions of children an intervention that provides little discernible benefit, on the grounds that we have not yet gathered solid evidence of its negative effects, violates the most basic tenet of medicine: First, do no harm.”

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The Big Three 鈥� January 28, 2022

Education Recovery Hub: The Collaborative for Student Success, Center on Reinventing Public Education and the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University launched a .

• Read an overview at 麻豆精品

K-Shaped Academic Recovery: With Omicron, another inequitable shock in math learning: Via

• “One of the evident consequences: a troubling re-emergence of a gap in participation in math learning between students in low- and high-income schools.”
• “This most recent K-shaped missed learning shows that students in low-income communities are experiencing a new and significant impact to their learning during this period of disruption 鈥� while students in more affluent communities are largely unaffected. This new finding comes on the heels of the reported five months of learning loss low-income students have already experienced as a result of the pandemic.”
• More details from 麻豆精品鈥檚 Beth Hawkins

Testing as an Alternative to Quarantining: Key Considerations and Best Practices for Implementing Test to Stay: . The issue brief highlights case examples from Illinois, Massachusetts and North Carolina鈥檚 Test to Stay programs.

• The brief also identifies four keys to success to help state and local officials overcome the challenges of Test to Stay programs:
  • Fund and Staff Adequately: Successful schools received funding quickly and efficiently hired appropriate staff members to help administer their programs.
  • Give More to Existing Underfunded Schools: States reallocated funds and staff to ensure that traditionally underfunded schools had adequate funding and staffing.
  • Help Parents and Students Understand: Successful schools prioritized communicating their Test to Stay program to parents and students, including its benefits, how it would work and why it is safe.
  • Consider Cultural Differences: Successful schools developed culturally appropriate responses that account for local contexts and parental views.

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Federal Updates

Federal Communications Commission: . Total commitments to date are supporting over 10,500 schools, 860 libraries and nearly 120 consortia for nearly 9.6 million connected devices and nearly 4.9 million broadband connections.

Education Department: Is hosting on Jan. 28 and Feb 4.

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City & State News

Arizona:

• As COVID closed Arizona鈥檚 classrooms, Black mothers launched their own microschools with focus on personalized learning, ending school to prison pipeline

Hawaii: Public school in latest COVID-19 surge.

Illinois: Under a new statewide compromise, public school and higher education employees .

Maryland: The Maryland Department of Health 鈥� ““鈥� to encourage parents to get their eligible children vaccinated against COVID-19.

Massachusetts: Boston has a of air filtration, ventilation and CO2 monitoring for all schools, down to the classroom in some cases 鈥� a brilliant way of not only providing transparency to parents and teachers, but .

Missouri: .

Texas: Starting next fall,

Virginia:

• Parents react: .
• Youngkin op-ed: .
• . Guidance , along with an infographic of the “algorithm” parents should use.
• to stop Youngkin鈥檚 mask-optional order on the day it takes effect.
• .
• A couple of additional thoughts: The guidance is a bit confusing, in part because it doesn’t link to or reference any studies to back up various claims and recommendations. For example, it says, “When the following prevention model has been implemented, studies have shown that infections and outbreaks in schools were reduced,” but there’s no model provided and literally no links/citations to anything that shows a reduction elsewhere. The ventilation guidance also has some inaccuracies.

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COVID-19 Research

Omicron Is a Bigger Risk for the Young, Medical Data Shows: . More via .

• “The Omicron variant may be more dangerous for children than earlier coronavirus strains, a study of hospitalization data from one of South Africa鈥檚 biggest medical insurance programs showed.”
• “Data from the 56,164 COVID-19-related hospital admissions among the more than 2 million beneficiaries of the Government Employees Medical Scheme found that the admission rate for children under the age of 4 was 49% higher during the Omicron wave than for Delta. It was also higher than during the infection surges driven by the original virus and the Beta variant, according to the data analyzed by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases. In addition, admissions were 25% higher for those aged 4 to 18 than in the Delta wave, although lower than for Beta, it showed.”

BA.2: There were a number of stories last weekend related to BA.2, which is often referred to as “stealth Omicron” because some PCR tests can’t distinguish it from other variants due to a unique mutation.

• The U.K. labeled BA.2 a 鈥�,鈥� due to its doubling every four days which equates to a
• . Early data suggests there hasn’t been an uptick in hospitalizations since the subtype took hold.
• VUI is the lowest level of classification, meaning it’s something to watch, not worry about right now.

Israeli Study Finds Rate of Heart Problems in Vaccinated Boys Slightly Higher Than Expected: “Boys between 12 and 15 years of age after receiving the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, Israeli researchers reported.”

• “Myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, occurred in 1 of 12,361 boys of this age group within a week of receiving the second dose, the study found. The cases were mild, and the side effect remains uncommon.”

Morning Consult/New York Times Survey:

• Only about half of parents are comfortable with in-person learning.
• More than 1 in 3 parents believe schools are opening too quickly.
• How certain or uncertain are you that each of the following will occur? We will learn how to live with COVID-19 and its variants without having to disrupt daily life: 66% Certain / 28% uncertain
• Do you support or oppose the following initiatives taking effect in your community? 
  • Requiring students to wear masks in schools: 68% support / 26% oppose.
  • Requiring students to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to attend school in-person: 55% support / 38% oppose
  • Transitioning students from in-school to online learning: 48% support / 41% oppose

Parents More Concerned About Their Child Missing School Than Catching COVID:

• Are you more concerned about children going to school in person resulting in more spreading of the coronavirus, or more concerned about children not going to school in person and falling behind in their education?
  • Total more concerned about spreading of coronavirus: 30%
  • Total more concerned about falling behind in their education: 65%

Children and COVID-19:

• More than 1.1 million cases were reported, nearly five times the rate of the peak of last winter鈥檚 surge.
• For the week ending Jan. 20, nearly 1.15 million child COVID-19 cases were reported. This number is a 17% increase over the 981,000 added cases reported the week ending Jan. 13 and a doubling of case counts from the two weeks prior.

