Wednesday, March 31, 2021
President Biden Unveils American Jobs Plan
President Biden unveiled the American Jobs Plan in Pittsburgh, PA: "It's not a plan that tinkers around the edges...it's a once-in-a-generation investment in America...it's the largest American jobs investment since World War II....It’s big, yes. It’ […]
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Yes, Learning Standards Are Approximate. Yes, Learning Loss Is Genuine.
Imagine two canoes paddling down a river. One canoe encounters a series of obstacles: rapids buffet it about, a fallen tree blocks its way, jutting boulders scrape the hull. The other canoe continues unimpeded. Any onlooker on the shore could comment, “the first canoe is falling behind the other,” and few would suggest this is a controversial observation. Yet when it comes to the question of how students are doing during this terrible pandemic year, the validity of so-called learning loss is very much in question.
This pushback has shown up in recent weeks across both major publications and social media. The Washington Post published a piece from literacy professor Rachael Gabriel asserting that “There is no such thing as learning loss,” only a “loss of a previously imagined trajectory leading to a previously imagined future.” While acknowledging that some academic progress has been significantly impacted, Ron Berger wrote in The Atlantic that he is “concerned about how this growing narrative of loss will affect our students, emotionally and academically.” Popular memes like the below one have emerged, variously suggesting that catching students up academically is a low concern or that the learning loss idea is being pushed by greedy testing companies:
Unraveling this knot starts by delinking three ideas: (1) that learning is a discrete brain function which can, in fact, be lost; (2) that learning standards can be arbitrary and exist in an inequitable system, but they are not going anywhere in the immediate future; and (3) that there are other life lessons to be learned during the pandemic, and more to life than academics.
First, let’s ask an important and under-examined question: what is learning? Neuroscientist William Klemm puts it this way: “learning experiences change the functional [brain] circuitry that is used to process and remember a given learning event.” Through a complex series of anatomical and chemical changes, the brain is altered in meaningful ways that allow us to access new knowledge and skills. When a given piece of knowledge or skill is underused, the brain has a tendency to “prune” those synapses. Anyone who has fleetingly tried to learn a new language knows how fast the information slips away, as if through a sieve.
So when we say “learning loss,” we can literally mean learning loss. Consider English Learners who have been isolating in monolingual homes: as The New York Times reported in one wrenching anecdote, “When Taniya first noticed her English slipping in September, she would read to herself out loud to practice speaking, pulling from a towering stack of picture books and young adult novels piled on her dresser. But over time, it became harder to pronounce the words and took longer to finish each chapter. Eventually, she stopped trying.” A similar story exists for students with reading difficulties, and for the startlingly large number of students who simply stopped attending school entirely.
Whether it is arbitrary to ask students to meet certain comprehension standards by 3rd vs. 4th grade is therefore largely moot: the loss is real in an aggregate sense, not a relative one. I don’t know what other word we should use for these disruptions. Descriptively, a skill that previously existed at a certain level no longer does.
Even in the relative sense, there has been loss regardless of the existence or absence of a measuring stick: A skill that would otherwise have been learned to a certain level in a non-pandemic year was not. The other canoe isn’t another student: it’s the same student in a normal year. In fact, a segment of students have certainly experienced relative learning gains during the pandemic, and we should not wave away that progress any more than we should ignore the majority who are struggling. One can reasonably fashion the relative gap as “unfinished learning,” as some stakeholders prefer, but we should be careful about getting too precious and losing sight of the literal losses.
Indeed, in some senses, this is a semantic problem. Many of those questioning learning loss seem to suggest that focusing on how students have fallen behind is “deficit” thinking and misses the ways they are resilient. As Berger put it, “Next time you hear the phrase learning loss, think about whether we really want to define our students by their deficits instead of their potential.” Yet multiple things can be true at once: students can have slipped on their academics while retaining their potential and also gaining experience in areas like adaptation, solidarity, and understanding societal inequities. Berger’s article was titled “Our Kids Are Not Broken,” and I think that’s a bad misunderstanding of the learning loss concept.
Back to the canoes. No one would say the canoe that encountered all those obstacles, or the paddler inside it, is flawed. The canoe didn’t fell that tree. The paddler didn’t raise those boulders. Pointing out a challenge is only problematic if it comes with a side dish of condemnation: why did you choose to go that way? Why didn’t you paddle harder? While often used in the U.S. to denigrate poor people or people of color, those accusatory questions do not appear to be part of this particular conversation.
The other intimation of the anti-learning loss crowd is that the American education system was awful to begin with, so why exactly are we trying to catch kids up so they can go back to the awfulness? It’s undeniable that our system can be brutal, particularly for students of color; Jonathan Kozol’s description of “savage inequalities” is apt now as when he wrote his book in 1991. The calls to use this opportunity to remake the system should absolutely be heeded, but realistically, that is not going to happen immediately.
