Keeping the schools closed has a high cost, and it is likely to exacerbate many problems for weaker students, or students that don't have an ideal situation at home with strong support from their parents and easy access to all the stuff you need for remote learning.
But there isn't really a choice in many parts in the US unless you're willing to let the pandemic run its course and kill as many people as it takes to get to herd immunity. The only way to safely reopen schools is to suppress the virus enough that you can contain it with contact tracing. If you can't do that, there's no way to safely reopen schools in full. You can try alternatives like e.g. teaching outside, using masks, but they're not entirely safe, difficult to do and can't really work at 100% capacity.
Safety is not a binary condition. The risk will be higher than it was last year no matter what we do. Keeping schools closed indefinitely is obviously untenable. Since they have to reopen eventually, there's nothing to be gained by waiting.
I don’t think anyone is advocating keeping schools closed until the heat death of the universe, and there is a lot to be gained by waiting when you’re somewhere in the middle of a pandemic.
Hence the ongoing conversation about striking the right balance which is very much going to be regional and fluid.
Schools do have to reopen eventually. Education is essential for a functioning society. Distance learning and home schooling aren't adequate for the majority of primary school students. Without education, everything will eventually collapse in a manner far worse than losing 0.3% of the population to COVID-19.
The reality is we have no good options so we have to pick the least bad one.
Covid-19 is particularly deadly for a flu. It may yet evolve into a more form. I also may evolve into a less deadly form. We just do not know. Still, either case is unlikely, I admit.
If it became more deadly, then, well, no, we're not going back to schools until it is over. No one is going to send their kids to die.
Even as deadly as it is, we're unlikely to keep schools open if an outbreak occurs within the student body.
I agree that it's not good to keep the kids from learning, but keeping them and their families from dying is much more important.
The key to getting kids back to school is to get rid of covid-19. Everything other plan keeps the virus going and prolongs the pain.
You haven't proposed a realistic alternative. Our incompetent federal and state politicians lack the will to take the steps necessary to get rid of COVID-19. Even the development of a vaccine won't change that reality. So unfortunately we're just going to have to live with it. Keeping schools closed at this point causes more harm than benefit.
More harm is killing children. Distance learn if possible. If not, then yes, we're not going to be teaching them like we should. Killing them and their families isn't a realistic alternative.
Does this situation suck? Of course. Massively so.
Without other alternatives (like a vaccine or a massive reduction in cases that can allow for contact tracing) I'm not seeing how sending them to avoidable death is acceptable.
Per the politicians, call them and demand change. Write in local papers about them. Do something other than giving up. It;s a lot easier to call their offices than to attend zoom funerals.
Untenable? How? Between open source academics and some basic homeschooling, we can completely meet (or exceed) the average statewide curriculum requirements.
> kill as many people as it takes to get to herd immunity
Evidence continues to mount that immunity to Covid-19 is time limited. There will be no herd immunity. Of course, it's not like we have ever achieved herd immunity to any disease before vaccines.
Evidence also continues to mount that systemic damage occurs even in people who are weakly symptomatic. I suspect that this is true for viruses, in general, but Covid is basically allowing us to collect data that would be unethical to collect from an experiment.
> The only way to safely reopen schools is to suppress the virus enough that you can contain it with contact tracing. If you can't do that, there's no way to safely reopen schools in full.
New York will be the exemplar. They seem to have it contained and have 100% contact tracing. They should be able to reopen--we'll see how it goes.
There are only seven known strains of coronavirus that infect humans, all discovered in recent decades. It's likely we've gotten and fought off many others in our millions of years of evolutionary history.
I couldn’t find anything documented about the consequences of having schools closed, only the consequences of them being open. According to internal CDC documents, “fully reopening schools and universities remained the “highest risk” for the spread of the coronavirus”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/us/politics/trump-schools...
