The Daily Signal - What Does ‘Back to School’ Mean in the Time of COVID-19?

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

What could "back to school look like during the first fall of the COVID-19 pandemic, and what should it look like?  What about an "exclusively virtual" education experience? What are wise precautions to take and what is unrealistic? Lindsey Burke, who directs The Heritage Foundation's Center for Education Policy and is the think tank's Will Skillman fellow in education, joins the podcast to discuss. We also cover these stories: The District of Columbia plus 17 states are taking President Donald Trump’s administration to court. Tensions between the U.S. and China continue to escalate, with China putting sanctions on Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, both Republicans. The Washington Redskins have thrown out both their team name and logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal Podcasts for Tuesday, July 14. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Rachel Del Judas. School districts across the country are trying to determine how their students return to school, be it in-person, virtually, or a mix of both. The Heritage Foundation's Lindsay Burke, director of the Center for Education Policy, joins me to discuss. And don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, and please encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. Washington, D.C., plus 17 states are taking President Donald Trump's administration to court. They were suing the president's administration over his decision to deport students from other countries

if their school in the U.S. chooses to hold only virtual classes due to COVID-19. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healy, whose office is leading the coalition of states suing the federal federal. government, said via the Hill that the Trump administration didn't even attempt to explain the basis for this senseless rule, which forces schools to choose between keeping their international students enrolled and protecting the health and safety of their campuses. Filed in Boston, the lawsuit maintains there have been several violations of a federal law known as the Administrative Procedure Act, which concerns how certain decision-making power

resides with federal agencies. At issue is whether ICE's new policy is legally justified or if it was arbitrary and capricious and thus illegal under the act. The Hill reported tensions between the U.S. and China continue to escalate, with China putting sanctions on Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, both Republicans. Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey, also a Republican, was sanctioned as well, as was San Brownback, ambassador at large for international religious freedom. The U.S. actions seriously interfere in China's internal affairs, seriously violate the basic norms of international relations, and seriously damage Sino-U.S. relations. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Wa Chon Ying said, per Reuters,

China will make further responses based on how the situation develops. Cruz said in a statement, the Chinese Communist Party is terrified and lashing out. They forced over one million Uyghurs into concentration camps and engaged in ethnic cleansing, including horrific forced abortions and sterilizations. These are egregious human rights atrocities that cannot be tolerated. On Twitter, Rubio wrote,

The Communist Party of China has banned me from entering the country. I guess they don't like me. The Washington Redskins have thrown out both their team name and logo. The team currently doesn't have a replacement name or logo. The official Redskins team Twitter tweeted out their press release, which read, On July 3rd, we announced the commencement of a thorough review of the team's name. That review has begun an artist. As part of this process, we want to keep our sponsors, fans, and community apprised of our thinking as we go forward.

Today, we are announcing we will be retiring the Redskins name and logo upon completion of this review. Dan Snyder and Coach Rivera are working closely to develop a new name and design approach that will enhance the standing of our proud, tradition-rich franchise and inspire our sponsors, fans, and community for the next 100 years. Next up, we'll have Rachel's interview with Lindsay Burke, and they'll discuss whether schools can reopen in the fall. Do you have an interest in public policy? Do you want to hear some of the biggest names in American politics speak?

Every day, the Heritage Foundation host webinars called Heritage Events Live. Webinar topics range from ethics during the COVID-19 pandemic to the CARES Act and the economy. These webinars are free and open to the public. To find the latest webinars and register, visit heritage.org slash events. I'm joined on the Daily Signal Podcast today by Lindsay Burke. she's the director of the Center for Education Policy and Will Skillman Fellow in Education. Lindsay, it's great to have you on the Daily Signal podcast. Thanks for having me.

So with the recent rising numbers we've seen out of places like Florida and Arizona, Texas, and California, what do you think back to school is going to look like for students in the coming weeks as we get closer and closer to August? Well, what it should look like is schools to the best that they can should read. reopen. That, of course, should take into account the local context, local conditions on the ground. But if they can, they should certainly strive for reopening in the fall. Unfortunately, I don't think that's what we're going to see in a lot of instances. I was more confident this morning, actually, but just before coming on this podcast, the Los Angeles Unified School District, which is the second largest school district in the entire country, announced that they will not be

reopening in person this fall. So that's a big deal. There are between 600 and 700,000 students who are in LA Unified, and I think it could really portend things to come in the fall for a lot of districts. Hopefully it doesn't. Hopefully we will see more districts moving toward reopening quicker, but that is the news on the ground today is LA Unified will not be reopening. Well, so you mentioned L.A. they're going to stay closed. What about other states across the country. How are they addressing this? Are they going to be reopening? Are they going to be doing some in person, some online? What does it look like for other states so far? Well, for the most part, local school districts, we're still sort of in that waiting period to see what they do,

but we're getting really close, I think, over the next week or two, to seeing just a massive amount of announcements one way or the other. If you look at Fairfax County in Virginia, another large school district, they were one of the first out of the gate to release what their plan would be for the fall. They're giving parents an option of either online or some mix of in person and online in their school districts. So I think in short order, we're going to see a lot of states and districts start to make that announcement. But right now, we're still at the point where we haven't seen a ton release those plans yet. Well, CNN had reported over the weekend that internal documents from U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,

