*Disclosure Note: I am not a teacher, but as a basketball coach, I am an employee of LAUSD
Last fall, in one of my two posts on our country’s failed COVID response, I briefly described the United States' utter failure not to prioritize getting kids back in school. At the time, I wrote that the impact on low-income kids was profoundly negative. I cited a piece on students in south-central LA that were truly sobering:
By the first week of October, several classes at the Communication and Technology School had more than 70% of their students failing. Many were not logging in. The dropout rate had noticeably increased from prior years, particularly among newcomer students. Technology problems — from weak wifi signals to broken iPads — plagued more than half the student body.
My point was not that schools should blindly open up, but that the closing of schools while so much of our broader economy remained open was a terrible prioritization as a society:
Governments should have recognized quicker that schools need to be at the top of the priority list for re-opening, not at the bottom. Whether you are a lockdown “hawk” or “dove” (and I understand the arguments for both), schools should have been higher in the priority lists than restaurants, bars, and the film industry. As much as I love sports, the idea that the Dodgers had had baseball games in LA before LAUSD returned to school is downright perverse.
The situation has not improved
Our collective attention has largely turned away from this topic, partially due to the COVID surge in places like Los Angeles that has made reopening in the short-term a non-issue and because our news cycle has been consumed by national politics and the botched vaccine rollout. But as the year goes on, we will presumably see the current surge die down, and vaccinations (slowly) make their way into people’s arms; this subject will quickly rise to the priority list.
The new year has not brought with it much change in the policies of re-opening of schools. While prominent Democratic politicians like Joe Biden and Gavin Newsom have endorsed reopening schools and promised funds to help local school districts do so, most of the nation’s largest school districts' stated policy is that the schools will not be reopening anytime soon. In fact, most school districts are pushing their start dates later and later:
Here in LA, the stated policy is that schools will remain closed for the rest of the school year. Superintendent Buetner has said that he does not expect kids to return to school until all kids have received the vaccine (which will likely be well into 2021, maybe even 2022).
In San Francisco, there is widespread hesitation among the board of supervisors to have kids return to school. When the board of supervisors met in December, they couldn’t even pass a symbolic resolution to call on the school board to create a reopening plan:
Here’s the context: SF’s Board of Supervisors met on Tuesday to discuss a straightforward resolution. One urging the school district to develop a “comprehensive plan for the safe return to in-person learning in accordance with public health guidelines.” Sounds simple, right?The process has been so slow and bureaucratic that the mayor of San Francisco has now told the city attorney to sue the school board, asking to open the schools:
In Chicago, there is widespread resistance from teachers to the stated plan of getting kids back in person:
The union reported that roughly 86 percent of its 25,000 members participated in the vote, and 71 percent of teachers wanted to keep teaching remotely. "CPS did everything possible to divide us by instilling fear through threats of retaliation, but you still chose unity, solidarity and to collectively act as one," said the union in a statement
In Fairfax County, Virginia (where I grew up), Teachers are objecting to the resumption of a whole 5-day school week:
"Concern remains that students will not be vaccinated before they return to school," said Adams. "This requires that we maintain the hybrid model and continue social distancing, masking and all the other mitigation strategies."
Now I want to be clear: there are legitimate concerns that I believe most teachers (and many parents!) have about the safety of schools reopening. And 100% I agree that to do this well, some of these concerns (including frequent testing, tracing, and mask compliance) need to be addressed (more on this later). However, what is also clear to me is that this stance against school re-opening goes beyond legitimate concerns and into the territory of terrible public policy.
Schools are Safe for Kids
Research from various sources has repeatedly shown that schools are not the source of massive COVID-19 spread. Economist Emily Oster has collected data showing that US schools that have reopened have still seen meager COVID positivity rates in students and staff. Even in high-risk areas, the spread seems to be happening far more outside of school than inside school.
