How Hard Are CDC Guidelines To Follow

So now everyone is freaked out about the CDC "guidelines" as reported on that blue meme that was going around. This, of course, was the point-- to sell the idea that public schools will be like prisons, so everyone should pull their kids out. Because in the spirit of never letting a crisis go to waste, there are folks from your neighbor with the tin hat all the way up to the US Secretary of Education who see the pandemic as one more chance to dismantle public schools.  So the blue list was framed, worded, and occasionally misrepresented in order to create maximum outrage. Mission accomplished.

Let's look instead at the actual CDC guidelines. I won't lie-- as I pointed out when they were just a few suggestions, they are not particularly awesome. But let's take a look-- Just how big a challenge do schools face when it comes to re-opening in the fall?

You can see two versions of the same info, either here on the CDC website, which is more recent, or here on the leaked document starting on page 47. I'm going to use the leaked document and try to pick up some details that are on the website, which is a little more listlike. It's worth noting that the recommendations are, in fact, phrased as recommendations It's important to note that the "considerations" are not even phrased as "recommendations" let alone mandates, and that the phrase "if feasible" turns up a lot. The CDC is presenting things to consider, not rules that schools must follow. The whole re-opening America document is organized around the idea of three phases. One-- school is closed. Two-- Open with enhanced social distancing. Three-- Open with distancing measures.

This is going to be long, but I want to be thorough.

FOR ALL PHASES

Establish and continue communication with local and state authorities.

So that the school is in tune with the surroundings. Do-able.

Protect staff and students who are higher risk by offering things like "telework" and "virtual learning." Ditto for those traveling to or from high transmission areas, like, I presume, a teacher who works in a low transmission area but lives in a hot spot.

So, everyone would have to run a cyber school on the side.

Make sure that outside groups that use the school also follow the guidelines.

Easy peasy. Just don't let any outside groups use the facility.

SAFETY STUFF

Promote washing hands and covering coughs and sneezes.

As with many school behaviors, the challenge here will be to deal with whatever the students learn at home.

Train and reinforce proper use of cloth face masks, which will be important when distancing is not possible. No cloth masks on kids younger that two or people who are having trouble breathing.

Good luck with masks on six year old. My three year olds last about fifteen seconds, and their masks look really cool. Masking is going to be a big issue, not just because it has become the hot new symbol for tyranny, but because it covers the face and makes it hard to read. How many times a day does a teacher read facial expressions to see how things are going, and how many times a day does a teacher use a smile or a frown to communicate quickly and silently with students.

Have adequate supplies to promote healthy hygiene behaviors.

That should be easy. I mean, what are the odds that the supply of hand sanitizer could completely disappear?

Post signs. And make announcements. Show videos.

Yes, student behavior is heavily influenced by signage. Not terribly effective, but it does give the school a kind of totalitarian decorating look. Remember, Big Brother wants you to wear your mask!

Clean the heck out of everything, often. But keep the cleaning stuff locked up so the kids don't get into it. And (just in case you need something else to worry about) check all your water fixtures that have been unused for six months so that you aren't spreading Legionairres' Disease.

This will be a challenge, and probably involve hiring extra staff with the money you won't have in the fall. Good luck on this.

SOCIAL DISTANCING: PHASES 1 and 2

Keep grouping static as possible: same kids together with same staff, all day for young students, and "as much as possible" for olders.

Well, "as much as possible" is "not at all." This involves small tweaks on elementary level, and is largely impossible for secondary.

Restrict mixing between groups.

See above.

Cancel all field trips, assemblies, extracurriculars.

Obvious. However, while I don't know how things are in your neck of the woods, around here as soon as you start canceling football games, it gets really real.

Limit gatherings and events that don't support social distancing. 

The guidelines keep falling over the same issue-- students are mostly very social beings, and anything that involves telling students some version of "I know your BFF is right over there, but you cannot go talk to them" is going to create endless stress and trouble.

Restrict non-essential visitors and volunteers.

So much for room mothers.

Space desks at least six feet apart, facing the same direction. 

The guidelines are everywhere stuffed with implications for class sizes. That class of thirty kids can't be social distanced unless you meet out on the football field. Most schools would have to radically reduce class size, which means more classes, which means more rooms and more teachers. My bet is that a whole bunch of administrators are right now pricing office cubicle dividers.

Also, I don't see anything about teachers in this scenario. Are you up in front of the room, declaiming at a distance, or are you allowed to circulate through the room. When Pat says, "I don't understand that third problem, can you help me," do you offer assistance at a distance, or are you allowed to get close enough to see what Pat is actually doing. Maybe you ask Pat to send you a pic of the work so far.

Physical barriers and guides could include sneeze guards, and tape directions on the floor.

