Where is it safe to open schools?

There is no more fraught question in education right now than the question of whether or not to open schools in person during the COVID-19 pandemic. Shut down in-person learning, and opportunity gaps widen, rates of depression climb, and working parents burn out from exhaustion. Keep school buildings open, and they could become super-spreader sites, leading to the death of teachers or children. The risks seem unbearable, whichever you choice you make.

While there is no one “right” answer, research offers at least some clarity to help education leaders make this difficult decision.

Several recent studies have shown that, under certain conditions, it is likely safe to reopen schools in-person. (Schools, of course, never really “closed” at all; learning is still happening, just remotely.) These studies generally agree that rates of COVID-19 infection are relatively low in the community around the school, and the school takes all necessary precautions like requiring masks and social distancing, then in-person learning does not pose a great risk of spreading the virus.

Of course, there’s debate over what exactly “relatively low” means. There’s no magic cut-off point that tells us exactly when it’s safe or not safe to re-open. But research can give us rough guidelines. Researchers at Tulane University, for example, found that “it appears safe to reopen schools in counties where there are fewer than 36 to 44 new COVID-19 county hospitalizations per 100,000 people per week.”

Note that researchers have not proven that it is unsafe to reopen schools in counties above that hospitalization rate. The study is inconclusive on what happens above the range of 36-44 new COVID-19 hospitalizations per week, as different methods of analyzing the data yielded inconsistent results.

Helpfully, the researchers provided a spreadsheet of hospitalization rates in around 2,200 counties across the U.S. The data, which comes from the federal Health and Human Services department, goes back to July 2020 and is updated weekly.

So, can most counties breathe a sigh of relief now? Where is it safer to open schools, and where should district leaders lean more towards remote learning? To find out, I mapped out the latest available data, from the week of January 22-28.

For an interactive version of this map, click here. Zoom in to find your own county.

The situation looks bad in states like California, Arizona, and Florida, where many counties are in the high range of COVID-19 hospitalization rates. Still, most of the map is green, which is a hopeful sign. In those counties, hospitalization rates are low enough that it is most likely safe to send kids back to the classroom.

But that map still doesn’t tell the whole story. The majority of counties may be in the green, but that’s not necessarily where the majority of people in the U.S. live. It could be that hospitalization rates are low in rural, sparsely-populated counties, but high in the big cities where millions of people live.

The following chart shows the share of the population that lives in counties where hospitals are filling up with COVID patients (click here for full screen):

Now, the story looks different. In early September, when the school year was just starting, two-thirds of Americans lived in counties where the spread of COVID-19 was low enough that it was likely safe to send kids off to school. But as of late January, the situation is reversed, and only about one-third of Americans live in such counties.

The researchers have stressed that they are not making recommendations on whether to close or open schools. These numbers are only a guidepost. There are many other factors that school leaders still must take into account, and they must weigh the risks of re-opening with the risks of not re-opening.

Take for example Clark County, Nevada, which saw 88 new COVID hospitalizations for every 100,000 residents in a single week at the end of January. That puts the county far above the limit that’s been confirmed as safe for reopening schools. Yet, as Erica Green masterfully reported in the New York Times, the county has also suffered the wrenching tragedy of losing 18 young people to suicide. Facing a youth mental health crisis, district leaders have chosen to start letting students return to the classroom.

Vegas shows that there are no easy answers to the question of whether it’s safe to open schools. No matter what, there are risks. Research, at least, can help school leaders understand exactly what risks they’re taking.

Which states punish disabled students at the highest rates?

One of the most-discussed civil rights issues in the United States today is the ‘discipline gap’ — disparities between which kids get harsh punishments like suspensions and expulsions and which don’t. The most commonly-cited disparity is racial: black students are suspended three times more often than white students, according to a 2014 civil rights report from the U.S. Department of Education.

Less discussed is the disparity facing disabled students. That same report showed that disabled students are twice as likely to get an out-of-school suspension as non-disabled students. But how does this disparity break down state by state?

To find out more, I used data from the U.S. Department of Education to calculate the percentage of all students with disabilities who got kicked out of class for at least two days during the 2014-15 school year. That includes in-school suspensions, out-of-school suspensions, expulsions, or any other instance where the child was removed from their normal class for a serious offense.

Report card time

The only people who worry more about grades than students are their teachers. The annual publication of Louisiana’s school performance scores was a major source of anxiety in the school I worked in last year. If a school gets a bad grade, fewer families want to enroll their kids there; if the school is under-enrolled, it gets less money; if it gets less money, then it’s going to be a struggle to raise the score and attract more students. And if a school gets a failing grade for long enough, it gets shut down.