Likewise, a recent paper by the REACH center at Tulane University found that:
For communities where hospitalization rates were already relatively low, "when [schools] opened in-person or hybrid mode, we did not see increases in hospitalizations post-re-opening...In fact, in many of these communities, hospitalizations appeared to go down after schools reopened — perhaps because of rules and norms around social distancing and wearing masks that kids may not be following at home.
This finding has been seen outside of the US, as is documented by the NY Times reporting on how schools opening is going in Europe:
Britain and the Netherlands have kept schools open with few restrictions on class sizes or requirements for mask-wearing. Yet they, too, have shown limited transmission among younger children or from children to their parents…
Even more explicit was a study coming out of Ireland last summer, which found that:
young students and education workers with COVID-19 interviewed more than 1,000 contacts and found “no case of onward transmission” to any children or adults.
When there have been isolated reports of school outbreaks, like there was in Israel last year, the contact tracing process often proved that it was actually community spread outside school that was causing the outbreak (Israel had permitted gatherings of 50 people at the same time as it had reopened schools). To the degree that we see outbreaks among kids, it tends to be transmissions that can be linked back to contact outside of schools:
A significant proportion of cases seem to come from activities outside school, Dr. Rubin said. “Most of the transmission, when we see it, is occurring in carpools, during travel leagues, maybe in a locker room, or parties and gatherings that people have on the weekend,” he said.
In response to this mounting evidence, we are starting to see more forceful statements from public health bodies. The CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics supported the re-’ re-opening, given the low risk of COVID spread. None of this research or guidance says that there are zero risks of transmission at school, just that there is low risk compared to many other activities that are both allowed and less socially productive than school.
The Cost of Virtual School
What really makes this urgent is the massive cost that virtual schooling is having for society. Here is what we currently know about those costs:
Kids who usually struggled from disadvantages in the classroom are overwhelmingly doing poorly in virtual school. The data is very, very clear: low-income students and students of color are falling behind.
We now have limited data that is showing that kids increasingly have mental health problems. Clark County, Nevada, has seen the number of youth suicides double in 2020, almost certainly due to kids being out of school and stuck and home.
We also know that kids being home is disproportionately impacting low-wage workers, both because they cannot work from home (so their kids must be unsupervised, with a relative, or they cannot work). We also know that women are dropping out of the workforce in large numbers to take care of kids from school. Anecdotally, I have talked to many parents (mostly women, mostly low-wage workers) who are hurting financially because they cannot go back to work with their young kids out of school and at home.
What really drives home the importance of this is that all we know from economic studies that education is crucial to low-income kids' prospects in life. Our society does not have an especially large or generous safety net for kids, and we do not have a great workforce training program that can help non-college graduates get middle-skilled jobs. So it is incumbent on our school system to help low-income kids achieve highly in school and enroll in quality forms of postsecondary education if they are going to get ahead in life.
The problem is, even in regular times, this is a wicked goal to achieve. Educational policy is one of the toughest nuts to crack: even with widespread agreement that we need to aim for better outcomes for low-income kids, there are no silver bullet solutions to getting there. On a micro-level, I have seen so much work by so many people trying to advance educational equity. It is tough to find interventions that work, and even when you find these interventions, they often do not scale.
However, to the degree we have found solutions that work, the pandemic is wiping out recent gains. I do not think the damage that this period of time is doing to kids can be overstated. The losses in learning that we see right now are equivalent to taking years of tutoring, mentoring, good teachers, and good schools to help kids without educational opportunity and erasing those gains. As someone who has put time and effort into this cause (albeit far less than many of my friends), I am really, really saddened and angered that we as a society are letting this happen.
Objections to Opening
Now, of course, this is a highly contentious public health issue, and as we would expect from a contentious public health issue, there are many arguments against reopening school. I want to engage these concerns.
1) Uncertainty
Though we have data showing that schools are not super-spreaders, almost every responsible researcher will say that we cannot know this with complete certainty. We could be missing something in the data, and maybe most concerningly, the latest variants of COVID may be more transmissible among kids. Just like re-opening has been slow and bureaucratic, there is fear that schools may not quickly pivot back to distance learning before an outbreak does severe damage if the situation changes.
