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The cost on kids of being out of school - BostonCard - 11-02-2020

[tweet]https://twitter.com/AlecMacGillis/status/1323368308188524546?s=20[/tweet]

Article here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/01/us/san-francisco-coronavirus-schools-reopening.html

What is sad is that even as Europe is going back into lockdown, they are keeping schools open, while we are doing everything we can to avoid opening schools.  I think it is a sad commentary on our relative priorities that we are opening stores, bars, restaurants, playing NFL and (starting next week) college football games, but are unwilling to have kids go back to schools.

BC

RE: The cost on kids of being out of school - oldalum - 11-02-2020

How much of that is teacher resistance?

RE: The cost on kids of being out of school - dabigv13 - 11-02-2020

It will be interesting to see what happens with the schools in Europe staying open during a spike. Part of the reason it's been tough to do in the US is many places never really got prevalence as low as they got it in Europe or elsewhere with more open in person schooling. Hopefully it's well studied because the data will be important. We still don't know how long we will have to deal with pandemic covid.

RE: The cost on kids of being out of school - Goose - 11-02-2020

(11-02-2020, 08:08 PM)dabigv13 Wrote:  It will be interesting to see what happens with the schools in Europe staying open during a spike. Part of the reason it's been tough to do in the US is many places never really got prevalence as low as they got it in Europe or elsewhere with more open in person schooling. Hopefully it's well studied because the data will be important. We still don't know how long we will have to deal with pandemic covid.
Amen. Despite the fact there are all kinds of conflating factors, if Europe can keep the schools open through a spike, we here in the USA should be able to do similarly.

RE: The cost on kids of being out of school - magnus - 11-02-2020

(11-02-2020, 07:51 PM)oldalum Wrote:  How much of that is teacher resistance?

Good point.  A friend of mine in the Bay Area said that their kids' schools were short staffed for in person (or hybrid) learning.

RE: The cost on kids of being out of school - akiddoc - 11-02-2020

(11-02-2020, 09:30 PM)magnus Wrote:  
(11-02-2020, 07:51 PM)oldalum Wrote:  How much of that is teacher resistance?

Good point.  A friend of mine in the Bay Area said that their kids' schools were short staffed for in person (or hybrid) learning.

A lot is teacher resistance. I believe that our teacher workforce is significantly older than that in other western countries, although I am not sure.
(11-02-2020, 04:28 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  [tweet]https://twitter.com/AlecMacGillis/status/1323368308188524546?s=20[/tweet]

Article here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/01/us/san-francisco-coronavirus-schools-reopening.html

What is sad is that even as Europe is going back into lockdown, they are keeping schools open, while we are doing everything we can to avoid opening schools.  I think it is a sad commentary on our relative priorities that we are opening stores, bars, restaurants, playing NFL and (starting next week) college football games, but are unwilling to have kids go back to schools.

BC

As far as actual data on children, they site one study which was conducted at my home hospital. They are doing PHQ9's on teens who visit the ER. The sample of kids visiting the ER right now is very different than the usual set of kids who visit without a pandemic. I don't think you can actually conclude much from that study. There just aren't any real hard numbers that tell us what is going on. 2 months ago, most of the kids I saw in the clinic were pretty confused by online learning. Now almost every kid has adapted and is making some progress. Generally, kids need interactions with other children to learn to navigate the world, and some kids are going to do poorly with Zoom learning (ADHD kids and kids with other diagnosed learning differences in particular), but I suspect most kids are going to be okay if we can get everyone back in by September 2021.

RE: lex24 - BostonCard - 11-02-2020

(11-02-2020, 09:41 PM)lex24 Wrote:  Unions.  Not teachers.

The teacher's union to an extent, but they are only reflecting the will of a minority of vocal teachers who feel very strongly about not coming back.  Some of them have legitimate concerns about their health; as akiddoc mentioned, there are some older teachers and they will have a cross section of comorbidities.  Regardless, although I think it is a minority of teachers who feel this way, they are very vocal and they have leveraged the teacher's union and the sentiment of the larger community of teachers to support them.  I've listened to enough school district board meetings of teacher after teacher lining up to say "I don't feel safe" or decrying the school board plan as inadequate while telling my kids "we really want to come back".

BC

RE: The cost on kids of being out of school - Mick - 11-03-2020

I think you have a unique set of factors in the United States in which a 100-year old system is ill-prepared to deal with modern-day educational needs.  The kids don't need to help on the farm during summers any more, yet they have summers off, and so do the teachers. I realize there are some high quality, dedicated teachers.  A casual look would give that impression regarding my sister (Stanford SUSE PhD), but she went into teaching, she told me, so she could have summers off and leave work at 3 p.m. every day.  There are quite a number of teachers who fill that bill.

Generally speaking, I think society underinvests in children.  Inflation-adjusted federal tax deductions for dependents has dropped like a rock since the 1940s.  California state tax expenditures on higher education (CSUs and UCs) have gone in literally the opposite direction from pension contributions.  We no longer have a brobdingnagian surplus of high-quality women teachers (because teaching and a few other jobs were the only jobs that women could get); nowadays, women exist in virtually all professions.  And yes, the current teacher unions prioritize health and time off, or at least they did when my wife, mother and mother in law were teachers, I assume that it hasn't changed much.  There's a reason that other industrial societies kick our educational butts; e.g., longer school days, longer school years, fewer days off, schools and school systems aligned along need and potential (Germany), teachers paid like middle managers, etc.

And we, as a society, don't really care if we educate our kids or how much we take from them.  The last three generations have all been worse off than their parents, at an increasing rate.  It doesn't surprise me that today's young act as they do from a political standpoint.  They have zero expectations (absent a priviliged upbringing), so why not support Socialism?  And society doesn't really need highly educated, highly qualified American high school or college graduates, we've been able to import talent for so long and our immigration laws (and enforcement thereof) are so immigrant-friendly that no one gives two sxxts whether or not American kids go back to school.  

Society doesn't care about American kids, not really.  Too much evidence to the contrary.  Collectively, we don't care nearly as much about the long-term damage to the kids as we do to the (much, much smaller) proportion of the teachers.

Doesn't surprise me at all.