NY Times Upshot: What the Data Says About Pandemic School Closures, Four Years Later

[goat]

The alternative would have been much worse. The problem wasn't just a few extra dead kids, but a lot of dead parents and grandparents as the graph below indicates.

In reality, when dealing with the unknown, it's best to be cautious. If the President at the time hadn't denied the existence of a problem, the US could have gotten ahead of the problem. Time will tell, but the last I read was that over 150,000 American deaths could have been prevented had the problem been properly addressed by the administration.


Note that school age children had a 0.1% COVID death rate, which seems small, but when it's also noted that there are 26M kids age 12-17 in the US, that means 26,000 dead kids. Obviously if the schools opened earlier, that rate would have gone up a bit, but mostly it would have impacted their older relatives. https://www.statista.com/statistics/457786/number-of-children-in-the-us-by-age/

Garbage in garbage out. The Southern Hemisphere didn't change their day-to-day routine, yet covid had very little impact on their life. The US makes up statistics to support their narrative. Even the NYT had to admit that fact.

 

[Flash]

Covid lockdowns were a test run for the upcoming martial law. Government knows all they have to do is declare a national emergency and most of us will do what we are told. We're already seeing worldwide protests over genocide Joe, and we should see bank runs and food shortages sometime in our lifetime.

Journalists have named it the Greater Depression.

When will the martial law begin?

 

[Dutch Uncle]

When will the martial law begin?

January 21st, 2025?

 

[Flash]

January 21st, 2025?

I remember when people said Obama was going to declare martial law and cancel the 2016 election.

 

[goat]

When will the martial law begin?

After the bank runs and food riots.

 

[Dutch Uncle]

I remember when people said Obama was going to declare martial law and cancel the 2016 election.

An early MAGAtism. Same for Jade Helm which was supposed to be practice for the takeover....held in Texas, no less.

I was in a pawn shop looking at handguns when a guy approached me and asked if I was aware of the story. I said yes. He asked if I was concerned and I said, "No. I don't worry about conspiracy theories". He walked away shaking his head. LOL

A few years later I wondered if he ended up in prison for 1/6 as one of Trump's useful idiots that he refused to pardon.

 

[Flash]

After the bank runs and food riots.

So, never? Is such a claim just an attempt to control the public with fear?

 

[goat]

So, never? Is such a claim just an attempt to control the public with fear?

The Great Depression became obvious with the bank runs of 1929 and food riots of 1931. We didn't live in a police state at that time, so FDR was forced to create social programs to prevent an uprising to overthrow our capitalist system. The Bill of Rights has been chipped away at over the years (read the Patriot Acts) to eliminate habeas corpus. Jurisprudence is a thing of the past and covid pretty much proved that fact.

 

[Geeko Sportivo]

You refused to address what I was actually talking about in my post. WHY?

I'm not here to argue with idiots- LIKE YOU!

 

[serendipity]

I'm honestly shocked the NY Times ran this. To me, while the national media has generally always had a liberal bias, I thought they were truthful for the most part. But since Trump I've started losing faith because it's become more of an ends justifies the means mindset (whatever it takes to get rid of Trump) and the result has been more people have lost faith in our leading institutions.

So within this polarization I'm shocked they wrote this (even if it is four years later) and I'm shocked because they cheer leaded for this.

And I can speak directly to the effects of this. My niece was in middle school when the pandemic hit. She's a great kid but they've now discovered in high school that she has some learning differences. Had they not been on Zoom for two years this would have been diagnosed in middle school. But instead she lost that time and is now behind and scribbling to catch up and figure out a program to help her.

All we heard was 'follow the science', 'follow the science' and that was nothing but a B.S. buzzword. We didn't follow the science, which said schools could open up, we did what politicians and their political supporters wanted - science be damned. And these are the results.





What the Data Says About Pandemic School Closures, Four Years Later

The more time students spent in remote instruction, the further they fell behind. And, experts say, extended closures did little to stop the spread of Covid.


Four years ago this month, schools nationwide began to shut down, igniting one of the most polarizing and partisan debates of the pandemic.

Some schools, often in Republican-led states and rural areas, reopened by fall 2020. Others, typically in large cities and states led by Democrats, would not fully reopen for another year.