Now I think it is always important to consider what we do and do not know when making difficult public policy decisions. There is still much we do not know about COVID, and we know even less about the new variants. There is concern that the new variants may be easier for kids to catch and transmit, though the CDC has said they do not have enough data to show this one way or another. So I would be wary of public policy interventions that push schools to stay open no matter what.
However, defaulting to the status quo in the face of uncertainty is a terrible way to make public policy. The appropriate course of action is to weigh the risk and benefits we do know while also accounting for how much we don’t know could change that calculation. Given that the baseline is that kids are suffering under the status quo and seem very unlikely to spread COVID, it would be unwise to make policy on the possibility that new variants will change that baseline so significantly as to change our risk calculation. We also know that we will not have data on vaccines in children for quite some time, and may not know much about the latest variants either, so waiting for more information will mean doing nothing for most of 2021.
2) Teacher and Employee Spread
Just because kids do not get sick and spread COVID does not mean that teachers or other school employees cannot get sick and spread COVID to their family members. Many teachers have voiced concerns that they are putting themselves at significant risk by going back to school, even if it is safe for the kids. Why should teachers have to take on more risk than the rest of us? Some data shows that infection rates have risen among teachers in recent months, over and above the spread rate in their community. However, it is imperative to note that as the spread of COVID in the community rises, we should expect teachers to get sick more often from activities outside of school. Because teachers are getting tested when schools open (while many people are not), we may simply be seeing a higher % of teacher cases being caught than the general population.
But even if teachers are not getting sick at high rates, we should absolutely be trying to set up frequent and rapid surveillance testing in schools; you can catch many cases before becoming widespread. We should also be doing common sense things like setting up outdoor learning spaces, masking kids, and ventilating classrooms. There are concerns among many teachers that their local school district will be unable to implement such programs competently, but that is why teachers should bargain for better agreements with your school district, not give up on in-person schooling altogether.
Unfortunately, much of the negotiating that appears to be happening is not in good faith. Last summer, the UTLA was not focused on hazard pay but on asking for a grab bag of left-wing policy ideas in its negotiations with LAUSD, including medicare for all, 500 billion in additional school funding, a wealth tax, defunding the police, and ending charter schools and vouchers. Using negotiations over safe conditions and fair conditions at schools as an opportunity to push unrelated policy ideas is not negotiating in good faith.
Teachers will also soon have access to vaccines, which, given what we know right now, eliminates almost all risk of severe illness and likely removes the significant risk of transmission as well. Population-level data from Israel, which has vaccinated a super high percentage of its population, has shown people who have gotten two doses of the Pfizer shot have minimal risk of transmission. We would expect this not just to make teachers safer at school but make them less likely to transmit to family members.
Lastly, in a time of a pandemic, someone is going to absorb risk. Grocery store workers, restaurant workers, medical personnel have all been asked to absorb risk with little to no additional compensation. By shifting education to virtual learning, we have made teachers safer; but we have also shifted the burden of that risk onto parents (who have had to quit jobs and forgo pay) and kids (who are falling behind and becoming less healthy). I think a much fairer approach, philosophically, is to share the risk between teachers and students.
3) Parents Skepticism
Now, I think this is maybe the most under-discussed measure in the discourse around this subject. While students of color are some of the most acutely affected by distance learning, their parents are also some of the most skeptical of in-person learning. It was reported last summer that USC found in a survey that 70% of black parents wanted to continue remote learning, though anecdotal reports were more widespread:
Obviously, it is essential to respect parents' concerns and consider when making these decisions. But I think precision and context are crucial too. I do think it is important to point out a couple of things to make sure we understand the context:
1) Much of these polls and surveys were conducted last summer when the leading voice arguing for reopening schools was...Donald Trump, who did not have a stellar approval rating among Black Americans. Meanwhile, in blue cities, public officials and school districts have been very hesitant to come out and directly say that schools are safe for fear of angering teachers. The “public health” messaging that many Americans in blue America are hearing is quite muddled and likely will be until Democratic officials have the courage to state clearly that schools are safe to re-open, without fear of what the teachers will say.