That article actually says it's "highest risk" according to the CDC website.[1]
> Since May, the C.D.C. website [link to 1] has cautioned that full reopening would be “highest risk,”
And from that site, we can see that it's not the highest risk among all possible ways of spreading COVID-19, it's simply the scenario with the highest risk of COVID-19 spread among 3 scenarios for schools: full reopening, virtual-only instruction, or:
> Small, in-person classes, activities, and events. Groups of students stay together and with the same teacher throughout/across school days and groups do not mix. Students remain at least 6 feet apart and do not share objects
I believe the CDC director is recommending something like that middle risk plan, and saying that the risk of spreading coronavirus under this plan is outweighed by the risks of having schools closed.
The problem is that the "public health consequences of having the schools closed on the kids" have not been defined, yet alone measured, and thus we have no basis for comparison against the fairly well-established risks of opening schools. The director is making a political statement based on hunches rather than evaluating risks based on science.
I agree that the CDC director should have given a lot more detail in his statement. The risks certainly haven't been explained to the public very well. But the experts seem to agree about the risks:
> The American Academy of Pediatrics' guidance "strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school."
> The American Academy of Pediatrics once again plunged into the growing debate over school reopening with a strong new statement Friday, making clear that while in-person school provides crucial benefits to children, "Public health agencies must make recommendations based on evidence, not politics." The statement also said that "science and community circumstances must guide decision-making."
> The AAP is changing tone from the guidance it issued just over two weeks ago. Then, the organization made a national splash by recommending that education leaders and policymakers "should start with a goal of having students physically present in school."
Yeah, the CDC is basically just saying that fully reopening schools carries higher risk of spreading Covid-19 than not doing so, which of course it does. The New York Times is carefully misleading people about this for nakedly partisan, anti-Trump ends. It's not the only bit of shady narrative-pushing in that article - notice how they also initially describe this information as coming from an internal CDC document and darkly hint that Trump might be supressing it so that he could push to reopen schools, before half-admitting that the same information has been on the CDC website since May deep into the article.
One example I know of is school meals for low income students.
My brother, a teacher, was telling me about socialization and brain development in adolescents. There is a definite impact that we have very little understanding of.
Not at all... Depending on the setting the meals are either picked up at the school, or dropped off at the student's home. Both are generally easy to arrange in a "no contact" way. It's not like they are inviting the students into the cafeteria for one big group meal.
Why does it seem like everyone assumes you can only socialize in school? I don't think homeschooled kids are particularly deficient in this regard either.
That's highly dependent on the parents. A lot of homeschooled kids end up normal, but the stereotype of homeshooled kids not knowing how to behave in a social setting exists for a reason. It'll be even worse in the current situation where you have parents that are working full time and don't have time to also organize social activities like the parents who intentionally did homeschooling.
There's actually a very common joke in the homeschool community: "Sometimes I worry my child is missing out on socializing in school, so once in a while I beat them up and steal their lunch money".
I think any parent who's been homeschooling, or attempting to for the greater part of this year's second semester is well aware of the negative consequences for children (and their parents) of keeping the schools closed.
As far as I'm concerned the intellectually honest debate is whether the unknown negative consequences of opening schools trumps the very well known and very broadly observed negative consequences of closing the schools.
Hi, I'm not in the USA and I'm home schooling (since longer than the pandemic though) so I'm not aware of the situation for forced home schoolers, aside from imagining that it's probably quite unpleasant and hard to organize, and I don't know what the health threats are. I'm quite curious though so if you may clarify the health threat for your children?
The health threat that I've experience and those that many of my peers have experienced has been of a behavioral nature. Again. from experience, somewhat mitigating factors seem to be easy access to open spaces, the presence of siblings, and a child by nature being an indoor child.
Just because it might be lower risk to children still means that they bring it back home which gives you a near ideal vector to reinfect a large portion of the population.