In the meantime, the current cohort of students still face a system where seat time is prioritized over mastery; where each successive grade assumes you know the content in the grade below; where you are forced out after 12th grade; where the ability to access higher education for a credential or degree is deeply determinative of future financial prosperity. It is simply unfair to the tens of millions of students currently enrolled to deprioritize their academic recovery. To put one facet of this bluntly: children need to know how to read, and fewer of them are currently reading as well as they otherwise would be. That demands our attention, not our platitudes.
Education stakeholders need to have a multifaceted approach to helping children catch up, however, or else learning recovery efforts will fail. I echo those insisting we not go down an ineffective remediation path, but instead meet the moment with a combination of rigorous instruction, tutoring, mental health supports, and extra learning time, Yet academic recovery can’t happen just within the school walls, given the outsize effects of out-of-school factors on the brain’s ability to learn. These are, to extend the metaphor, ropes holding back our canoe. Housing stability can be a strategy to combat learning loss. Family economic stability can be a strategy to combat learning loss—and therefore affordable child care can be a strategy to combat learning loss.
Learning loss is a complex topic, and the reflexive resistance to suggesting anything “negative” about children who did nothing to bring this pandemic upon themselves is understandable. If we can all speak with more clarity and detail exactly what we mean—what is being lost, how does that relate to learning standards, and how do we simultaneously meet today’s students where they are while preparing a new system for tomorrow’s—the conversation can become far more productive. The first step, though, is to get everyone on the same page that learning loss is, unfortunately, very real.
Elliot Haspel is a former public school teacher and the author of Crawling Behind: America’s Childcare Crisis and How to Fix It.
The post Yes, Learning Standards Are Arbitrary. Yes, Learning Loss Is Real. appeared first on Education Next.
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Federal government asylum declares based on unpublished data
“No, our system is broken on asylum and it’s broken for a range of reasons. Sixty percent of people that have come to the country illegally are within that system.”
Priti Patel, 24 March 2020
Last week, Home Secretary Priti Patel appeared on the Today programme to discuss the launch of a new government-led consultation on immigration.
The “New Plan for Immigration” sets out objectives for UK immigration policy, and some of the consultation’s questions centre on the UK asylum system.
In response to being challenged on the Today programme as to whether changes to this system were strictly necessary, Ms Patel replied: “No, our system is broken on asylum and it’s broken for a range of reasons. Sixty percent of people that have come to the country illegally are within that system…”
While it’s not clear exactly what the Home Secretary meant by this comment, when asked for clarification, the Home Office referred Full Fact to the following statistic in the consultation document:
“For the year ending September 2019, more than 60% of those [asylum] claims were from people who are thought to have entered the UK illegally…”
It added that the 60% statistic referred to one-off analysis of administrative datasets which matched together data on asylum claims with data relating to various potential (legal and illegal) routes of entry for migrants into the UK.
However, the Home Office did not provide Full Fact with the data meaning that, beyond noting that the figure might therefore be slightly out of date, we can’t assess whether it is reliable as it is unpublished.
It is inappropriate for the government to use unpublished evidence to support claims. Figures like these should be published in full so that anyone can check where they’re from and how they’re calculated.
Previously, the Office for Statistics Regulation has also said: “When management information is used publicly to inform Parliament, the media and the public, it should be published in an accessible form, with appropriate explanations of context and sources,” which does not appear to have been the case in this instance.
We will be asking the Home Office to provide this information through a Freedom of Information request and will update you on its response in due course.
We’ve also written about the process of claiming asylum before.
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FactChecking Biden’s Claim that Attack Weapons Ban Worked
President Joe Biden claims the 10-year assault weapons ban that he helped shepherd through the Senate as part of the 1994 crime bill “brought down these mass killings.” But the raw numbers, when adjusted for population and other factors, aren’t so clear on that.
There is, however, growing evidence that bans on large-capacity magazines, in particular, might reduce the number of those killed and injured in mass public shootings.
A day after the Boulder, Colorado, mass shooting, in which 10 people were killed by a gunman in a grocery store on March 22, Biden spoke in support of two House-approved bills that would expand background checks to include private sales. Biden also returned to another campaign promise on gun control: to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
“We can ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in this country, once again,” Biden said. “I got that done when I was a senator. It passed. It was a law for the longest time and it brought down these mass killings. We should do it again.”
Biden is referring to his work as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee when he sponsored and largely shepherded the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act into law in 1994. That law, among other things, included an “assault weapons” ban, which prohibited the sale of certain semiautomatic firearms and large-capacity magazines that could accommodate 10 rounds or more. (Existing weapons on the banned list were “grandfathered,” meaning people could keep them.) A sunset provision, however, meant that the ban expired in 10 years, in 2004.
