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I'm very pleased by the decision from the top in California today about keeping schools remote until things get better. The only complaint I have is how long it

I'm very pleased by the decision from the top in California today about keeping schools remote until things get better. The only complaint I have is how long it took to get there. Tons of people at hundreds/thousands of school districts and private schools throughout the state have spent incredible effort debating and planning and so much effort could have been saved if the decision from the top was made earlier.

samatman 6y ago
I share your pleasure in the decision, but staunchly disagree with you about the method used to reach it. The correct decision was reached, in time (before the start of the school year) for it to make a difference. Tons of people and thousands of schools vigorously debating is the democratic process. A decision handed down from "the top" is authoritarianism, and as we've seen repeatedly this year, authoritarian decisions are resisted even when they're the right decision. For something like masking, you can justify it with the urgency of the situation (even though I'm compelled to add that "the top" got this one wrong during the crucial months of February and March). For starting school in the fall, you can't.
- dmoy 6y ago
  I think you are at least a bit misconstruing direct democracy vs representative democracy and instead calling it democracy vs authoritarianism. The people handing down the aforementioned decisions were elected specifically to do things like this. That doesn't outright make it authoritarianism. (Yes, most elected US politicians on both sides of the aisle skew fairly authoritarian, but that doesn't mean the process itself is authoritarian)
  - samatman 6y ago
    This is at most a conflation, not a misconstrual. I prefer to think of these words as points in a spectrum, rather than definitional prisons with tight boundaries. Allowing school districts to do what they are constituted to do, is more democratic than delegating it to the State governments, which is more authoritarian. Authoritarian is also not an antonym of democratic. They correlate, but not as strongly as any advocate for democracy would prefer.
- roenxi 6y ago
  > A decision handed down from "the top" is authoritarianism Actually not so; it is only centralised. The democratic process is pretty clear that the people want education decisions handed down by an authority "at the top". A decentralised approach to eduction would let parents make on-the-day decisions about where to send their children and probably have some sort of market-based approach to how education was funded (maybe even parent-pays). That approach has been mostly rejected politically.
- electriclove 6y ago
  The vigorous debating resulted in many school districts actually making plans to reopen in a variety of ways. All that effort became moot when Newsom announced his decision today.
JungleGymSam 6y ago
I don't share your admiration for "the top".
theonething 6y ago
Why do you believe keeping schools closed is better than reopening? Have you looked into the research? Most of my findings indicate that the benefits of opening safely outweigh the the risks and the adverse effects of school closure (to the children, families and society) outweigh the benefits. Just one quote out of many: > Weighing the health risks of reopening K-12 schools in fall 2020 against the educational risks of providing no in-person instruction, school districts should prioritize reopening schools full time, especially for grades K-5 and students with special needs, according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2020/07/schools-should-prioritize-reopening-in-fall-2020-especially-for-grades-k-5-while-weighing-risks-and-benefits https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2020/07/schools-shoul... https://www.mathematica.org/commentary/reopening-schools-while-mitigating-covid-19s-spread-how-many-days-should-students-attend https://www.mathematica.org/commentary/reopening-schools-whi... https://jamanetwork.com/channels/health-forum/fullarticle/2767982 https://jamanetwork.com/channels/health-forum/fullarticle/27... https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/07/18/the-risks-of-keeping-schools-closed-far-outweigh-the-benefits https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/07/18/the-risks-of-ke... https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2766114 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/... https://globalhealth.washington.edu/sites/default/files/COVID-19%20Schools%20Summary%20%282%29.pdf https://globalhealth.washington.edu/sites/default/files/COVI... Edit: I realize this is a contentious topic. I'm definitely not trying to stir up political wars here. I'm submitting my question and research findings here because I trust this place for civil and intellectual discourse.
- wegs 6y ago
  That's not research. That's opinion pieces from research organizations. There's a question of values, which is a personal question. I don't want the moral weight of risking that my child catch COVID19 and cause someone else to die. If I were a teacher, I wouldn't want to be in a position where a mistake I make can make people die. I can run the numbers as well as the next guy, and I know the risks. I don't want my schools to reopen. If you're from a different culture, you can run the same numbers, get the same risk profile, and say "Heck, if n people die to keep m more kids in school, that's worth it," for the exact same values of n and m. On questions of values and culture, reasonable people can disagree. Every fiber of my being can scream to prioritize life, and every fiber of your being can scream to prioritize schooling. It's entirely a question of values and culture. As a footnote, my concern is less about death and more about long-term disability. There, we can more-or-less speculate about the risks.
bleah1000 6y ago
But he's making the decision for all of California. If you look at the actual data, it appears that most of the cases are coming from southern california. Also, the real data to look at is death rate, and hospitalization rate. I don't know about the death rate, but the hospitalization rate is definitely going up. However, nearly all of the patients are in southern california again. In fact, it's LA that's really the epicenter of death and hospitalization for california. Here's the hospitalization link I'm using, because there might be better data somewhere else. https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID-19HospitalsDashboard/Hospitals?:embed=y&:showVizHome=no https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID-19HospitalsDashboard/... It's easy to be consumed by the fear about this disease, and that the number of cases that are rising. But we have to be careful to make informed decisions, and not compromise student learning in the entire state due to rising cases in one part of the state. One thing, is it looks a bit like the hospitalizations might be starting to slightly level off, but it's hard to tell since it still could be trending upwards. At the very least, it doesn't look like the cases are on any kind of exponential curve.
FuckButtons 6y ago
I’m not, California should have got its shit together and instituted comprehensive tracking and tracing commensurate with the needs of public education restarting. By failing to build testing and tracing capacity we have wasted the time bought for us through mass unemployment. California is the 5th largest economy in the world, we could have done this alone and ignored the rest of the us, but we didn’t and that is a failure.