warn that fully opening K-12 schools and universities would be the highest risk for the spread of the coronavirus, and they're citing in New York Times report in CNN's reporting. Would you say reopening schools is a right risk to take? So I think that, again, we really need to think about the local conditions on the ground. It might be the right call in one area, but another area, if they have an outbreak, might need to hold off a little bit. I think what is instructive, though, at the moment, is to look at what schools around the world have started to do, what countries around the world are doing when it comes to their school reopening. Science magazine, of course, well-respected publication, they looked at over 20 countries that had reopened since June. And a lot of those countries throughout Europe, but they really decided that their reopening would happen because,

children in particular, we know it is rare for children to develop really severe symptoms. And if they contract the virus, it seems rather rare for them to spread it if they do get it. And so that was the assessment in Europe for a lot of the schools that reopened in countries across the continent there. So that could be instructive, but at the end of the day, it really is going to come down to local leadership. It should be a conversation between parents and between their local school. Right now what we're seeing, I think, unfortunately, is a conversation that is looking increasingly to Washington to provide the answers. And that, of course, is moving it further and further away from the people, the children that these decisions are going to impact. So right now we see

special interest groups, the teachers unions are calling for hundreds of billions of dollars in new money to be spent at the federal level in order for schools to reopen. The administration, President Trump, has said the opposite, that schools should not get federal funding if they don't reopen. And then the Education Secretary, Secretary DeVos, has said, well, maybe not cut off funding, but allow those dollars to follow students to schools of choice that are open. And I think that really should be our posture with regard to federal policy and federal spending, that if schools aren't going to reopen, let's fund the student and allow those dollars to follow that student to schools of choice that are open. Well, Lindsay, you had briefly mentioned Europe,

and what does back to school look like on the international front? How are other countries handling their schools? Well, a lot of schools, a lot of countries throughout Europe have opened schools, at least partially throughout the spring. So Denmark, for instance, was the very first country in Europe to reopen schools. They reopen their schools all the way back. It seems like a million years ago, but all the way back in April, April 15th. And their approach is to do as much in terms of class time as they can outside. They also divide children into small groups. This is apparently the new education buzzword now. They divide them into pods. So kids are in pods of about 12 students. Finland reopened schools in May. They retained their existing class size, so they didn't

reduce class sizes. That's something that we've heard calls for here, but they've kept classes separated from each other. They've done a staggered reopening by age. If you look at France, France schools reopened mid-May there, but they reopened on a voluntary basis. So it just depends. It's very country-specific. Germany open schools on a part-time basis. If you go outside of Europe, if you look at places like Japan right now, Japan, again, their reopening process in June. So just last month, they started reopening schools. And they have some pretty clear-cut guidelines for what they expect of the families once

schools reopen. So parents have to take their child's temperature every morning and they report their temperature to the school before they show up that morning. children attend school on alternative days. They alternate days back and forth, teachers and kids wear masks. So it just really depends. And then you have the other side of the spectrum, which are the countries that never closed schools at all, right? Sweden never closed down. It's schools from day one of the pandemic. So that's the other end of the spectrum there. Well, going back to the U.S., one of the political debates right now is whether schools should

follow the CDC guidelines. What do you think? And then what are some of those guidelines? Well, again, I think it is really locally driven and should be locally driven and context-specific. This is something that the National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, that the Heritage Foundation launched, that they recommended was that that decision does stay local. The CDC has recommended things like sanitizing the playgrounds in between each use, of course, social distance, of students there, to some extent, alternating days or at least classes that go back to school. I think the answer there really has to be whatever works in a local context. That's something that school leaders are thinking hard about across the country.

And that's something we have a lot of evidence, too, from the non-public sector, from the private school sector. And some instances from some of our friends in the online space and the charter school space that it really is school dependent, that school leaders are thinking deeply about what those reopening plans look like. They are really starting to think through what does an emergency management plan look like for my school if it has to close again. And this is something else that has come out of Europe too, instead of just shuttering schools across the board, that once schools did reopen, if there was a teacher or a student who contracted the virus to not

necessarily close down the entire school, but to have that student go home to not reenter school for a period of two weeks or whatever it might be, but only if you get a certain number of cases growing to shut down that school. So, you know, again, it's really going to need that local context, state to state, and even district to district. But as I said a minute ago, Right now, so much of the focus has started to shift toward Washington. We saw the Education Secretary this weekend was on TV, a couple of different media hits over the weekend, talking about school reopening. But I think she really hit the nail on the head with that when she said that those dollars that we currently spend should follow kids to schools of choice that are open. And so that's, I think, what we have to keep front and center.

