I don’t know . . . It seems much less dismissive than arguing that it is better to let 10,000 Texans unnecessarily die so that Junior doesn’t have to take online classes for a few months. Both show an incredible lack of perspective, but mine was satire.
As for Oakland Unified, their enrollments have been declining for years. As for declining attendance this year, it is not because of online classes; classes are being taught in person. The explanation I read is that attendance is likely down because 1) so many kids out with covid, and 2) because some parents are afraid to send their kids to school because of covid.
Covid sucks. For everyone. But what’s happening with the attendance this year at Oakland Unified is more likely because of Covid rather than any desire on the part of policy makers to make kids suffer.
That school district has had steadily declining enrollment for 20+ years. Even before the pandemic they had twice as many schools as neighboring districts with similar size student populations. It is misleading to attribute this inevitable move primarily to covid.
The same thing is happening in our district that had “bursting at the seams” enrollment increases until a couple of years ago (in a more sought after school district in the Bay Area). Yes, Oakland Unified has been dysfunctional for a while, but when there are schools in the same geographic vicinity that are in-person, and your kids are struggling to learn online you reevaluate.
OUSD did not even remotely have bursting at the seams enrollment a couple of years ago and they, like most districts in the country, returned to mostly in person learning last fall.
It’s not just Oakland. Oakland just happened to be on KQED this morning while I was driving to work. To me this is a troubling trend in public education.
I understand. It’s just a touchy subject for many parents right now. Our school district is distributing KN95 masks and expecting 5 and 6 year olds to wear them during PE, outdoors. Not sure they were ever intended for this type of use.
Like I mentioned, Oakland unified was on KQED on my way to work this morning. The news piece from a couple of months ago describes the situation in a more holistic (favorite word on CC) manner.
Oakland has proposed closing/merging up to 15 schools. Enrollment has been declining since way before COVID. The District has failed to adjust to its new normal.
‘What educators don’t know is where those students have gone.’
Well, they could ask around. Our smallish town 12,000k has had a drop in enrollment. Where are they? Well, at places like the one in my neighborhood. Two teachers - previously in the public system - have started their own business. What used to be a pre and after school program - geared toward outdoor science - is now full time instruction. They’ve been in person throughout the whole thing.
Parents have formed learning circles and hired the expertise as needed. Some virtual, lots in person.
Parents that can - WILL - find a way. And that way is leading less and less thru the yard of a public school.
Maybe that’s why the head of the Berkeley teachers union takes his own kids to a private (and for the most part) in person school
If you look at just 2021 data–after the initial wave that hit coastal states, after vaccines were available, and after state and local mitigation mandates/restrictions had “shaken out”–the opposite is true. In 2021, Texas’ per capita death rate was higher than CT and FL death rate was higher than MA. I suspect we’ll see those same trends continue this year, as well. In my opinion, 2021 data give us better insight than do 2020 numbers, into which mitigation policies and strategies are most effective.
Many states which did not want to mask also did their best to misreport COVID numbers.
Moreover, after controlling for population density, the places which had no mask mandate did, in fact, have more deaths than places with mask mandates.
Since the vaccines have arrived, the places without mask mandates also tend to be the places with low vaccination rates, and their death rate was much higher since the vaccines became available.
So, even without controlling for population density, locations with high vaccination rates and mask mandates have had lower mortality since January of last year than places with low vaccination and no mask mandates.
I don’t want to go political here, since a lot of the studies look at the politic of the counties. However, what is is that the areas in which vaccinations are low and have no mask mandates, death rates can be as much as 6X higher than in places with both mask mandates and vaccinations.
Masks reduce both the amount of virus you spread and the amount to which you are exposed. This reduces the severity of the infection, and increases the effectiveness of the vaccine.
Studies show that unvaccinated people are dying at 12X the rate of vaccinated people, so I’m sorry, but you are either getting your data from an unreliable source, or your analysis is off.
I found this opinion piece interesting. Sorry - paywall - but here’s the summary:
"To be clear, there are some hard decisions and unavoidable trade-offs. Covid can lead to hospitalization or worse for a small percentage of vaccinated adults, especially those who are elderly or immunocompromised, and allowing children to resume normal life could create additional risk. The Omicron surge may well heighten that risk, leaving schools with no attractive options.
For the past two years, however, many communities in the U.S. have not really grappled with the trade-off. They have tried to minimize the spread of Covid — a worthy goal absent other factors — rather than minimizing the damage that Covid does to society. They have accepted more harm to children in exchange for less harm to adults, often without acknowledging the dilemma or assessing which decisions lead to less overall harm."
The article highlights several areas where there has been an uptick in bad outcomes for kids:
Shortfalls in learning continue to grow;
Achievement gap for black and brown children has increased notably;
Poorer overall mental health has been noted;
Increase in suicide attempts;
Increase in gun violence against children;
Increase in behavior problems.
The data will continue to come in and may well show that some of the Covid policies have not been thoughtful enough about the harm to children. It’s understandable that many don’t wish to prioritize Jr. over Granny. But should we have prioritized Granny over Jr. is the big question. Another might be: had it been Granny who was facing increased loneliness and isolation, mental health issues, gun violence, etc. would we as a society have just chalked it up to an inevitable side effect of protecting Jr. or would we have done something that helps them both? Because a policy that restricts just the elderly, infirm or immunocompromised could well lead to those outcomes.
Our national experiment in online learning was not by and large a success. In any event, it would seem most useful for researchers to focus on the extent of the tradeoff - did Texas open schools cost 10k lives, and if so, is that a reasonable tradeoff for the benefit to children?
According to the CDC, the people most likely to die from Covid are low income people of color. How does teaching children that other students’ parents, grandparents, and extended family members are expendable benefit any of the children?
What would be more useful than exposing people to a disease which has already killed more than a few of the children’s parents and teachers would be a commitment to increasing the quality of education in this country. If online learning was horrible then that’s what needs to be addressed.
I too find these kinds of opinion pieces interesting. Yet I think they are overly simplistic. It is easy to find fault with things we have done and claim that we would have been better off had we taken another route. And that view is easy to argue and claim it is absolute b/c the truth is we have no idea what the implications would have been had we taken the other route.
Here’s my point. Let’s say we had not taken schools to virtual learning - kept school’s open. How many more people might have died? I certainly don’t know. I definitely believe that some number more, but here’s the thing - what would have been the impact on kids and their mental health had a parent, grandparent, teacher, friend (you get the idea) with whom they were close died and they thought that maybe they had transmitted covid to that person? This is not philosophical - this happened. Kids (well, the 20 somethings) in NYC whose work went remote and went home to the suburbs. We know some who infected parents who then died. I cannot even imagine! Yes, taking schools remote, impacting in-person socialization, maybe even requiring masks has had an impact on kids - learning outcomes, mental health, development, etc. But we have no idea what the impact would have been on kids had we kept schools open and lived life as usual. Covid is the culprit here and trying ex post to compare potential impacts of mitigation choices is something of a fools errand - we cannot know the repercussions of those paths not taken - even if we try to compare to what other countries etc. did. Comparing “lockdown” effectiveness is meaningless - a lockdown here is completely different than lockdowns in China or even Australia. When people don’t comply and/or lie reaching conclusions about lockdown effectiveness is just not valid. Yes Covid has deteriorated outcomes for kids. We can fight over whether we did the right thing and point fingers or do our best now to figure out how to improve those outcomes and figure out the best way to move forward. Climbing off soap box.
eta - cross posted with @austinmshauri - similar sentiment