samatman 6y ago

I share your pleasure in the decision, but staunchly disagree with you about the method used to reach it. The correct decision was reached, in time (before the start of the school year) for it to make a difference. Tons of people and thousands of schools vigorously debating is the democratic process. A decision handed down from "the top" is authoritarianism, and as we've seen repeatedly this year, authoritarian decisions are resisted even when they're the right decision. For something like masking, you can justify it with the urgency of the situation (even though I'm compelled to add that "the top" got this one wrong during the crucial months of February and March). For starting school in the fall, you can't.

dmoy 6y ago
I think you are at least a bit misconstruing direct democracy vs representative democracy and instead calling it democracy vs authoritarianism. The people handing down the aforementioned decisions were elected specifically to do things like this. That doesn't outright make it authoritarianism. (Yes, most elected US politicians on both sides of the aisle skew fairly authoritarian, but that doesn't mean the process itself is authoritarian)
- samatman 6y ago
  This is at most a conflation, not a misconstrual. I prefer to think of these words as points in a spectrum, rather than definitional prisons with tight boundaries. Allowing school districts to do what they are constituted to do, is more democratic than delegating it to the State governments, which is more authoritarian. Authoritarian is also not an antonym of democratic. They correlate, but not as strongly as any advocate for democracy would prefer.
roenxi 6y ago
> A decision handed down from "the top" is authoritarianism Actually not so; it is only centralised. The democratic process is pretty clear that the people want education decisions handed down by an authority "at the top". A decentralised approach to eduction would let parents make on-the-day decisions about where to send their children and probably have some sort of market-based approach to how education was funded (maybe even parent-pays). That approach has been mostly rejected politically.
electriclove 6y ago
The vigorous debating resulted in many school districts actually making plans to reopen in a variety of ways. All that effort became moot when Newsom announced his decision today.

JungleGymSam 6y ago

I don't share your admiration for "the top".

theonething 6y ago

Why do you believe keeping schools closed is better than reopening? Have you looked into the research? Most of my findings indicate that the benefits of opening safely outweigh the the risks and the adverse effects of school closure (to the children, families and society) outweigh the benefits. Just one quote out of many: > Weighing the health risks of reopening K-12 schools in fall 2020 against the educational risks of providing no in-person instruction, school districts should prioritize reopening schools full time, especially for grades K-5 and students with special needs, according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2020/07/schools-should-prioritize-reopening-in-fall-2020-especially-for-grades-k-5-while-weighing-risks-and-benefits https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2020/07/schools-shoul... https://www.mathematica.org/commentary/reopening-schools-while-mitigating-covid-19s-spread-how-many-days-should-students-attend https://www.mathematica.org/commentary/reopening-schools-whi... https://jamanetwork.com/channels/health-forum/fullarticle/2767982 https://jamanetwork.com/channels/health-forum/fullarticle/27... https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/07/18/the-risks-of-keeping-schools-closed-far-outweigh-the-benefits https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/07/18/the-risks-of-ke... https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2766114 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/... https://globalhealth.washington.edu/sites/default/files/COVID-19%20Schools%20Summary%20%282%29.pdf https://globalhealth.washington.edu/sites/default/files/COVI... Edit: I realize this is a contentious topic. I'm definitely not trying to stir up political wars here. I'm submitting my question and research findings here because I trust this place for civil and intellectual discourse.

wegs 6y ago
That's not research. That's opinion pieces from research organizations. There's a question of values, which is a personal question. I don't want the moral weight of risking that my child catch COVID19 and cause someone else to die. If I were a teacher, I wouldn't want to be in a position where a mistake I make can make people die. I can run the numbers as well as the next guy, and I know the risks. I don't want my schools to reopen. If you're from a different culture, you can run the same numbers, get the same risk profile, and say "Heck, if n people die to keep m more kids in school, that's worth it," for the exact same values of n and m. On questions of values and culture, reasonable people can disagree. Every fiber of my being can scream to prioritize life, and every fiber of your being can scream to prioritize schooling. It's entirely a question of values and culture. As a footnote, my concern is less about death and more about long-term disability. There, we can more-or-less speculate about the risks.

bleah1000 6y ago

But he's making the decision for all of California. If you look at the actual data, it appears that most of the cases are coming from southern california. Also, the real data to look at is death rate, and hospitalization rate. I don't know about the death rate, but the hospitalization rate is definitely going up. However, nearly all of the patients are in southern california again. In fact, it's LA that's really the epicenter of death and hospitalization for california. Here's the hospitalization link I'm using, because there might be better data somewhere else. https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID-19HospitalsDashboard/Hospitals?:embed=y&:showVizHome=no https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID-19HospitalsDashboard/... It's easy to be consumed by the fear about this disease, and that the number of cases that are rising. But we have to be careful to make informed decisions, and not compromise student learning in the entire state due to rising cases in one part of the state. One thing, is it looks a bit like the hospitalizations might be starting to slightly level off, but it's hard to tell since it still could be trending upwards. At the very least, it doesn't look like the cases are on any kind of exponential curve.

FuckButtons 6y ago

I’m not, California should have got its shit together and instituted comprehensive tracking and tracing commensurate with the needs of public education restarting. By failing to build testing and tracing capacity we have wasted the time bought for us through mass unemployment. California is the 5th largest economy in the world, we could have done this alone and ignored the rest of the us, but we didn’t and that is a failure.