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I woke up this morning with a lot on my mind in regards to the school reopening debate, so I thought I would take a moment to collect all of the information that has been floating around in one place. 
1/18
1/18
First, I've been thinking about how the science isn't settled that school reopenings are safe. This study from JAMA found an association between school closures and lives saved in the US this past spring: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2769034 2/18
Now correlation is not causation. That paper isn't the only one that shows such a link. Researchers at the U. of Edinburgh found reopening schools was the only non-pharmaceutical intervention significantly associated w/increased COVID transmission. 3/18 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30785-4/fulltext
This preprint study from Sweden also found that open schools were related to higher infections of both parents and teachers than closed schools. It hasn't been peer reviewed yet–another reason the science isn't settled. 4/18 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.13.20211359v2
Schools in Montreal were also found to be cause of a driver of COVID transmission. Schools in Montreal added a mask mandate in October. I learned las night that Tennessee, among others, have no mask mandate in schools. 5/18 https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/montreal-schools-now-driving-force-of-covid-19-spread-experts
I've also been thinking about the schools in Europe are open while many are closing early here, if they were open at all. In addition to the fact that schools in Europe have windows that open and students and teachers enjoy much stronger health infrastructure, 6/18
I've also been thinking about how places that have truly beaten the virus (i.e. not Europe) did keep schools closed until cases were much lower than they are now. 7/18 https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/coronavirus-government-response-tracker
I also think about the suggestions that teachers' union are somehow to blame b/c they want to protect their members. It's hard to see how this is the work of the unions, however, when even ununionized charter chains chose months ago to stay closed. 8/18 https://www.amny.com/news/success-academy-goes-fully-remote-throughout-the-rest-of-2020/
Of course, unions wanting stringent health & safety requirements are what unions are for. I am appalled that we are leaving behind many Black & Brown early childhood workers from these protections. Maybe ECE should look different, but those workers deserve protection, too. 9/18
Then I get to the idea that folks are only advocating for a choice for parents, not to force children back into schools. I find it notable and important that minoritized parents are largely choosing virtual options. 10/18 https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/schools-that-are-mostly-black-latino-favor-starting-online/2020/09/11/ddcfd016-f48f-11ea-8025-5d3489768ac8_story.html
Choices, as we know, have consequences. And what I hear from a lot of district- and school-level leaders is that running two programs, in person and virtual, is hard if not impossible. Virtual kids get less. Parents see this happening. 11/18 https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2020/11/18/surveys-show-things-are-better-for-students-than-they-were-in-the-spring-or-do-they/
To me, it makes a lot of sense to prioritize the instructional method that Black and Brown parents have chosen and make it as good as possible. 12/18
I also feel angry that these discussion points get written off as "anti-science" or as teachers being lazy by a lot of folks–particularly a lot of white men with large megaphones. I wonder why that could be? 13/18
My friend @JoshuaMound offers some ideas here that make sense to me give my background studying racial and socioeconomic school inequality. 14/18 https://jacobinmag.com/2020/10/neoliberal-education-reform-scapegoat-teachers-covid-19-reopening-school
And I am grateful for @rmc031 for highlighting additional ways in which the science on school reopening is not settled. https://prospect.org/coronavirus/why-reopening-schools-has-become-the-most-fraught-debate-of-the-pandemic/ (For the record, I do not think her critique of anyone comes to close to being misogynist) 15/18
I don't have strong prescriptions for school districts because each district is different, part of the challenge of our disjointed system of education in the United States. 16/18
Some districts could bring back young kids and/or kids with special needs. Others, probably most, given our high rates of community transmission, need to be keeping everyone learning at home. 17/18
This is all really hard & ultimately rooted in federal leadership that completely abandoned kids, teachers, and parents. I'm grateful that starting in January we'll have new leadership. 18/18