A variety of data — about children’s academic outcomes and about the spread of Covid-19 — has accumulated in the time since. Today, there is broad acknowledgment among many public health and education experts that extended school closures did not significantly stop the spread of Covid, while the academic harms for children have been large and long-lasting.

While poverty and other factors also played a role, remote learning was a key driver of academic declines during the pandemic, research shows — a finding that held true across income levels.

“There’s fairly good consensus that, in general, as a society, we probably kept kids out of school longer than we should have,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatric infectious disease specialist who helped write guidance for the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommended in June 2020 that schools reopen with safety measures in place.

There were no easy decisions at the time. Officials had to weigh the risks of an emerging virus against the academic and mental health consequences of closing schools. And even schools that reopened quickly, by the fall of 2020, have seen lasting effects.

But as experts plan for the next public health emergency, whatever it may be, a growing body of research shows that pandemic school closures came at a steep cost to students.

The longer schools were closed, the more students fell behind.

At the state level, more time spent in remote or hybrid instruction in the 2020-21 school year was associated with larger drops in test scores, according to a New York Times analysis of school closure data and results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, an authoritative exam administered to a national sample of fourth- and eighth-grade students.

At the school district level, that finding also holds, according to an analysis of test scores from third through eighth grade in thousands of U.S. districts, led by researchers at Stanford and Harvard. In districts where students spent most of the 2020-21 school year learning remotely, they fell more than half a grade behind in math on average, while in districts that spent most of the year in person they lost just over a third of a grade.

Such losses can be hard to overcome, without significant interventions. The most recent test scores, from spring 2023, show that students, overall, are not caught up from their pandemic losses, with larger gaps remaining among students that lost the most ground to begin with. Students in districts that were remote or hybrid the longest — at least 90 percent of the 2020-21 school year — still had almost double the ground to make up compared with students in districts that allowed students back for most of the year.

Some time in person was better than no time.

As districts shifted toward in-person learning as the year went on, students that were offered a hybrid schedule (a few hours or days a week in person, with the rest online) did better, on average, than those in places where school was fully remote, but worse than those in places that had school fully in person.

Income and family background also made a big difference.

A second factor associated with academic declines during the pandemic was a community’s poverty level. Comparing districts with similar remote learning policies, poorer districts had steeper losses.

But in-person learning still mattered: Looking at districts with similar poverty levels, remote learning was associated with greater declines.

A community’s poverty rate and the length of school closures had a “roughly equal” effect on student outcomes, said Sean F. Reardon, a professor of poverty and inequality in education at Stanford, who led a district-level analysis with Thomas J. Kane, an economist at Harvard.

But the combination — poverty and remote learning — was particularly harmful. For each week spent remote, students in poor districts experienced steeper losses in math than peers in richer districts.

That is notable, because poor districts were also more likely to stay remote for longer.

Some of the country’s largest poor districts are in Democratic-leaning cities that took a more cautious approach to the virus. Poor areas, and Black and Hispanic communities, also suffered higher Covid death rates, making many families and teachers in those districts hesitant to return.

“We wanted to survive,” said Sarah Carpenter, the executive director of Memphis Lift, a parent advocacy group in Memphis, where schools were closed until spring 2021.

“But I also think, man, looking back, I wish our kids could have gone back to school much quicker,” she added, citing the academic effects.

Other things were also associated with worse student outcomes, including increased anxiety and depression among adults in children’s lives, and the overall restriction of social activity in a community, according to the Stanford and Harvard research.

Even short closures had long-term consequences for children.

While being in school was on average better for academic outcomes, it wasn’t a guarantee. Some districts that opened early, like those in Cherokee County, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, and Hanover County, Va., lost significant learning and remain behind.

At the same time, many schools are seeing more anxiety and behavioral outbursts among students. And chronic absenteeism from school has surged across demographic groups.

These are signs, experts say, that even short-term closures, and the pandemic more broadly, had lasting effects on the culture of education.

“There was almost, in the Covid era, a sense of, ‘We give up, we’re just trying to keep body and soul together,’ and I think that was corrosive to the higher expectations of schools,” said Margaret Spellings, an education secretary under President George W. Bush who is now chief executive of the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Closing schools did not appear to significantly slow Covid’s spread.