We wrote about this issue eight years ago, when the gun debate was again raging in Congress. At the time, we found that a three-part study funded by the Department of Justice concluded that the ban’s success in reducing crimes committed with banned guns was “mixed.”
We wrote:
FactCheck.org, Feb. 1, 2013: The final report concluded the ban’s success in reducing crimes committed with banned guns was “mixed.” Gun crimes involving assault weapons declined. However, that decline was “offset throughout at least the late 1990s by steady or rising use of other guns equipped with [large-capacity magazines].”
Ultimately, the research concluded that it was “premature to make definitive assessments of the ban’s impact on gun crime,” largely because the law’s grandfathering of millions of pre-ban assault weapons and large-capacity magazines “ensured that the effects of the law would occur only gradually” and were “still unfolding” when the ban expired in 2004.
Recent Research
Some things haven’t changed much since then. A RAND review of gun studies, updated in 2020, concluded there is “inconclusive evidence for the effect of assault weapon bans on mass shootings.”
“We don’t think there are great studies available yet to state the effectiveness of assault weapons bans,” Andrew Morral, a RAND senior behavioral scientist who led the project, told FactCheck.org in a phone interview. “That’s not to say they aren’t effective. The research we reviewed doesn’t provide compelling evidence one way or the other.”
There has, however, been emerging research about post-ban trends that may provide information that could be useful to evaluating what worked and what didn’t in the 1994 assault weapons ban.
For example, research published in 2019 in Criminology & Public Policy by Grant Duwe, director of research and evaluation for the Minnesota Department of Corrections, found that after controlling for population growth, the assault weapons ban did not appear to have much of an effect on the number of mass public shootings, comparing a pre-ban period with the 10 years the ban was in effect. But he found that the incidence and severity of mass public shootings, meaning the number killed and injured, has increased over the last decade, after the ban had expired.
Duwe, author of “Mass Murder in the United States: A History,“ documented 158 mass public shootings in the U.S. between 1976 and 2018, which included shootings that “occur in the absence of other criminal activity (e.g., robberies, drug deals, and gang ‘turf wars’) in which a gun was used to kill four or more victims at a public location within a 24-hour period.”
Duwe also looked at three-, five- and 10-year moving averages to flatten out some of the extreme spikes and dips in individual years.
Duwe found that the lowest 10-year average in mass shooting rates was between 1996-2005, which roughly corresponds with the ban period. But Duwe notes that that “aligns with broader trends observed for crime and violence in the United States.” In other words, it’s hard to know how much the assault weapons ban may have affected mass shootings during that time.
While the incidence rate was higher pre-ban than post-ban, the number of victims killed and shot — the severity of mass public shootings — has increased dramatically in the post-ban period, after 2004, Duwe found.
“The growing number of highly lethal mass public shootings raises several important questions,” Duwe wrote. “Perhaps most notably, why have they become more deadly since the mid-2000s? Is this effect a result of the expiration of the federal assault weapons ban in 2004? Or is it a result of other changes in gun policy?”
Although he poses these questions, Duwe does not offer a definitive conclusion about the impact of the assault weapons ban.
Duwe noted that the relative infrequency with which mass public shootings occur “makes it challenging to predict with accuracy who will commit a mass public shooting or to develop policies designed to reduce their incidence or severity.” And so, he said, it “may be unrealistic to assume that policy proposals targeting mass shootings in particular would, individually or collectively, prevent a catastrophic attack from ever taking place in the future.”
Research published in Criminology & Public Policy in January 2020 concluded that assault weapons bans “do not seem to be associated with the incidence of fatal mass shootings.” However, state laws requiring handgun purchasers to obtain a license and state bans of large-capacity magazines did appear to be “associated with reductions in fatal mass shootings.”
“It’s worth noting that state bans of LCMs were shown to be associated with reductions in fatal mass shootings and state bans of assault weapons were associated with fewer fatal mass shootings, however, the relationship was not statistically significant,” Daniel Webster, one of the authors of the study and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, told us via email.
“It’s clear that there is an association between weapon features, most notably ammunition capacity, and how many people are shot in these incidents,” Webster added. “Shooters select weapons and ammunition feeding devices that will allow them to shoot as many people as possible. It is a separate question whether bans will reduce casualties from mass shootings or how long they need to be in place in order for the effects to be realized.”
In separate research also published in Criminology & Public Policy in January 2020, Christopher S. Koper, principal fellow of George Mason University’s Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy and the author of the Department of Justice review of the 1994 assault weapons ban, focused on the role of large-capacity magazines (as opposed to assault weapons) in mass shootings.