Current evidence says that children very rarely transmit to adults:
"Almost 6 months into the pandemic, accumulating evidence and collective
experience argue that children, particularly school-aged children, are far less
important drivers of SARS-CoV-2 transmission than adults. Therefore, serious
consideration should be paid toward strategies that allow schools to remain
open, even during periods of COVID-19 spread. In doing so, we could minimize the
potentially profound adverse social, developmental, and health costs that our
children will continue to suffer until an effective treatment or vaccine can be
developed and distributed or, failing that, until we reach herd immunity."
Reuters also wrote an article about this statement, also without mentioning the specific consequences. I suspect he didn't name them, but NPR has discussed the consequences before with other experts.
Dr. Dimitri Christakis, who directs the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children's Hospital, and is the editor-in-chief of JAMA Pediatrics, shared concerns about abuse and about children's mental health:
> Mental health and social-emotional development, Christakis argues, have been less discussed: "The social-emotional needs of children to connect with other children in real time and space, whether it's for physical activity, unstructured play or structured play, this is immensely important for young children in particular." A new study in JAMA Pediatrics, he says, documents elevated depression and anxiety among children under lockdown in China.
> A third major risk, says Christakis, is child abuse. With schools closed and activities canceled, adults who are mandatory reporters, such as teachers, are less likely to catch wind of abuse or neglect. Hospitals around the country are reporting a rise in admissions for severe child abuse injuries and even deaths — a rise that coincides with lockdown orders. And a sex-abuse hotline operated by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network reported that half its calls in March came from minors, for the first time in its history.
And in another article, a former Secretary of Education also shared his concern that not all homes are safe:
> I'm heartbroken about the kids for whom school is the place that provides structure and support and a sense of security that don't have that. I mean, for me, as a kid, after my mom passed when I was 8, I lived with my dad. My dad had an undiagnosed Alzheimer's, and so home was this place that was scary and unpredictable and unsafe. But school is the place that was reliable and consistent, where I had positive relationships with adults and peers. And I wouldn't be alive today without those school experiences.
> And I worry about the kids who are in homes where there is abuse, where there is addiction, where family members - as you say - have lost jobs, where family members are sick or passed away.
Keeping schools closed is horrific for my children. That said all of these brave warriors demanding schools reopen from behind the keyboards of their socially distanced houses should have to spend a day to two a week working in the schools and expose themselves as adults to that environment. Our teachers and other educational workers are not disposable. Moreover our school is facing a 20 percent budget cut while being tasked with converting to hospital grade PPE/distancing. Utterly unrealistic.
That's a good point. Over here (NL) things have been slowly opening up, to the point where to many of us it feels like things are 'back to normal'. Nonetheless, when it comes to schools reopening, as I understand it, one of the big problems is that many teachers aren't quite as comfortable going 'back to normal'.
I'm writing from NYC. My wife is the Principal of a school here. Schools are being given almost no support or guidance at any level from local to federal. Educational administrators are being told to open schools ensuring student and staff safety without a shred of fiscal support or health science guidance. The physical infrastructure of the schools can't possibly handle the distancing requirements being imposed. My wife is being presented with a Kobayashi Maru here but with the real lives of children, staff, and extended families on the line. I am 110% sympathetic to the importance of getting kids back in school. My kids are suffering from social and educational withdrawal. When schools even partially reopen I'll be solo with the kids on their home days as my wife is back running her school. Not exactly an environment conducive to productive work or my kids' mental health. But the idea that we can just ram through re-openings prematurely is insane. It is double insane that at this time the Federal government is bailing out every private sector millionaire in creation via PPP while schools are being forced to cut budgets by catastrophic amounts.
We have already seen what happened when the bars and restaurants re-opened (increase in infections and deaths). I imagine we won't see anything different when the schools re-open. So this seems incredibly shortsighted to me.
It's sad that the administration is willing to sacrifice the teachers, misc school staff, parents and children for short term gains.
Not only are we endangering human lives, but we are risking prolonging this disease which will continue to ravage the economy. If you think it's bad now, imagine what it will be like in 2021 if we continue at this rate.