I’m not working in education anymore, but I’m still interested in seeing how New Orleans schools are doing. When I look at these grades, I don’t just think of them as a number. I think of how the schools will react to them: how the scores will fill teachers and administrators with either worry or pride, how staff might scramble to respond; how the grades could cast a shadow over the rest of the year.

With that in mind, take a look at this custom-made map of every public school in New Orleans and their grades over the years. A schools are blue, B is green, C is yellow, D is purple, and F is red. Click on the link above for an interactive version.

 

Idealism isn’t always enough

It’s been over three weeks since I put on my red City Year jacket for the last time. The 2016-17 Corps graduated on May 9th, and I’ve been planning to write this blog post all year. Yet, I’ve been putting it off.

I know I must address some of program’s critical flaws. The mission of City Year is to “put idealism to work” in the nation’s school system, but this self-sacrificing idealism doesn’t always help the children.

At the same time, I know that Donald Trump’s proposed budget puts nearly every national service program on the chopping block — and, imperfect as City Year is, I have seen how much the schools we work in depend on our service. I don’t want anything I write to be used as an argument in favor of City Year’s elimination. (Here’s a post that outlines all the arguments in favor of keeping the program.)

Most NOLA schools don’t take teacher evals seriously – but the few that do have something to teach us

Eight New Orleans schools are told to start a new teacher evaluation system. Three schools grumble about having another bureaucratic chore and do the minimum needed to comply. Two schools game the system, sending the problem kids out of the room when it’s time for a classroom observation.

The remaining three? They actually take it seriously. And the results show a lot about how what kind of leadership style supports serious reflection and collaboration in a school system.

Those eight schools are real, and they were the subject of a case study from Tulane’s Education Research Alliance (ERA), released this Thursday.

An easy lesson plan to teach kids about fake news

Around Halloween, a brief wave of hysteria overcame the students at my middle school: fear of killer clowns. Remember when that rumor briefly took over the internet? My kids could not stop talking about it. The fifth-graders were convinced that clowns had murdered people in a nearby town; the sixth- and seventh-graders were more skeptical, but some still believed it. I had to spend a lot of time patiently explaining to my class that it was all a hoax.

Milton Friedman admitted that the voucher program would lead to racial segregation – and he was fine with it

With school-choice evangelist Betsy DeVos sworn in as the new Education Secretary on the narrowest of margins, the government will likely soon make a push for voucher programs (despite the fact that three of the latest studies on voucher programs in Louisiana, Indiana and Ohio have all shown abysmal results, even the one financed by the conservative Walton Family Foundation.)

In the midst of all this debate over choice and charters and vouchers, it’s fascinating to go back to the idea that started it all: a brief essay called “The Role of Government in Education,” written by economist Milton Friedman in 1955.

The essay is a well-argued summary of the school choice philosophy, comprehensive and concise. What shocked me, though, was not the main argument but a lengthy footnote in which Friedman struggles with the uncomfortable racial implications of his idea – and, ultimately, accepts them.

Carrots and sticks

It’s a rare pleasure, though also a bit unsettling, to find a book that’s so close to your own experiences that reading it feels like looking into a mirror. Sarah Carr’s Hope Against Hope will likely feel like that for anyone who has worked in a New Orleans charter school.

“I have a voice that needs to be heard”: middle schoolers vote on Election Day

On Election Day, students at the middle school got an inspiring taste of what exercising their civic duty looks like. They voted on a computer for their favorite candidate, then took photos of themselves holding up a “Why I Vote” sign. (An ELA teacher turned these photos into a wonderful piece of artwork, but for privacy reasons I can’t post a picture of it online.)

Here are a few of my favorite answers. I’ve corrected grammar and spelling – except in one case, where a spelling mistake made the statement unexpectedly accurate.

Angela Duckworth’s “Grit”

It seems like a book on grit wouldn’t say much that’s not already obvious. Hard work is important and kids who work harder do better in school, life, pretty much everything — duh.

But Angela Duckworth, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, drew on a wealth of scientific research and interviews with highly successful and committed people (Olympians, CEOs, artists) to figure out what “grit” actually means and how it develops over the course of a lifetime.

Her insights, published in the book “Grit,” are primarily aimed at teachers, coaches, and parents who want to help the children in their life develop character. But I found that it was most helpful in allowing me to clarify my own career and life goals.