“Crimes with AWs [assault weapons] began to decline shortly after the ban’s passage, likely in part because of the interest of collectors and speculators in these weapons, which helped to drive their prices higher through the end of the 1990s (thus making them less accessible and affordable to criminal users),” Koper wrote. “Criminal use of other semiautomatics equipped with LCMs [large-capacity magazines], however, appeared to climb or remain steady through the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, adjusting for overall trends in gun crime. Available evidence suggests that criminal LCM use eventually declined below pre-ban levels but only near the ban’s expiration in 2004. As noted, crimes with LCM firearms have since increased.”
Koper argues that the ““most important provisions of assault weapons law” are restrictions on large-capacity magazines, because “they can produce broader reductions in the overall use of high-capacity semiautomatics that facilitate high-volume gunfire attacks.”
“This rise in LCM use would arguably have not happened, or at least not to the same degree, had Congress extended the ban in 2004,” Koper states. “Considering that mass shootings with high-capacity semiautomatics are considerably more lethal and injurious than other mass shootings, it is reasonable to argue that the federal ban could have prevented some of the recent increase in persons killed and injured in mass shootings had it remained in place.”
Specifically, Koper concluded, “Data on mass shooting incidents suggest these magazine restrictions can potentially reduce mass shooting deaths by 11% to 15% and total victims shot in these incidents by one quarter, likely as upper bounds.”
The success of any ban on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, Koper said, may depend on how the law is implemented, especially with regard to treatment of pre-ban weapons.
Koper argues that “exemptions and loopholes” in the 1994 assault weapons ban likely blunted the short-term effects of the law. Millions of existing weapons and magazines were “grandfathered,” making them legal to own, and importers were able to import tens of millions of large-capacity magazines manufactured before the ban took effect.
During the campaign, Biden vowed that a new assault weapons ban would be “designed based on lessons learned from the 1994 bans.”
“For example, the ban on assault weapons will be designed to prevent manufacturers from circumventing the law by making minor changes that don’t limit the weapon’s lethality,” according to Biden’s campaign website. “While working to pass this legislation, Biden will also use his executive authority to ban the importation of assault weapons.”
Biden also proposed requiring citizens who own assault weapons to undergo a background check and register those weapons with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, as those who currently possess machine guns must do. Machine guns have been banned since 1986, though grandfathered weapons can be transferred from one registered owner to another registered owner.
And finally, Biden said he would institute a voluntary buyback program for existing assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Those who do not sell their weapons to the government would have to register them.
Although there is broad public support for banning assault-style weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines (including from about half of Republicans), the proposal does not appear to have the 60 votes needed in the Senate to overcome a potential filibuster.
During a press conference on March 25, Biden did not commit to a timeline for when gun control legislation such as an assault weapons ban might come to the forefront in Congress, saying only that it was “a matter of timing.” Biden said his next big legislative push will be for infrastructure.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104.
The post FactChecking Biden’s Claim that Assault Weapons Ban Worked appeared first on FactCheck.org.
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Tuesday, March 30, 2021
Pluralism Is Growing in K-12 Education
After surveying 1,000 public and private school parents on how Covid-19 affected their view of schools, longtime pollster Frank Luntz of FIL Inc. expressed surprise: “Never in my lifetime have so many parents been so eager for so much educational change.”
An article in The Atlantic is headlined: “The Pandemic Has Parents Fleeing From Schools—Maybe Forever.”
Covid-19 shock put parents in charge of their child’s education in ways no one ever imagined, let alone experienced.
It made them think about schooling in new ways.
It drove them to seek different options for educating and supporting their children.
And it inspired imaginative individuals to expand existing or create novel ways to support that new demand.
The dynamics of parent response to Covid-19 shock are reminiscent of a conceptual framework described just over 50 years ago by economist Albert Hirschman in Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. He describes how individuals as consumers in multiple domains respond when facing decreasing quality or benefit in the services they are receiving. In short, the response can be either exit or voice, with loyalty affecting one’s analysis of whether to use exit or voice.
The result of the Covid-19 shock dynamic in K-12 is a more pluralistic education system, one that’s being redefined to include more options from more providers for more families and students.
What are parents saying and doing about the response of public schools to Covid-19 shock? Or to use Hirschman’s words: what are they voicing; are they exiting or loyal?
According to the FIL poll, parents say they don’t want schools to “return to normal” after Covid-19.
Two of three (66 percent) say we need to rethink “how we educate students, coming up with new ways to teach children.”
They also want to try new ways to finance their children’s learning.
Nearly eight in ten (76 percent) want to see “education funding follow the student to whichever school they or their parents choose.”
And eight in ten (80 percent) want the government to provide education savings accounts for families, defined as “allowing parents to receive a deposit of public funds into government-authorized savings accounts.”
Gallup reports that parents saying they’re “completely satisfied” with public schools going into the 2020 school year dropped 9 points from the prior year, to 32 percent from 41 percent.
This dissatisfaction is driving them to vote with their feet—to exit. They’re withdrawing—or not enrolling—their children in schools. No, not all of them. Many are remaining loyal. But some portion of them are exiting.
