Oh, So a School District's Stance on Re-Opening in the Fall Is Grounded in County-Level Support of Trump

The panic porn over coronavirus has spilled into the school debate. Districts are neck-deep in debate as to whether they should re-open, despite the fact that young children aren’t really impacted by this virus. The reaction has been overblown. In fact, there’s more data that suggests the lockdowns we were subjected to did more harm than good. And now, we have the doomsday peddlers saying our kids shouldn’t learn for another year.

Okay—they’re not really saying that, but this online instruction model isn’t going to work. Some places have zero accountability measures, teachers are complaining about how many hours they have to teach, and they also don’t want to go back. We have concerned parents, lazy teachers’ unions, and Trump derangement syndrome overloading the scene here. The data is quite clear. It’s safe for kids to return to school (via WSJ):

The evidence—scientific, health and economic—argues overwhelmingly for schools to open in the fall. Start with the relative immunity of young children to the disease, which should reassure parents.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 30 children under age 15 have died from Covid-19. In a typical year 190 children die of the flu, 436 from suicide, 625 from homicide, and 4,114 from unintentional deaths such as drowning.

Only two children under age 18 have died in Chicago—fewer than were killed in shootings in a recent weekend. In New York City, 0.03% of children under age 18 have been hospitalized for Covid and 7.5 in one million have died. The death rate for those over 75 is more than 2,200-times higher than for those under 18.

Children so far have been shielded from the virus compared to working adults. But even pediatric cancer patients at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering were about a third less likely to test positive than their adult care-givers, and only one of 20 who tested positive required noncritical hospital care. In Sweden, which kept schools open, only 20 children under age 19—0.6% of confirmed cases—have been admitted to the ICU and only one has died.

Parents and teachers understandably worry that children might spread the virus. But a recent retrospective study of schools in Northern France, from February before lockdowns, found that “despite three introductions of the virus into three primary schools, there appears to have been no further transmission of the virus to other pupils or teaching and non-teaching staff of the schools.”

Teens appear to be more infectious. Yet schools that have reopened in most countries, including Germany, Singapore, Norway, Denmark and Finland, haven’t experienced outbreaks. Some schools in Israel had outbreaks last month after class sizes were increased, but most infections in both teachers and students were mild.

There was a study from South Korea that The New York Times peddled in an attempt to derail the ‘reopen the schools’ narrative. Don’t bother reading it. It was trash, described as “fairly murky and confused” by Professor Francois Balloux. What do pediatricians say? Send the kids back to the classroom.

But in this case, the medical experts are being ignored because Democrats really want to drive this COVID panic home by spreading it to parents and their school districts. They want chaos. They want the suburbs to be in play and what better way to do that than frame Trump as someone who wants to get their kids killed. Kids don’t really get it, and the jury is still out as to whether they spread it. What is clear is that the county-level support of Trump is what’s really driving the decisions of the local school boards. Jon Valant of Brookings crunched the numbers (via Brookings):

Since school district boundaries are not coterminous with county boundaries in some states, I used data from the U.S. Department of Education to identify the districts’ primary county location. I then merged data from the MIT Election Data + Science Lab with county-level results from the 2016 presidential election and data from USAFacts showing the number of new COVID-19 cases by county from July 1 to July 25. The idea is to see what is more related to these district decisions (albeit not necessarily causally)—local health conditions or politics.

[…]

In reality, there is no relationship—visually or statistically—between school districts’ reopening decisions and their county’s new COVID-19 cases per capita. In contrast, there is a strong relationship—visually and statistically—between districts’ reopening decisions and the county-level support for Trump in the 2016 election. Districts located in counties that supported Trump are much more likely to have announced plans to open in person. On average, districts that have announced plans to reopen in person are located in counties in which 55% voted for Trump in 2016, compared to 35% in districts that have announced plans for remote learning only. Unsurprisingly, the one remaining group in EdWeek’s data—“Hybrid/Partial”—falls right in the middle, at 44%.

These data aren’t perfect. For example, EdWeek’s database of district reopening plans is, by its own acknowledgement, incomplete, and school districts don’t map perfectly to counties. However, the patterns are so clear, and the regression results so consistent (e.g., controlling for different variables and restricting the timeframe of district announcements), that it seems implausible that politics aren’t a major factor in district decision-making.