2) We are relying on public opinion polling from last summer when most school districts promised that they had “learned how to do zoom school better.” But within weeks of school opening virtually last August, I heard from many parents here in LAUSD that it was only marginally better, and in some cases, worse. Many parents also likely were not expecting schools to possibly be closed through all of the 2020-2021 school year. We desperately need more data on parents’ current and shifting attitudes and experiences.
3) Black Americans have a low level of trust that their local schools work for their kids. A California survey showed that only 19% of African Americans gave their local schools an “A” or a “B” in quality. In a pandemic where safety is a concern, this likely translates into skepticism that schools will follow through on reopening plans safely, competently, and equitably. Seeing a more concrete plan with adequate funding for testing and safety would likely change the calculus here.
5) When you actually dig into the USC surveys, it paints a different picture: the most popular policy among every racial group was to offer parents choices. 79% of Black parents and 74% of White and Hispanic parents wanted their schools to offer both remote AND in-person learning and opt into the one that fits their life and risk profile better.
Empowering Parents
I have found that big picture educational policy debates often, unsurprisingly, become ideological battles between choice and equity. The assumption on the right is that school choice automatically leads to equity by giving parents more options. The belief on the left is that ensuring that choice undermines equity because it allows privileged kids options that low-income kids will never have.
I have always found both of these perspectives to be partially true. It is absolutely the case that just because you allow low-income kids to pick their school, they are often denied many options that wealthier kids will have. Zoning laws and school districts' design ensures that the wealthiest and best-resourced schools are reserved for wealthy kids. Looking at a map of LA school districts very quickly shows how the most affluent parts of LA (Malibu and Beverly Hills) are conspicuously absent from LAUSD:
No amount of “school choice” will erase these kinds of residential inequalities in who gets to attend the wealthiest school districts.
On the flip side, though, the belief that any attempt at giving parents a choice in the education system will inevitably lead to inequality also seems wrong. COVID has illustrated that pretty clearly: there has often been condemnation of parents with resources for doing things like “setting up pods” to ensure their kids get some adequate learning in this time. Trying to shame wealthy parents in this way seems to be a paradigmatic example of “Leveling Down,” in which your efforts to try to make things fairer end up making the well-off worse-off rather than making the disadvantaged better off. We should not treat education as a zero-sum game: the most successful societies approach educational systems to ensure ALL students are maximized to their full potential.
To me, the best way to help disadvantaged kids during COVID is to give them, and their parents, options. You can do this by doing the following:
You start reopening with K-6 education, where the risk of spread is the lowest, and the impact of virtual learning on kids and parents is the highest. As you find a success formula and build trust in the process, you work your way towards older kids.
You give all parents the option to send their kids back to school. You can take special care to do targeted outreach to kids and parents who struggle the most during virtual school. Some parents might want to avoid this risk, while others will be eager to take it up. Those who do not want to go back can continue with virtual schooling.
You negotiate a hazard stipend for all teachers, say, $5000 to go back to work before they get the vaccine and $2000 if they go back to work after they are vaccinated. Those who do not want to go back (maybe because they are older or live with relatives) would still be able to teach remotely, assuming that there are kids who will remain in virtual schools under this framework.
You make sure the schools operate with adequate COVID precautions and do as much testing as possible.
I do not see why this formula should not be workable if teachers and school districts are willing to put in the elbow grease and formulate new policies. I really hope that in California (and other areas throughout the country where schools are still closed), we will see politicians standing up for this!