Why can't we continue with e-learning for the first half of school and reassess the situation as we approach 2021?
The sad and frustrating thing is we know how to beat this disease: STAY HOME, wear a mask when you absolutely have to go out, contact tracing. But Americans just won’t do these simple things. They’ve got to go get their nails done, and eat at their restaurants, and walk around flexing their freedom, and by whatever means possible own the libs. Then they wonder why we have so many cases and deaths and can’t open schools without the apocalypse happening. I’m pretty much out of empathy at this point. We are missing out on an entire year because people won’t put a piece of cloth over their face.
I don’t get it, kids have 3 months off in summer. Do we just ignore them during those times. They still have meal requirements and issues at home. Delay school start at a minimum until we can get our positivity rates down. The Feds could feed kids who need it.. it seems like a false narrative to focus on kids here. Am I wrong? Congress could do a lot more and save the day.
Lots of parents leave their kids home alone, even if they are underaged. Largely it works, but up to a year?
Lots of parents are willing for their kids to backslide a little, especially since most kids backslide together, rather than an emerging narrative of kids spending their summers cramming for placement tests. But a year? Some kids will be racing ahead because they're still experiencing personal math tutoring.
And what have Americans been doing in the time during lockdown? Have they purchased time? For example, in what ways is TX more prepared for the year ahead?
I guess we'll see which kids deserve to place into the best seats.
Even accounting for children sent to camp, there are a lot of children left to deal with.
In the US, about ~20% of children attend summer camp in a given year (that includes both day camps and overnight camps). For children from poor families it's down around 7%. 38% for children from affluent families.
Also, of those who do go to camp many of them go to camps that do not last the entire summer.
I know very few kids doing summer camps (before now). Any chance someone could wrangle a stat on this? I know they exist but just didn’t think it was a pervasively utilized thing.
Yeah, the push to re-open schools just seems like a bad idea on multiple fronts, this part included.
A few teachers I follow are being asked to name someone who can "replace" them if they contract covid. I can't wrap my head around putting people in harm's way like that willingly when we don't have any control over the outbreak.
School districts are already preparing form letters for when kids and teachers die. It’s the height of nihilism when compared to what countries in SE Asia have accomplished in stopping the disease.
Amazing that they pay them like crap and then expect them to put their lives on the line. I have no idea why anyone would ever bother becoming a teacher in 2020.
This goes back 25 years. It is even more so if you are the first in your family to go to college. There will be a huge shortage of teachers and there already is a HUGE diversity problem with most minority groups do not go to school for teaching as a profession.
> The American Academy of Pediatrics has also called for students to return to classrooms, citing the educational and social harms to children of being away from school for a prolonged period of time.
It doesn't sound like they walked it back, but clarified their statement. They still think the goal should be to get kids physically in schools, they just emphasized that it shouldn't be done based only on political reasons.
> "I don't think we should go overboard in trying to develop a system that doesn't recognize the reality that this virus really is relatively benign to those of us that are under the age of 20”
Great. How about their teachers and school staff, parents and extended family? What are the consequences of watching you’re teachers get seriously ill or die, losing a grandparent, or your mom or dad? Also, novel disease so we don’t actually know the long term consequences for children or anyone else.
3 teachers in Arizona tried to be extra precautious and do in person instruction over the summer. Now, one of them is dead from COVID:
The anecdote had to do with a 33% fatality rate of the three teachers... not that viruses spread.
We are trying to flatten the curve, i.e. the only known vaccine is surviving covid. Most vaccines fail, maybe we will have one in 5-10 years, maybe not. It might be like HIV in regards to difficulty.
Ok, but, regardless, it corresponds exactly with the CDC's own assessments. Reopening schools is among one of the highest risk things for spread of the disease:
It doesn’t need to be spread at all. Taiwan, New Zealand, and Vietnam have halted it. If the US had acted with the sanity and foresight of those countries, we wouldn’t even be in this mess.