It’s no shocker, I know. But spare me the public health aspect people are making about schools reopening. Trump wants kids back in school, so liberals oppose it. If he said kids should hang back this fall, liberals would demand schools reopen. It’s so predictable. And the fact that the Left now ignores the experts regarding coronavirus, safety, and schools shows what this whole fiasco was really about: power.

I’m not saying that COVID is fake or not contagious. It’s all of those things, but I’m pretty sure that we all overreacted and the impact of kids not learning for a year will do more damage than coronavirus could ever inflict.

And let the word go forth now: kids are now acceptable chips to put into play for political games. The Left has once again set a truly remarkable precedent.

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Keep masks out of the classroom

Keeping children out of school for months on end did, in the end, teach us all at least one thing. It showed us that the leaders of Britain’s teaching unions really despise children. Early on in the lockdown, Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, expressed her contempt for children ‘who are mucky, who spread germs, who touch everything, who cry, who wipe their snot on your trousers or your dress.’ She went on to argue that children should be ‘sprayed front and back with disinfectant’ at the school gates. I don’t know if Mary has pets but I wouldn’t even talk about my cats in this way.

Now, just when it seems as if a return to the classroom might be on the cards, the fear and loathing some teachers and union leaders have for children is showing again. This week, teaching unions have written to government ministers to demand that wearing face masks should be mandatory for children in all secondary schools. They are backed by a new report from the Data Evaluation and Learning for Viral Epidemics (DELVE) group, which advises government scientists. These adults want children returning to school in September, after months in isolation, to be muzzled.

Several schools, including Fallibroome Academy in Macclesfield and Brighton College, have already indicated that mask-wearing will be compulsory. At Holmes Chapel school in Cheshire, masks can be purchased at the same time as new school uniforms. That way, each child can sport an identical navy blue mask. Each face will be uniformly covered, all voices equally muffled.

Children attend school for at least six hours a day. Add to this time spent on public transport and many could be wearing masks for up to eight hours a day. That’s eight hours gagged with an uncomfortable rag around their mouths and eight hours without seeing the smiles of their friends. How could anyone, let alone teachers, think this is anything other than cruel and inhumane?

Wearing a mask deprives us of the visual cues that are so fundamental to social interaction. It’s virtually impossible to read someone’s facial expression from their eyes alone. Schools – as progressive teachers have been reminding us for decades – are about far more than formal instruction. They are places where children learn what it means to be part of society, not through reading about it at their desks, but in practice. At school, pupils learn how to behave around children and adults who are not part of their family through sitting, working, eating and playing alongside others. Masks alienate people from each other; they place a literal barrier over each individual’s face. Making friends and forging relationships becomes far less spontaneous and more difficult when delighted grins, knowing smirks and conspiratorial smiles cannot be exchanged.

Patrick Roach, general secretary of the NASUWT teachers’ union, wants schools to ‘be brought into line’ with other workplaces. But schools are not like other workplaces. Teachers do not simply input data or fix parts on a production line. Schools are concerned with education and this occurs through a relationship between a teacher, pupils and knowledge. Good teachers adapt their lessons depending upon the subject, the time of the day and the mood of their class. To do this, they need to be able to read the room and spot the child who is stifling a yawn, the child who looks baffled and the children who have understood. They use their own facial expressions to convey interest and enthusiasm but also, importantly, discipline. For all these reasons, even the best online learning can never fully replace the experience of being in a classroom.

Proponents of mask-wearing point to the continued exam success of pupils in south-east Asian countries to argue that masks are not a barrier to learning. But this ignores the vastly different cultural contexts within which schooling takes place around the world. For decades now, children in the UK have been taught not in silent rows but in noisy classrooms where they often work in small groups. In many subjects, teachers encourage children to engage in discussion and to weigh up a range of alternative ideas before reaching their own conclusions. Expressing your own ideas and listening to the views of others are both made far more difficult when speech is muffled by a mask. It’s ironic that the very same teaching unions that have railed against strict behaviour policies are happy to promote mask-wearing.