Gallup reports that parents home schooling their child nearly doubled, to 10 percent from around 5 percent. And those enrolling their child in a public school decreased 7 points, to 76 percent from 83 percent.
The homeschooling number is reinforced by new data from the U.S. Census, which also found homeschooling increased, to 11.1 percent of households from 5.4 percent, even after a clarification was added to the question to make sure that households were reporting true homeschooling rather than virtual learning through a public or private school.
The Education Next survey also found shifts away from traditional district-run public schools, including a decline in district public school enrollment to 72 percent of students from 81 percent between the spring and fall of 2020. The Education Next survey found an increase in homeschooling to 8 percent from 6 percent, along with increases in private school and charter enrollments. Though the increases were too small to be statistically significant, they track with the other surveys.
How are policymakers and others responding to this dynamic, to this exit and demand for more and different options?
Lawmakers in nearly a third of the states have proposed bills to establish or expand a variety of taxpayer funded programs. These include education savings accounts and tax credit scholarships that allow taxpayers to receive tax credits when donating to nonprofits that provide private school scholarships.
And governors are using federal Covid-19 relief funds in inventive ways. For example, Idaho Republican Governor Brad Little has created a new $50 million Strong Families, Strong Students Initiative. Under the program, eligible families could receive $1,500 per student, with a maximum of $3,500 per family. The money can be used to purchase eligible educational materials, devices, and services. Other governors have created similar programs.
What other alternatives are exiting parents choosing?
Some are choosing traditional private schools, including Catholic schools. For example, Tom Carroll, the head of Boston’s Catholic Schools, said enrollment demand increased in “all our 100 schools” following the closing of public schools in Boston and its surrounding areas.
The best known of the newer alternatives are Parent Organized Discovery Sites—or pods—micro schools, and virtual schools.
Pods involve small groups of children learning together in person or virtually. A variety of actors—local government, non-profits, parents, corporations—start these programs. They use volunteers or hire teachers or other adults to supervise the program.
They typically serve families with children enrolled in a school’s online learning program, supplementing this with special services. These include tutoring, childcare, and afterschool programs so students socialize and pursue academics or extracurricular activities with friends.
Pods are paid for in different ways. Families pay directly “out of pocket” or receive them as employee benefits. Some pods provide scholarships for low-income families. Other approaches include using state or local tax dollars or support from nonprofit and philanthropic organizations.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed opened 84 pod locations called community learning hubs run by the city. The program was started as the city’s response to a dispute with the school district’s closing policies. It serves around 2,400 children, about 96 percent racial minorities.
In Columbus, Ohio, the YMCA is offering pods for students ages five to sixteen who are attending school virtually. Students can arrive as early as 6 a.m., with learning sessions starting at 8 a.m.
In Minnesota, the Minneapolis based African American Community Response Team is created the North Star Network of community ZOOM pods. They supplement online learning offered by schools, providing a quiet learning space, technology, and tutors.
JPMorgan Chase offers discounts on virtual tutors and pods for eligible employees accessed through its employer sponsored childcare provider, Bright Horizons. It’s also opened its 14 childcare centers for employee children as a no-cost place for remote learning with supervision.
Micro schools reinvent the one room schoolhouse. They’re usually groups of 15 students or less, engaging three to six families. They might employ one teacher, or alternatively, parents teach, hiring a college student or other “grown-up” to assist.
Prenda is an Arizona based network of micro schools, growing from seven students in one neighborhood in 2018 to over 200 schools. School can be held in homes or almost any public space like a community center or library. They are led by a Prenda Guide, a trained mentor who doesn’t need to be a certified teacher. During the pandemic, they’ve expanded to Colorado and grown to over 3,000 from 550 students. They follow social distancing guidelines of their local jurisdiction.
Florida Virtual School is an accredited online tuition-free school founded in 1997. It employs Florida certified teachers and works with public, private, charter, and homeschool families and school districts nationwide. Since the pandemic, it has seen an increase of over 231,100 new course enrollments—a 57% increase—in its open-registration, part-time Flex program.
The VELA Education Fund is supported by philanthropy. It invests in family education innovations that meet children’s academic and social-emotional needs. It awards microgrants of up to $25,000 to students, families, and educators innovating outside the traditional education system. For example, Zucchinis Homeschool Co-op is a parent led pod serving 4 to 10 year olds, including the younger siblings of students at The LIFE School, an accredited, project-based high school in downtown Atlanta. VELA also awards larger grants of up to $250,000 for programs that expand to serve more students and families. Prenda’s micro school expansion to Colorado was funded by VELA.
Websites like SchoolHouse, LearningPodsHub, and Selected for Families are helping families form pods and assist teachers and tutors in providing services to these families.