If a family's not satisfied with how a school proposes to reopen in the fall, what that school's plan might look like, they should be able to take their dollars to an education environment that reflects what they want for their child, the day-to-day experience that they want their child to have in this post-pandemic era that we're approaching. Well, Lindsay, as you've looked through guidelines and seen what some districts are looking at versus others, what are some good precautions that you've seen that you would like to? to share with others and then others that you've seen that just seem unrealistic or could be approached in a better way? Well, I think, so when you talk to school leaders across the country, I think everybody sort of gets it intuitively, but the thing that you hear school leaders say is that it could be difficult among very young children, right? Think about kids who are in kindergarten to have them potentially wear masks all day,

or to really enforce some of that social distancing. Then that's not to say one way or the other, that that's the right policy or the wrong policy. Just when you listen to school leaders across the country, that is one concern that they have is with that really, really young kids, some of the enforcement pieces there. And then you hear some of the same concerns

when it comes to things like sanitizing the playground in between each use, that that's something that might be difficult for schools to do. Again, not a comment on whether or not that's good or bad policy, but something that we're hearing. In our world, the thing that I think has really been striking, more so than how schools are really thinking about sort of the health perspective of reopening, has been the extent to which they have or have not provided access to instructional material.

I mean, it has been just all over the place in terms of what district schools in particular have been doing since March, since schools closed. About a third of districts across the country, of those districts that have been studied, have really provided virtually no online instruction to speak of. That has been, and I think will prove to be a real loss for a lot of students across the country. And then we see about a third that are doing a pretty decent job

providing some online instruction, but they're not taking attendance of students, They're not grading student work. And so, you know, how much will that really, I think, benefit the student long-term as an open question as well. If they're providing that online instruction but not monitoring student progress, what does that mean long-term? And then we've got about a third of districts who've done a pretty good job overall at providing

online options. But it has been spotty across the country. And I will say, too, that this is why it's so important to make a distinction. when it comes to online learning between districts, public school districts that have had to, in some cases, haphazardly put together an online platform for their instruction and give it to students virtually versus students who chose to learn online before the pandemic hit. There's a big difference there. Families who've selected into an online learning option pre-pandemic versus what we're seeing it now, which is, seeing right now, which is this sort of accidental homeschooling, you know, we're all homeschoolers now moment that we're in. So just a little caveat there. Well, on that note, my next question

was it fits in perfectly. And just to talk about this more virtual experience that probably a lot of people in L.A. will end up having to become part of. But what would an exclusively virtual experience look like, as some school systems are proposing just that. Yeah, so it's going to vary, I think, widely by district if history is any indication in recent history, right, since the pandemic started, because it really has been all over the map, the extent to which districts are providing high quality virtual instruction to students. But I can tell you what it tends to look like, in some cases, it will be at the beginning

of the week, a district will provide some. number of hours, three hours perhaps, of instructional material for a student to work through. Some districts are doing a good job with that synchronous online option where you have a teacher in front of the students, they're in a virtual classroom, they're learning together about as close as you can model to that sort of typical traditional in-person classroom experience. So it tends to be something along those lines where you have the districts, where you have a local school providing some amount of content on the front end for students to work through. The real variable in that equation is the extent of time that they are spending sort of face-to-face

online with a teacher. And that has been really all over the place. Well, lastly, Lindsay, how would you say this long-term quarantine and lack of programming for young people and students, whether it's school camps of the summer and the like, how is that had an effect on students and what especially about those students who are low income in particular? Yeah. You know, this is the big, big question. It's the big important question. To what extent are we really going to see a negative impact on student learning as a result of schools being closed? If you look at a district like LA Unified, which again has just announced that they're not reopening this fall. They have reading proficiency rate among their eighth grade students of

18%. So 18% of eighth graders in LA Unified, the second largest school district in the country, can read proficiently. I mean, that should keep us all up at night. So I say that because there are, and so many people are well aware of this through firsthand experience, so many instances where children are already not getting access to quality content that their traditional district school for whatever reason is not meeting their needs. We know across the country nationally, only about one-third of students can read proficiently. And so LA is even more of an exploitation point behind that low level of reading proficiency. So the question really is, you know, what does it look like next year or two years later once we really start to get the data in on the impact of the

has had on student learning. I think for low-income students in particular, we're probably going to see a negative impact on their student learning outcomes. But the district system has had a long way to go before this pandemic hit anyways. So it will, I think, be interesting just to know those baseline numbers, right,

to know that only a third of kids were proficient in reading before the pandemic hit, and then to really be able to put into context what the numbers look like a year or two from now. The best, the absolute best thing that we could do right now would be to give families control over the money that is being spent on schools they cannot physically enter. We are funding schools like LA Unified. The doors are shut. Parents cannot get into them.

Those parents should be able to take their dollars to schools that they want to attend that will meet their child's needs that are actually open where the doors are open. or they should be able to use them for virtual tutors or online learning, whatever it is that meets their child's unique learning needs. And so we have said that states immediately should move toward providing emergency education savings accounts for families. It's a really smart, targeted response to this pandemic that I would argue is also very good long-term policy. Well, Lindsay's, thank you so much for breaking the sound for us today on the Daily Signal

Podcast. We appreciate having you with us. Thanks for having me. And that will do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. We do appreciate your patience as we record remotely during these weeks. Please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or Spotify, and please leave us a review or a reading on Apple Podcasts to give us your feedback. Stay healthy and we'll be back with you all tomorrow.

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