Although the union-backed campaign to get children wearing masks in schools has taken off this week, there is no new evidence to suggest that children are at risk of catching coronavirus or that they play a significant role in spreading the virus. The facts are worth repeating. Just five children in the UK are reported to have died from Covid-19. School-age children are more likely to be hit by lightning than to die from coronavirus. All the scientific evidence suggests that children play a minimal role in transmitting the virus. There have been no reported cases of a teacher catching coronavirus from children anywhere in the world. Making children wear masks is unlikely to protect children or prevent the spread of coronavirus. But it will be detrimental to their education and socialisation. That teaching-union leaders want children to be forced to wear masks is utterly shameful.

At present, there is no directive mandating mask-wearing in schools. The government has warned headteachers against making face masks compulsory. But there have been so many changes of directions in response to the pandemic that there is no room for complacency while union leaders are still championing masks. Parents and teachers who oppose this need to make their voices heard. The campaign group Us for Them has launched a petition against the wearing of masks in schools to make sure there is no backtracking from the government. I would urge everyone to sign it.

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Australia: Victorian coronavirus schooling rules for year 11 and 12 VCE students 'inflexible', unions say

Whining teachers again

The Victorian Government's requirement for all year 11 and 12 students to attend school in person is causing anxiety for school principals and making staff concerned for their safety, unions representing the education sector say.

Prep to year 10 students in Melbourne and the Mitchell Shire have been learning from home since July 20.

Currently Victoria's VCE and VCAL students, as well as special school students, are required to attend school in person.

But the Australian Education Union (AEU) and the Independent Education Union (IEU) say the policy is inflexible and "failing our school communities".

There are 72 schools across Victoria which are currently closed due to coronavirus: 61 government schools, nine Catholic schools and two independent schools.

Nineteen early childhood services are closed.

The unions want the State Government to give school principals more flexibility and the power to implement home learning programs for their students when required.

AEU Victorian branch president Meredith Peace said many union members were concerned about their safety and the safety of their students.

"It is leaving our principals with the responsibility to manage incredibly difficult circumstances for their schools, without having the capacity to make important decisions," she said.

The Victorian Government's rationale for keeping year 11 and 12 students on campus was to avoid VCE students falling out of step with their counterparts outside of the locked-down areas.

But Ms Peace said many parents were keeping their children home because of health concerns anyway, particularly in special schools.

"So we already have significant inequity, because those students who are at home are not receiving a formal learning program — our kids with disabilities, in special schools, are receiving no learning program," she said.

Departmental guidelines were getting in the way of principals doing "the right thing", the general secretary of IEU Vic-Tas Debra James said.

"Too many people are required to be on campus when they could easily be working from home, and principals who are trying to minimise the number of staff or students in the senior secondary area are getting pushback," she said.

Ms Peace said some secondary schools had tried to implement flexible arrangements for their VCE students, such as keeping year 11s at home for part of the week.

But she said the Department of Education and Training told those schools to reverse those decisions, and other proposals put forward by the union had been rejected.

"We cannot have a circumstance where principals are trying to manage the growing anxiety and stress among their staff and students and parents, and yet they are not trusted to make very sensible decisions about how to manage their staff on site."

Ms James pointed to a senior secondary school in Melbourne's western suburbs which had recorded positive cases among students and staff and where a partner of a staff member was in ICU.

"This is serious stuff … we believe there is a different way, a better way, and this should be seriously looked at," she said.

The union leaders also said delays in contact tracing were causing a high level of "stress and anxiety" for schools.

"We've heard stories about people sweating over email all weekend, wondering if they should be preparing remote learning classes for their kids or whether they should be preparing to be on site, face to face," Ms Peace said.

"We can't sustain those kinds of workloads, we can't sustain that stress for our school communities."

Education Minister James Merlino said the settings in place at schools in Victoria were based on the Chief Health Officer's advice.

"Schools already have the flexibility at the local level for staff to work remotely and to provide learning support for students on extended absences," he said.

"Having VCE and VCAL students and those with a disability onsite ensures that those most impacted by remote learning still have access to face-to-face learning."

SOURCE