SitterStream is a startup created at the beginning of the pandemic. It offers on-demand babysitting and tutoring to students, individually or in pods. It has partnerships with small and large businesses who provide these services to employees, with Amazon one of their corporate clients.
iCode is a national computer science education franchise that offers onsite and virtual computer coding for young people. It now offers supervised, in-person or remote online learning support to help working parents manage school closures and online schooling for their children.
How much of this will “stick” beyond the pandemic? No one knows for sure. But it seems reasonable to bet that some will stick.
A Civis Analytics national survey reports that eight of ten (83 percent) K–12 parents who disenrolled children from school say they will reenroll them in their original school once it is safe to do so. In Hirschman’s words, loyalty is stronger than a permanent exit, for these parents.
An NPR/Ipsos national poll found that almost 3 in 10 (29 percent) of parents were likely to stick with remote learning indefinitely. That included about half of the parents who are currently enrolled in remote learning. Exit is the preferred option for this group.
And a RAND Corporation analysis of a survey from their new American School District Panel, which consists of leaders of more than 375 school districts and charter management organizations, found that about 1 in 5 are considering a remote school option after the end of the pandemic.
Cobb County, Georgia serves over 112,000 students. Itis the second largest district in the peach state and 23rd largest in the nation. Superintendent Chris Ragsdale announced that the district would enact a classroom choice program for the 2021 school year. The online learning for grades 6-12 will be supported through Cobb Online Learning Academy. Local school based online learning will be in place for PK-5 along with Cobb Horizon Academy and Cobb Virtual Academy for part-time online learners. In this case, the organization is listening to voice and responding in new ways.
All this suggests some significant number of parents and students will return to some version of the “old normal.” But some won’t. Some have exited, permanently. So the long-term effect is a question of magnitude.
Covid-19 shock has thrown K–12 schooling into disarray. But it’s also catalyzed creative and determined parents, innovators, and policy leaders to respond in new ways. Their creativity and entrepreneurship is characteristically American and impressive, even if driven by urgency and exasperation.
Our best hope is that our emergence from COVID-19 shock positions us for what could be a new era in educational excellence, one in which families have more direct control over, and options for, their child’s education. One in which they are truly trusted and supported in making decisions about their children’s schooling. One that gives our children an effective education that prepares them for opportunity and success.
Bruno V. Manno is senior advisor to the Walton Family Foundation’s K-12 Program.
The post Pluralism Is Growing in K-12 Education appeared first on Education Next.
By: Bruno V. Manno
Title: Pluralism Is Growing in K-12 Education
Sourced From: www.educationnext.org/pluralism-is-growing-k-12-education-covid-19/
Published Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2021 10:00:51 +0000
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Claims house prices have actually quadrupled considering that 1990 are about right
A graph shared on Facebook and Twitter shows average UK house prices quadrupling since 1990, while the average household income rose by about half. This is about right.
The graph gives its source as the Land Registry—a government department registering property and land ownership. The graph is correct that the Land Registry shows the average UK residential property price (including flats) was £57,726 in June 1990.
According to the Land Registry, the equivalent figure for June 2020 is £234,947. The Facebook graph quotes a slightly higher figure of £237,834, which has also been reported by the government. (The differences are likely due to the way in which House Price Index data is updated as transactions are completed.)
The graph also says the average UK household income for 2020 is £37,100. This is the correct figure for the mean UK disposable household income for the financial year ending April 2020, which means it also incorporates nine months of 2019. (The exact figure is £37,108.)
Meanwhile, the figure of £20,448, which the graph describes the average UK household income for 1990 appears to be slightly too low. The actual mean average figure for disposable household income 1990 is £24,415.
Using this set of figures, mean average household incomes in the UK have risen by about 52% in the past 30 years, while average house prices have risen by about 307%.
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Due to the unprecedented crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, BRIO has dedicated 100% of their operations to importing critically needed respirator masks. Featuring a 3D comfort design, these KN95 masks provide filtration against particulate pollution, gases, as well as bacteria, viruses, and most odors. It's made with comfortable stretch fabric and has convenient earloops for a tight fit. These masks are perfect for everyday wear. Order your 5-Pack now!
- 3D Comfort mask design
- Convenient earloop design
- Comfortable stretch fabric for tight fit
- Easy to put on & remove
Specs
- Color: white
- Materials: 3-layer melt-blown non-woven PPE
- Product dimensions: 1"H x 8"L x 5"W
- 3D Comfort design
- KN95 PRC Standard (Similar to NIOSH N95)
- CE 0194
- FFP2 - EN149 Filtration Level
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President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC to mark National Vietnam War Veterans Day.
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Travel to Spain needs negative Covid test
On Instagram, businessman Wayne Lineker has claimed that, once international travel resumes, people will not need to have been vaccinated in order to travel to Spain and will only require proof they have tested negative with a PCR test in the 72 hours prior to travel.