Don’t Blame Individuals for Systemic Problems
Now I want to make one more point here that I think is really important: I don’t think the problem will be solved by blaming individual actors. I have seen some rhetoric around school re-opening that has (to me) gone too far in criticizing individuals as if they were solely responsible for the failure to re-open schools. We should not be blaming individual teachers for this problem: many of the most generous, hardest-working people I know right now are teachers trying to make the best of an awful situation. They should not be blamed for what is largely happening above their heads.
I am even squeamish about blaming individual politicians or school administrators. In general, I think it is appropriate for politicians to take the heat, especially here in California, where high-profile politicians like Gavin Newsom and LA mayor Eric Garcetti talk a big game while avoiding any hard decisions. That said, individual politicians are still very limited in what they can do: Mayors have virtually no power over their school districts, and governors have some control, but it is fixed. A huge amount of the education policy problems come back to system-level problems in how our educational system is designed. I pointed out earlier that our school district's designs make little sense: they involve a very.
But an even bigger problem is one of capture. Capture is the idea that specific, narrow special interest groups influence governments more than the broader public's interest. This is especially true in local governments: back in September, I spoke at an event that discussed how people could get involved in local politics. One of my main arguments was the vital importance of pushing back on our local government's “capture.” Because so much of what happens in local governments are out of the general public's sight, it is straightforward for it to be captured. School districts are some of the worst offenders for this: they often have a high-level structural autonomy from the cities and states that they operate in, meaning their elections and decisions are even more hidden from public view than general issues in a city.
There is a fascinating parallel in our politics right now between how both sides of our political system view the criminal justice and educational systems in our country. While not alike in every way, they have striking parallels: Both systems operate in the public’s interest but also have powerful public-sector unions at their center (teachers in education, police in criminal justice) that almost certainly have “captured” the governing bodies that are supposed to oversee them. Outcomes in both systems are highly unequal along the lines of race and class: black and brown young men are wildly over-represented in both those who drop out of high school and those in the criminal justice system. There are many reasons for this, the biggest being how poverty intersects these systems. Still, lack of accountability for these outcomes plays a role in their continuation. And it is vital to point out that the public sector unions at the heart of both generally resist accountability or reform, even if those reforms would only target “bad actors.”
This is true even though the individuals I know who have gone into both professions (teaching and criminal justice) have largely done so because they are idealistic and want to help people in their community. I think it is wholly unproductive to state that “All teachers are lazy” or that “all cops are bastards,” as some activists do. Instead, we should spend far more time and energy pointing out the system's problems and looking at how big-picture forces (which do include the unions that represent police AND teachers) do not always have the general public’s interest in mind.
The difference is that while Democrats are quick to be critical of the police, they tend to come to the defense of teachers when criticized. And while Republicans are quick to be critical of teachers, they tend to come to the police's defense when criticized. To me, this has never made much sense: we want to see these systems serve the public good, especially the good of the most marginalized in our midst. This means we have to some consistent philosophy for balancing the need for “accountability” with fair treatment of teachers, policies, and other public servants. I do not think this means that we should “defund the police” or “get rid of public schools.” Instead, let's focus on how we can reform our existing institutions to try to make them work better!
Part of the reason I bring this up is that what I believe we saw last summer, in the wake of the death of George Floyd, was a reaction to the sense that the criminal justice system had lost legitimacy with many Americans because it was seen as unaccountable to them and their concerns. Once legitimacy has been lost, it's really, really hard to gain back, and as we saw last summer, it is tough to enact meaningful reform in the midst of a legitimacy crisis. That was some of the reason that I think the calls for common-sense reforms in the criminal justice system largely fell by the wayside. Instead, we got either highly personal attacks on police (“all cops are bastards”) or widely unpopular policy ideas (“defund the police”), neither of which was able to be “put back in the bottle” and channeled into meaningful reform.
If I were part of the educational system, I would be worried that what we see right now, with the slow-building harm of schools being closed, is in the early stages of a similar legitimacy crisis. And I would want there to be a resolution to virtual learning before that crisis escalates into a kind of anger that cannot be easily put back in a bottle. And that means figuring out now, before it is too late, how to get back to in-person learning.