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I've heard from private school teachers that they expected exactly this to happen, and enrollment in private schools has boomed as parents that could used the s

by ovi256 4y ago

I've heard from private school teachers that they expected exactly this to happen, and enrollment in private schools has boomed as parents that could used the schools that cared about staying open (and opened as soon as they could). This was well supported and non-controversial pre-pandemic, where we had research results showing that simply having participation in remote schooling lowers high school graduation rate by a significant fraction. But during the pandemic, we still closed schools for most pupils in the developed world. This was one more problem where the contemporary governance mechanism is "we pretend it won't/isn't/didn't happen because it's politically inconvenient as it contradicts high level leadership decisions (and we can't cause face loss to said leadership)".

gilbetron 4y ago
No idea why you were getting downvoted this month, what you said was largely fact. I have a son that went through 6th grade virtually, and 7th grade in-person but masked. We were able to stay on top of him, so he's doing well enough academically (honor roll for 3 terms so far this year, although the work has been easier). Socially and developmentally has been a big issue, and he suffered a lot, in a first world way. He'll be fine, but this has scarred his generation and the results will be felt on society in the coming decades - I don't know how, but it will. But he tells me of all the kids that are just simply failing, and have barely learning anything this year, let along last when many were sitting home by themselves all day. We did our kids dirty last year :(
- JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  It was that last sentence where he threw blame.
mort96 4y ago
I don't understand exactly what you're complaining about. Has anyone ignored the cost of closing schools? My impression has always been that everyone has known about the high cost, but, well, millions more dead isn't exactly a small cost either. I mean you may disagree with the choices which were made, but surely you have to recognize that it's a bit more complicated than what you're suggesting?
- mattcwilson 4y ago
  Would love to see the data you have showing that private schools that stayed open, or public schools that fought to stay open, contributed significantly to additional deaths, such that “millions more dead” would even be a fair comparison to the impact of schools choosing to go virtual instead.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8266060/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8266060/ > Early evidence indicated that schools were low risk and children were unlikely to be very infectious, but it is becoming clear that children and youth can acquire and transmit COVID-19 in school settings and that transmission clusters and outbreaks can be large.
    - mattcwilson 4y ago
      Thanks! A little confused though, the protocols run here all assume the classroom stays in-person and just goes into different isolation measures. Most of the protocols (besides the baseline, do-nothing protocol) have some effect, but aren’t perfect. > None of the mitigation protocols we modeled, initiated by a positive test in a symptomatic individual, are able to prevent large transmission clusters unless the transmission rate is low (in which case large clusters do not occur in any case). Among the measures we modeled, only rapid universal monitoring (for example by regular, onsite, pooled testing) accomplished this prevention. But as it says there, prevention can be achieved by emphasizing frequent on-site testing (which is super consistent with what we know about avoiding spread events generally). > Without closing schools down entirely, if we want to prevent large clusters from occurring altogether, this leaves approaches to detect potential index cases before they show symptoms. Pooled testing, wastewater monitoring and airflow monitoring have all been proposed with this aim [42, 43]. We simulated introduced cases and resulting transmission under the baseline of no regular testing (with the same baseline as above, symptomatic individuals going home) and compared this to weekly or every three day testing or environmental monitoring covering all individuals in the class. The results for the total cluster size are shown in Fig 6. Regular pooled or otherwise universal testing dramatically reduces the sizes of even the most unfortunate clusters (infectious index, higher-risk room), for example from a median of 12 to a median size of 3 if the index is asymptomatic. But even with regular pooled or otherwise universal testing, testing in a matter of hours (e.g. onsite) has a substantially greater impact than testing at a centralized laboratory (if that takes 2 days including shipping time). This doesn’t seem like a strong argument in favor of virtual school?
makeitdouble 4y ago
> This was one more problem where the contemporary governance mechanism is "we pretend it won't/isn't/didn't happen because it's politically inconvenient as it contradicts high level leadership decisions (and we can't cause face loss to said leadership)". Can this be more factually false: https://www.ed.gov/coronavirus/data https://www.ed.gov/coronavirus/data first sentence: > COVID-19 and the 2021-2022 School Year > Students learn best when they're safely in school, in-person.

by ovi256 4y ago

gilbetron 4y ago

No idea why you were getting downvoted this month, what you said was largely fact. I have a son that went through 6th grade virtually, and 7th grade in-person but masked. We were able to stay on top of him, so he's doing well enough academically (honor roll for 3 terms so far this year, although the work has been easier). Socially and developmentally has been a big issue, and he suffered a lot, in a first world way. He'll be fine, but this has scarred his generation and the results will be felt on society in the coming decades - I don't know how, but it will. But he tells me of all the kids that are just simply failing, and have barely learning anything this year, let along last when many were sitting home by themselves all day. We did our kids dirty last year :(

JoeAltmaier 4y ago
It was that last sentence where he threw blame.

mort96 4y ago

I don't understand exactly what you're complaining about. Has anyone ignored the cost of closing schools? My impression has always been that everyone has known about the high cost, but, well, millions more dead isn't exactly a small cost either. I mean you may disagree with the choices which were made, but surely you have to recognize that it's a bit more complicated than what you're suggesting?

mattcwilson 4y ago
Would love to see the data you have showing that private schools that stayed open, or public schools that fought to stay open, contributed significantly to additional deaths, such that “millions more dead” would even be a fair comparison to the impact of schools choosing to go virtual instead.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8266060/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8266060/ > Early evidence indicated that schools were low risk and children were unlikely to be very infectious, but it is becoming clear that children and youth can acquire and transmit COVID-19 in school settings and that transmission clusters and outbreaks can be large.
  - mattcwilson 4y ago
    Thanks! A little confused though, the protocols run here all assume the classroom stays in-person and just goes into different isolation measures. Most of the protocols (besides the baseline, do-nothing protocol) have some effect, but aren’t perfect. > None of the mitigation protocols we modeled, initiated by a positive test in a symptomatic individual, are able to prevent large transmission clusters unless the transmission rate is low (in which case large clusters do not occur in any case). Among the measures we modeled, only rapid universal monitoring (for example by regular, onsite, pooled testing) accomplished this prevention. But as it says there, prevention can be achieved by emphasizing frequent on-site testing (which is super consistent with what we know about avoiding spread events generally). > Without closing schools down entirely, if we want to prevent large clusters from occurring altogether, this leaves approaches to detect potential index cases before they show symptoms. Pooled testing, wastewater monitoring and airflow monitoring have all been proposed with this aim [42, 43]. We simulated introduced cases and resulting transmission under the baseline of no regular testing (with the same baseline as above, symptomatic individuals going home) and compared this to weekly or every three day testing or environmental monitoring covering all individuals in the class. The results for the total cluster size are shown in Fig 6. Regular pooled or otherwise universal testing dramatically reduces the sizes of even the most unfortunate clusters (infectious index, higher-risk room), for example from a median of 12 to a median size of 3 if the index is asymptomatic. But even with regular pooled or otherwise universal testing, testing in a matter of hours (e.g. onsite) has a substantially greater impact than testing at a centralized laboratory (if that takes 2 days including shipping time). This doesn’t seem like a strong argument in favor of virtual school?

makeitdouble 4y ago

> This was one more problem where the contemporary governance mechanism is "we pretend it won't/isn't/didn't happen because it's politically inconvenient as it contradicts high level leadership decisions (and we can't cause face loss to said leadership)". Can this be more factually false: https://www.ed.gov/coronavirus/data https://www.ed.gov/coronavirus/data first sentence: > COVID-19 and the 2021-2022 School Year > Students learn best when they're safely in school, in-person.