While some users on social media have questioned this in the comments, it does accurately reflect the latest statements from the Spanish government, though of course things may change.
Currently, it is illegal for people in the UK to travel abroad for holidays, although there are some legally permitted reasons for foreign travel. The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, has said 17 May is the earliest date people in England might be permitted to travel internationally for leisure, but this is still under review.
Spain is not permitting passengers from the UK to enter unless they are Spanish or Andorran nationals, or legally resident in Spain or Andorra.
This restriction is due to be lifted on 30 March, though entry will only be granted to those who can demonstrate their journey is essential., Details are available on the UK government website.
Spain requires travellers from most countries to present evidence of a negative Covid-19 test taken in the 72 hours prior to arrival in Spain. The UK is on this list until at least 11 April.
The test should be a PCR, LAMP or TMA test. Of these, only PCR tests are widely available in the UK.
The Spanish minister of industry, trade and tourism has said the country could introduce a vaccine passport from May.
However, The Independent reports that Fernando Valdés Verelst, another minister in Spain’s tourism department, has indicated that passengers will not be denied entry if they have not yet been vaccinated.
Full Fact has approached the Spanish tourism ministry for confirmation of this.
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Due to the unprecedented crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, BRIO has dedicated 100% of their operations to importing critically needed respirator masks. Featuring a 3D comfort design, these KN95 masks provide filtration against particulate pollution, gases, as well as bacteria, viruses, and most odors. It's made with comfortable stretch fabric and has convenient earloops for a tight fit. These masks are perfect for everyday wear. Order your 5-Pack now!
- 3D Comfort mask design
- Convenient earloop design
- Comfortable stretch fabric for tight fit
- Easy to put on & remove
Specs
- Color: white
- Materials: 3-layer melt-blown non-woven PPE
- Product dimensions: 1"H x 8"L x 5"W
- 3D Comfort design
- KN95 PRC Standard (Similar to NIOSH N95)
- CE 0194
- FFP2 - EN149 Filtration Level
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Monday, March 29, 2021
President Biden announces 90% of adults will be eligible for vaccine by April 19th
President Biden: "I'm pleased to announce that at least 90% of all adults in this country will be eligible to be vaccinated by April the 19th, just three weeks from now, because we have the vaccines."
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CDC Director Reflects on Recurring Feeling of Impending Doom
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky: "I'm going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom. We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope, but right now, I'm scared...We ha […]
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The Education Exchange: Yes, It Is Safe to Resume Schools
A visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, John Bailey, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Bailey’s latest report, which reviews more than 130 studies on whether schools can reopen safely amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Bailey’s report, “Is it safe to reopen schools? An extensive review of the research,” is available now from AEI.
Follow The Education Exchange on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher or here on Education Next.
— Education Next
The post The Education Exchange: Yes, It Is Safe to Reopen Schools appeared first on Education Next.
By: Education Next
Title: The Education Exchange: Yes, It Is Safe to Reopen Schools
Sourced From: www.educationnext.org/education-exchange-safe-reopen-schools-covid-19/
Published Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2021 10:00:48 +0000
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Boris Johnson handgun quote is genuine
A post on Facebook claims that in the wake of the Dunblane Massacre and calls for the government to ban handguns that followed, then-journalist Boris Johnson wrote: “Nanny is confiscating their toys. It is like one of those vast Indian programmes of compulsory vasectomy.”
While fake quotes attributed to the Prime Minister are popular on social media, this one is genuine.
It’s unclear where and when exactly the article first appeared, but it was published or republished in the Canadian newspaper, the Calgary Herald in September 1997 and is credited to Boris Johnson and The Telegraph.
On 13 March 1996, a gunman murdered 16 children and one teacher at Dunblane Primary School near Stirling in Scotland, before killing himself.
Parliament subsequently passed legislation banning the private ownership of handguns in most cases, and offered payment to people who voluntarily surrendered their guns.
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Description
Due to the unprecedented crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, BRIO has dedicated 100% of their operations to importing critically needed respirator masks. Featuring a 3D comfort design, these KN95 masks provide filtration against particulate pollution, gases, as well as bacteria, viruses, and most odors. It's made with comfortable stretch fabric and has convenient earloops for a tight fit. These masks are perfect for everyday wear. Order your 5-Pack now!
- 3D Comfort mask design
- Convenient earloop design
- Comfortable stretch fabric for tight fit
- Easy to put on & remove
Specs
- Color: white
- Materials: 3-layer melt-blown non-woven PPE
- Product dimensions: 1"H x 8"L x 5"W
- 3D Comfort design
- KN95 PRC Standard (Similar to NIOSH N95)
- CE 0194
- FFP2 - EN149 Filtration Level
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Oranges do not evaluate positive for Covid-19
A post shared widely on Facebook claims that an orange has tested positive for Covid-19 using a lateral flow test. It’s unclear whether the post is implying that the tests are inaccurate or unreliable. In reality, the test cannot work properly with an orange. The fact that these tests can effectively be broken with fruit does not make them inaccurate or unreliable for use in the general population.