Perhaps the biggest question that hung over school reopenings: Was it safe?

That was largely unknown in the spring of 2020, when schools first shut down. But several experts said that had changed by the fall of 2020, when there were initial signs that children were less likely to become seriously ill, and growing evidence from Europe and parts of the United States that opening schools, with safety measures, did not lead to significantly more transmission.

“Infectious disease leaders have generally agreed that school closures were not an important strategy in stemming the spread of Covid,” said Dr. Jeanne Noble, who directed the Covid response at the U.C.S.F. Parnassus emergency department.

Politically, though, there remains some disagreement about when, exactly, it was safe to reopen school.

Republican governors who pushed to open schools sooner have claimed credit for their approach, while Democrats and teachers’ unions have emphasized their commitment to safety and their investment in helping students recover.

“I do believe it was the right decision,” said Jerry T. Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which resisted returning to school in person over concerns about the availability of vaccines and poor ventilation in school buildings. Philadelphia schools waited to partially reopen until the spring of 2021, a decision Mr. Jordan believes saved lives.

“It doesn’t matter what is going on in the building and how much people are learning if people are getting the virus and running the potential of dying,” he said.

Pandemic school closures offer lessons for the future.

Though the next health crisis may have different particulars, with different risk calculations, the consequences of closing schools are now well established, experts say.

In the future, infectious disease experts said, they hoped decisions would be guided more by epidemiological data as it emerged, taking into account the trade-offs.

“Could we have used data to better guide our decision making? Yes,” said Dr. Uzma N. Hasan, division chief of pediatric infectious diseases at RWJBarnabas Health in Livingston, N.J. “Fear should not guide our decision making.”


https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/upshot/pandemic-school-closures-data.html

So many bastards need to be held accountable for the colossal mistakes made, especially the likes of Fauci and his cronies.

 

[serendipity]

Perhaps to you he is, but I find him to be true to his very name- CALIFORNIA WACKO- always using this forum in making snide accusations and opinions about the Democrats, everywhere he can squeeze them in, between all the other wild and crazy TRUMPTARDIAN CONSPIRACY THEORIES your side keeps bringing to this forum EVERY SINGLE DAY!

You're a fucking lunatic!

 

[Dutch Uncle]

So many bastards need to be held accountable for the colossal mistakes made, especially the likes of Fauci and his cronies.

Agreed those responsible for collossal mistakes should be held accountable, but disagreed on your targets.

First, like Trump, Fauci wasn't king. He was simply an appointee.

Second, Fauci reported to his boss who is responsible for the US COVID response. His boss was Mr. "Not my responsibility" himself, Donald Trump.

Last, it was a pandemic with a new disease in which there was no known immunity. Thailand's cowardly Pedo King, King Rama X, fled his home for Germany to sit out the crisis. Trump simply closed his eyes and denied there was a crisis. Result? The US had over a million deaths. Over 150,000 of which could have been prevented had proper measures been instituted in January 2020 instead of the following Summer.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

 

[Geeko Sportivo]

What’s done is done obviously at this point but if you go back and look, when the science/data said it was safe to go back to schools with proper precaution many places chose not to. That’s just fact.

You notice this article isn’t coming the gateway pundit or breibart. This is from the New York Times. The fact that they are writing this tells it’s bad. This has had huge negative effect on kids and their growth and behavior, and will continue to do so.

I believe every word of the Report! And I am glad you posted the opinion piece! Because it plays into a narrative that I have been talking about that goes all the way back to my days I spent in Public school myself.

Let's just say we all agree on one thing- That keeping kids out of school deliberately, for whatever reason, is disruptive to their learning.

Well, if that is so, why do we intentionally keep kids out of school for 4 months every school year? If you add up 3 months of Summer Break, 2 weeks of Christmas break, and 1 week of Spring Break every year, that is like 4 months time away from school and learning. I do not question the shorter breaks, but 3 months a year for Summer Break? To me, that has always been a waste of precious time.

Let's add up 3 months a year x 12 years. That comes to 4 years of time wasted in every young 18 year old's life right there!

