New York Times: "From the pandemic’s earliest days, the C.D.C. was subject to extreme politicization"

"In November, an independent team of academics and public-health experts who called themselves the Covid Rapid Response Working Group gathered on Zoom to puzzle over what had by then become the pandemic’s most vexing challenge: how to make all schools safe for full-time, in-person learning as quickly as possible. Schools had not proved to be a hotbed of coronavirus transmission, but beyond that the research was complicated, and communities were divided about how to balance the risks. Some people wanted a full reopening, immediately, no exceptions. Others were terrified to return at all.

So far, there was no national plan for how to move forward. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was advising everyone to wear masks and remain six feet apart at all times. But that guidance was a significant impediment to any full-bore reopening, because most schools could not maintain that kind of distance and still accommodate all their students and teachers. It also left many questions unanswered: How did masks and distancing and other strategies like opening windows fit together? Which were essential? Could some measures be skipped if others were followed faithfully?"

Continue reading the article online (subscription maybe required)

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/magazine/cdc-covid-response.html

Danielle Allen, head of the Safra Center at Harvard, led Covid Rapid Response Working Group. You may recall that she also recently declared she would be running for MA Governor.

https://www.franklinmatters.org/2021/06/boston-globe-harvard-professor-danielle.html

You can listen to Danielle on an episode of  "Toward a More Perfect Union"

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/5230abc8-a5e5-4ec6-89b3-2f1e1beeaa11

listen to Danielle Allen on an episode of  "Toward a More Perfect Union"

Equal access to sports

"The last time Republicans in South Dakota made a serious push to bar transgender girls from school sports, in 2019, their bill was known only by its nondescript numerical title, Senate Bill 49. Its two main sponsors were men. And it died without ever getting out of committee, just 10 days after it was introduced.

But when Republicans decided to try again in January, they were far more strategic in their approach. The sponsors this time were two women who modeled their bill after a template provided by a conservative legal organization. They gave the bill a name that suggested noble intent: the “act to promote continued fairness in women’s sports.” Supporters from Minnesota and Idaho traveled to the Capitol in Pierre to testify that a new law was urgently needed to keep anyone with male biological characteristics out of female competitions, even though they acknowledged only a handful of examples of that happening in South Dakota."

Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required) 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/29/us/politics/transgender-girls-sports.html

"Megan Rapinoe: Bills to ban transgender kids from sports try to solve a problem that doesn’t exist"

"I remember how I felt when I played soccer for the first time. Long before I was winning World Cup matches, I was trying to keep up with my brother. Soccer has been a part of my life since I was 4 years old. I spent hours outside working to perfect that next move — I wanted to be the best.

Being able to play sports as a child shaped my life’s path. It taught me so much more than is seen on the field and brought me so much joy. Every child deserves to have that experience. That’s why I believe that all kids, including transgender youth, should be able to participate in sports they love."

Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required) 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/28/megan-rapinoe-transgender-kids-sports-ban/

NY Times: "The Untold Story of the Birth of Social Distancing"

From the New York Times we find this long read but good background information on where 'social distancing' came from.

"Fourteen years ago, two federal government doctors, Richard Hatchett and Carter Mecher, met with a colleague at a burger joint in suburban Washington for a final review of a proposal they knew would be treated like a piñata: telling Americans to stay home from work and school the next time the country was hit by a deadly pandemic.

When they presented their plan not long after, it was met with skepticism and a degree of ridicule by senior officials, who like others in the United States had grown accustomed to relying on the pharmaceutical industry, with its ever-growing array of new treatments, to confront evolving health challenges.

Drs. Hatchett and Mecher were proposing instead that Americans in some places might have to turn back to an approach, self-isolation, first widely employed in the Middle Ages.

How that idea — born out of a request by President George W. Bush to ensure the nation was better prepared for the next contagious disease outbreak — became the heart of the national playbook for responding to a pandemic is one of the untold stories of the coronavirus crisis."

Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/social-distancing-coronavirus.html

Shared earlier in this pandemic period but a great visual on how social distancing works.  YouTube Link = https://youtu.be/o4PnSYAqQHU

I know at least one K teacher that will like this article

Wow, this article will generate some conversation!

... as in other studies, the Tennessee experiment found that some teachers were able to help students learn vastly more than other teachers. And just as in other studies, the effect largely disappeared by junior high, based on test scores. Yet when Mr. Chetty and his colleagues took another look at the students in adulthood, they discovered that the legacy of kindergarten had re-emerged.

Students who had learned much more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college than students with otherwise similar backgrounds. Students who learned more were also less likely to become single parents. As adults, they were more likely to be saving for retirement. Perhaps most striking, they were earning more.

All else equal, they were making about an extra $100 a year at age 27 for every percentile they had moved up the test-score distribution over the course of kindergarten. A student who went from average to the 60th percentile — a typical jump for a 5-year-old with a good teacher — could expect to make about $1,000 more a year at age 27 than a student who remained at the average. Over time, the effect seems to grow, too.

The economists don’t pretend to know the exact causes. But it’s not hard to come up with plausible guesses. Good early education can impart skills that last a lifetime — patience, discipline, manners, perseverance. The tests that 5-year-olds take may pick up these skills, even if later multiple-choice tests do not.

Read the full article in the NY Times here
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/business/economy/28leonhardt.html?_r=1&src=tptw

The study presentation slides can be found here:
http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/STAR_slides.pdf


And yes, in case you did not know, my wife is a kindergarten teacher.
http://www.franklin.ma.us/auto/schools/oak/classrooms/sherlock/default.htm




Franklin, MA