Yes, living on a completely isolated island helps immensely. So does a government with extensive experience and dictatorial powers. The rest of us aren't so lucky. Flatten the curve and enjoy the ride.
There are land-locked democracies (eg Germany) that Seem to have gotten a handle on this. As a country, we have screwed up. The President and his administration dropped the ball and now we all get to suffer for their incompetence.
“Flatten the curve and enjoy the ride.”
What a callous, heartless, inhuman, and evil thing to say. There is nothing enjoyable about this. Your comment is too glib by half. Might I suggest you enjoy the ride straight to hell?
I’m sorry reality is difficult. We just finished watching a WWII in color documentary on Netflix last night. ~70 million people perished in a few years. We’ve got it easy. Pleas to emotion and changing the past are not helpful.
Why is this being posed as either closing the schools and kids get no education or making kids go to school with expensive mitigations, and masks, etc. Why hasn't there been a serious effort at converting to online learning just like the transitions that happening around working remotely?
I have two young children who spent the last few months in online learning. Online learning requires more attention span than most children have available, and I haven't seen a program that's simultaneously a) engaging, and b) does as good of a job teaching as a teacher.
Honestly, a big part of this is the social pressure of 21 other classmate sitting there paying attention.
Many students don't have the right type of environment at home for online learning. I am not an expert in this area but would imagine it is much more diffcult to learn online as a 6-year-old versus a 16-year-old. There are also a lot of skills beyond academics students best learn through direct social interaction.
I have 2 ADD children.
I’m ADD myself.
Yea at home learn is a nightmare.
Someone had to sit with kid entire time. Even when video camera is on with teacher
Why are teachers never even entered into the equation? You have no teachers you don't have school. Teachers getting sick is going to put a serious hurt on the educational system.
Teachers have been demonized for decades now so hardly anyone is going into the field.
There is ZERO mention of any data or research in this article providing any evidence that this decision is a good one.
It may be a good decision, BUT it hasn't been justified, as far as I can tell.
Moreover, the article quotes school administrators, teachers, and their representatives stating in no uncertain terms that schools in the US do not yet have the resources necessary for reopening safely.
There is no mention of the risk to teachers health either. It likely varies a lot country to country and region to region, but there are a significant number of of old teachers. However a brief look at the average age of the US teaching workforce shows a slightly younger teaching workforce than I'd have expected which presumably helps a little.
One upside of the distinct gender bias in the teaching workforce is that females seem to fare better when they get corona virus, so there is that.
CDC director, after being pushed by the grim reaper in chief. The federal agency's initial advice can be taken as useful, but once there has been time for the marching orders to come down, it's better seen as outright harmful. Unfortunately that won't stop a lot of people in red states from dying, as their corrupt leaders point to the harmful misinformation when implementing their own backwards agendas.
I'm not saying that the pediatricians are wrong, or even that the headline of "Keeping schools closed greater health threat to children reopening" is false in a vacuum. The problem is the narrow emphasis, ultimately to support a counterproductive political agenda. The pediatricians' quote includes the caveat "wherever and whenever they can do so safely", which will surely be ignored, especially in underfunded school systems.
The fact is that the US is basically still at the beginning of our dealing with COVID-19, due a lack of societal and political will to confront the challenge. I too hope that it does magically go away due to a vaccine, silently-growing herd immunity, etc. But it's foolish to adopt hope as a plan of action, as opposed to acknowledging the problem and doing the hard work to address it.
But there isn't really a choice in many parts in the US unless you're willing to let the pandemic run its course and kill as many people as it takes to get to herd immunity. The only way to safely reopen schools is to suppress the virus enough that you can contain it with contact tracing. If you can't do that, there's no way to safely reopen schools in full. You can try alternatives like e.g. teaching outside, using masks, but they're not entirely safe, difficult to do and can't really work at 100% capacity.