Ironically, 4 years happens to be the time it takes to acquire a 4 year college degree!

I have said this till I am blue in the face, that we could always do more to educate our children. And I have always said that college, or even trade school, should be a part of public education.

I imagined a very long time ago, that if Public Schools omitted the 3 month long school break, reduced their summer break to 2 weeks, and graduated passing students on to the next grade that starts immediately following the summer break, you could provide every student a chance to acquire a college degree or trade school certification by the age of 18 years old.

SO WHO ALL HERE IS WILLING TO SAY THEY ARE REALLY CONCERNED ABOUT STUDENTS TIME AWAY FROM SCHOOL CAUSING HARM TO THE CHILD- and yet tell me I am wrong about my ideas to end the 3 month long summer break and make better use of these kids time?

BRING IT!

We will see who are really concerned about children's time out of the classroom, and how that harms our children's development!

I am not gong to allow you to have it both ways though! Either you are concerned about kids and their educations, OR YOU ARE NOT REALLY ALL THAT CONCERNED!

Next!

 

[Stone]

I'm not here to argue with idiots- LIKE YOU!

Then why respond to my post at all ? I knew you were a bit on the stupid side but I didnt know you were THAT stupid. I know now though,....you left NO DOUBT.

 

[Dutch Uncle]

I believe every word of the Report! And I am glad you posted the opinion piece! Because it plays into a narrative that I have been talking about that goes all the way back to my days I spent in Public school myself.

Let's just say we all agree on one thing- That keeping kids out of school deliberately, for whatever reason, is disruptive to their learning.

Well, if that is so, why do we intentionally keep kids out of school for 4 months every school year? If you add up 3 months of Summer Break, 2 weeks of Christmas break, and 1 week of Spring Break every year, that is like 4 months time away from school and learning. I do not question the shorter breaks, but 3 months a year for Summer Break? To me, that has always been a waste of precious time....

...I am not gong to allow you to have it both ways though! Either you are concerned about kids and their educations, OR YOU ARE NOT REALLY ALL THAT CONCERNED!

Next!

Agreed on both year-round schools and the hypocrisy of those who denigrate American schools then whine about the effects of a flawed US COVID response from the WH.

Republican have been attacking and chipping away at US public education since the 90s by cutting funding and attacking teachers.

 

[Geeko Sportivo]

Then why respond to my post at all ? I knew you were a bit on the stupid side but I didnt know you were THAT stupid. I know now though,....you left NO DOUBT.

Fuck Off FATBOY!

 

[Geeko Sportivo]

Agreed on both year-round schools and the hypocrisy of those who denigrate American schools then whine about the effects of a flawed US COVID response from the WH.

Republican have been attacking and chipping away at US public education since the 90s by cutting funding and attacking teachers.

I only know why my School District shutdown during the days of the pandemic. I am sure every school district across America had their reasons as well.

First of all, school attendance was already way down here, even in the earliest onset of the pandemic. In fact, a problem here in Mesquite was the fact that many students were either sick, or were being kept home by their parents, for whatever reason. But, also, a majority of the Teachers, school bus drivers, and the school support staff got sick, and the School District had problems getting substitute teachers to come in, in their place.

So, all this talk about Democrats shutting down schools is preposterous. Even our Governor eventually announced he was closing the schools down state wide. Just as he closed all the bars down. And last time I looked he is a Republican.

SO this thread is nothing more than an irresponsible and misguided potshot at the Democrats!

 

[Stone]

Fuck Off FATBOY!

The response of a frustrated low mental functioning TDS victim. He cant help it folks. If its not cut and paste he does not have the ability to reason things out on his own so he lashes out in a triggered anger. Poor waterhead that he is........

 

[Stone]

I only know why my School District shutdown during the days of the pandemic.

Sadly folks,...like Jethro he is STILL in elementary school.


Wellllllllllllllllllllllllll doggy!

 

[Geeko Sportivo]

The response of a frustrated low mental functioning TDS victim. He cant help it folks. If its not cut and paste he does not have the ability to reason things out on his own so he lashes out in a triggered anger. Poor waterhead that he is........

There is no reasoning with TRUMPTARDED idiots!