Research shows that approved lateral flow tests are highly unlikely to give a false positive result when used correctly. We’ve written before about claims that a kiwi fruit and glass of Coca Cola have appeared to test positive with lateral flow tests.
Dr Alexander Edwards, associate professor in Biomedical Technology at the University of Reading, previously told Full Fact on this subject: “If you completely ignore the manufacturer’s instructions or in fact use the test for something completely different, then you shouldn’t really be surprised if you get a silly result.”
Annette Beck-Sickinger, professor Biochemistry at the University of Leipzig, told fact checking site AFP Fact Check that the buffer solution you mix with the sample in a rapid test would not be able to “neutralize large amounts of acid”, such as the amounts found in fruit like mangoes or apples.
The reliability of diagnostic tests is evaluated in experiments before they are approved. Early results show lateral flow tests rarely give false positive test results when properly used.
In the UK, the government is using a large number of Innova rapid tests. When trialled in labs and in real-world settings such as hospitals, schools and testing centres, they correctly identified negative samples 99.68% of the time.
Although these tests rarely give false positive results, they can produce false negatives. In its UK evaluation, the Innova test correctly identified 76.8% of positive samples, missing 75 out of 323. Some concerns have been raised about their ability to detect positive cases depending on who is administering the tests.
This makes rapid Covid tests controversial among some experts, who disagree about whether the benefits of quickly identifying lots of infected people will outweigh the risk of falsely reassuring others.
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Description
Due to the unprecedented crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, BRIO has dedicated 100% of their operations to importing critically needed respirator masks. Featuring a 3D comfort design, these KN95 masks provide filtration against particulate pollution, gases, as well as bacteria, viruses, and most odors. It's made with comfortable stretch fabric and has convenient earloops for a tight fit. These masks are perfect for everyday wear. Order your 5-Pack now!
- 3D Comfort mask design
- Convenient earloop design
- Comfortable stretch fabric for tight fit
- Easy to put on & remove
Specs
- Color: white
- Materials: 3-layer melt-blown non-woven PPE
- Product dimensions: 1"H x 8"L x 5"W
- 3D Comfort design
- KN95 PRC Standard (Similar to NIOSH N95)
- CE 0194
- FFP2 - EN149 Filtration Level
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Sunday, March 28, 2021
Police verify officers did not suffer broken bones at Bristol demonstration
Last week Avon and Somerset police claimed that two officers had suffered broken bones, and one of those had a punctured lung, following protests in Bristol on 21 March, in opposition to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.
It has now emerged that this is not the case.
Posts on Facebook correctly claim that the police have now confirmed that officers did not suffer broken bones during the protests, despite initially stating that they had.
In a statement on the day of the protests, Avon and Somerset police said: “Officers have been subjected to considerable levels of abuse and violence. One suffered a broken arm and another suffered broken ribs. Both have been taken to hospital.”
Another statement said 20 officers were injured, and one of the officers with broken bones also had a punctured lung.
The claim that broken bones were suffered by the police officers was widely reported in the media.
However, in a further statement, released on 24 March, the force said: “We are now investigating assaults on 40 officers and one member of the media. Thankfully following a full medical assessment of the two officers taken to hospital, neither were found to have suffered confirmed broken bones.”
The force also updated their 21 March statement to say: “Our initial information suggested two officers had broken bones. Thankfully the injuries – while still serious – did not involve fractures. We believed the information had been verified but it had not, and while we apologise for that there was no intention to mislead.” The force also shared this update on Twitter.
The screenshot of a news story being shared on Facebook with the headline ‘police confirm officers did not suffer broken bones at Bristol protest’ is genuine, and comes from ITV News.
We have also written about false claims that a police car which was set alight during the protest was a “prop”.
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Description
Due to the unprecedented crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, BRIO has dedicated 100% of their operations to importing critically needed respirator masks. Featuring a 3D comfort design, these KN95 masks provide filtration against particulate pollution, gases, as well as bacteria, viruses, and most odors. It's made with comfortable stretch fabric and has convenient earloops for a tight fit. These masks are perfect for everyday wear. Order your 5-Pack now!
- 3D Comfort mask design
- Convenient earloop design
- Comfortable stretch fabric for tight fit
- Easy to put on & remove
Specs
- Color: white
- Materials: 3-layer melt-blown non-woven PPE
- Product dimensions: 1"H x 8"L x 5"W
- 3D Comfort design
- KN95 PRC Standard (Similar to NIOSH N95)
- CE 0194
- FFP2 - EN149 Filtration Level
News.... browse around here
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