COVID-19: Endemic Doesn鈥檛 Mean Harmless: . A 鈥渄isease can be endemic and both widespread and deadly. Malaria killed more than 600,000 people in 2020. Ten million fell ill with tuberculosis that same year and 1.5 million died. Endemic certainly does not mean that evolution has somehow tamed a pathogen so that life simply returns to 鈥榥ormal鈥�.”

COVID Virus Linked with Headaches, Altered Mental Status in Hospitalized Kids: According to a led by a pediatrician-scientist at UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

What Now? How Pandemics End:

• What’s next?
  • Omicron infection will help, but we don鈥檛 know for how long.
  • The virus will mutate, but we don鈥檛 know how.
  • There has to be a global response.
• How do we prepare?
  • Increase vaccine uptake.
  • Continue to wear masks. “Masks, on average, .”
  • Invest in better filtration systems.
  • Scale up antigen testing.
  • Increase supply of therapeutics.
  • Strengthen surveillance.
  • Communicate. “We desperately need top-down communication. The CDC needs to come out from hiding and let their experts talk. We need weekly updates. But, more than that, we need a plan. We need to develop and communicate off-ramps and goals. If public health officials don鈥檛, then other people will. And, when we don鈥檛 like their plan, we have no right to complain.”

Pfizer: .

New Research Shows How Bad the Pandemic Has Been for Student Mental Health: Via

The End of K-12 Contact Tracing? Some Schools Say Symptoms, Not Exposure, Should Spur Tests: Via 麻豆精品

UK Study Suggests Two-Thirds Infected With Omicron Had COVID Before:

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Viewpoints

Schools May Be Open 鈥� But They鈥檙e Struggling: Via .

• “The problem [at Brooklyn Tech] and in many other schools boils down to a mismatch between demand and supply. While many officials and parents nationwide push to keep kids in school and away from remote learning, Omicron has left many schools short of the essentials needed to operate, like teachers, substitutes, bus drivers, cafeteria workers 鈥� and sometimes students themselves.”
• “The result is a sort of low-grade chaos. Teachers improvise Zoom classes for those who are absent. Some students try to teach others who have missed long stretches. Students give themselves COVID tests in crowded hallways.”
• “To improve ventilation in their stuffy, prewar building, Brooklyn Tech teachers have been instructed to open windows at least 3 inches. Under city rules, two to three windows in a classroom should be open 3 inches or one window in a room should be open 6 inches.”
• “When temperatures fell to 17 degrees this month, students took to wearing coats in an anthropology class. 鈥業t鈥檚 like you lose focus,鈥� said senior Alex Atack, 17. 鈥業 swear to God, my toes went numb last week. It was so cold.鈥欌��

Students Are Walking Out Over COVID: Via .

• “The students [in Texas] are requesting, among other things, that their schools notify them if they鈥檝e been exposed to a COVID-positive classmate, enforce the mask mandate and provide KN95 or N95 masks to students (the district currently provides surgical masks). They also want the option to voluntarily go remote until those demands are met.”
• “What鈥檚 more, a couple of students I spoke with said that they knew of classmates who had tested positive but gone to school anyway, and that students have been on their own in determining whether they鈥檝e been exposed. They effectively have had to work as their own informal contact-tracing teams, asking around about peers鈥� test results and monitoring social media for indications of COVID cases.”

‘My Freshmen Are More Like 7th Graders’: Inside the Omicron-Era Classroom: , with some really interesting interviews with teachers.

SAT Moves Online: The College Board announced that the .

4 Education Policy Tools to Use in 2022:

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…And on a Snowier Note

Seven Springs Resort Ski Update: :

• 1 inch of natural snow overnight
• 16 inches of snow this week
• 21 slopes and trails
• 1 person struggling to walk down the stairs.

Abbey actually tracked down the “” and provided an update.

You asked, we delivered. Struggling Skier/Mrs Bean is here with an update.

鈥� Seven Springs (@7SpringsPA)

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ICYMI @The74

Weekend Reads: In case you missed them, our top stories of the week:

• New York City: NYC schools reported over 9,600 students to child protective services since Aug. 2020. Is it the 鈥榳rong tool鈥� for families traumatized by COVID?
• Masking: Kids wearing masks reduces child care center closures, year-long Yale study finds
• Media Literacy: As misinformation rages, educators focused on improving news literacy turn to outside groups to help kids parse fact from fantasy
• COVID Recovery: 鈥楨ssentially abdicating their role鈥�: Report finds states lack plans for ensuring schools spend pandemic aid on the kids who need it most
• Commentary: After 2 years of uncertainty and shaken trust, America鈥檚 relationship with its public schools is in play like never before

For even more COVID policy and education news, .

Disclosure: John Bailey is an adviser to the Walton Family Foundation, which provides financial support to 麻豆精品.

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