See-- office cubicles would be great. Again, the "one way routes" is offered as an example, not the actual recommendation, which is good, since many schools have halls that would become inescapable dead ends. I will point out some math that I mentioned elsewhere-- a class of fifteen students lined up with six feet between them makes a line 84 feet long-- how exactly does an elementary teacher monitor that, and how many such lines can be out in the halls before nobody can observe the guidelines?

Close communal spaces like cafeteria and gym. Either stagger use and disinfect in between, or do things like serving lunch in classrooms. 

This is kind of a nightmare. I taught in a building that staggered lunch shifts of 300ish students, and what that meant was that the first lunch of the day was served at 10:30 AM. For my old building to stagger lunches so that they could involve proper social distancing-- that would take more time than is available in the school day. Lunch in classrooms means that lunch just became part of the teacher workday, which creates its own issues.

Create social distance "between children on school buses where possible."

The bit about one per seat and only every other seat is an example offered for trying to maintain distance on buses, not the official recommendation. Still, this is still a nightmare. Again, in my district some students ride the bus for 30-50 minutes, which means turning one route into two or three runs would either involve buying a whole second fleet of buses or staggered flights that would arrive at the school over the space of two hours. And getting more buses would probably not be as hard as getting more bus drivers.

SOCIAL DISTANCING: PHASE 3

Just adds "consider" to all of the above guidelines. Phase 3 suddenly seems far less exciting.

LIMIT SHARING

Keep each child's belongings separate from others'.

Again, one suspects that maybe nobody at the CDC has recently met a human child.

Ensure adequate supplies to minimize "sharing of high touch materials."

One also wonders if anybody at the CDC has met a school district business administrator. Also, "High Touch Materials" would be a good band name.

Avoid sharing food, utensils, electronic devices, toys, books, and other games or learning aids.

Seriously. And it's not just that human children want to share cool stuff with their friends. It's the questions of what levers classroom teachers are supposed to use to enforce this sort of thing. Do they give Pat a detention for passing a pencil to someone, or suspend them for a day because they shared earbuds with someone in order to play them a cool new song? It's not just that social distancing is antithetical to how young humans live their lives-- it's the strange contortions that schools will have to employ to enforce such measures.

TRAIN STAFF

Train staff in all of the above. Teach them also about how to screen students while also respecting all privacy regulations. 

Nobody has figured out this one yet. The working answer so far seems to be that in the face of pandemic, privacy must yield. Many citizens are pretty unhappy about that.

Stay home when you're sick.

Which totally makes sense, except if you're at home, what is happening with your class? Can your school find a substitute teacher who is able to manage all this-- and wants to? If they can't find a sub, then what. Can't just combine classes into one room, or have a parade of teachers pop in during their prep time, without violating the guidelines. And speaking of sick...

WHEN SOME BECOMES SICK

Have an isolation room for anyone who comes down with Covid-like symptoms. Be prepared to close off areas, wait twenty-four hours, then clean and disinfect, notify all the authorities, parents, students, etc.

I'm suddenly thinking of Code 2319 from Monsters, Inc. One kid with a dry cough could wreak such huge havoc on a school.

So can this be done?

You can see that the guidelines aren't quite as humanly impossible as they're made to seem in the blue meme-- just mostly impossible. It would certainly not be out of character for a school to say, "Well, this is the gold standard, and we view it as aspirational and will come close in several areas, kind of." This will depend a great deal on states, since the federal government is apparently happy to basically sit this whole thing out and didn't want to release these recommendations at all. The guidelines also make it quite clear that it will be up to local authorities to decide what is "feasible, practical, acceptable, and tailored to the needs" of the community.

Much of what the CDC recommends will be impossible because of either A) human nature or B) expense. Many of these recommendations would be expensive, and schools are already expecting to be financially strapped in the fall. So critical questions will be what will the states actually require, and what will schools actually implement. The most important question will be what balance of practices will parents accept. Parents will want schools to feel safe-- but that also includes not feeling like a gulag. And, of course, some parents will not have much choice but to send their kids back, and they are rightfully going to have some feelings about that, too.

And of course we can talk about this all day, but September is still three months away, and three months is, right now, a long time. Remember three months ago? February? Boy, those were great times.

Betsy DeVos Has, In Fact, Become Arne Duncan 2.0

When this originally ran at Forbes.com, there was still some qujestion about the premise. Since then I've updated it with new info from DeVos herself.

For many conservatives, one of the greatest sins perpetrated by Obama’s secretary of education was using the powers of his office to bypass the legislature. Arne Duncan oversaw Race to the Top, which was instrumental in pushing Common Core and other preferred policies into schools across the country. Now Betsy DeVos is using nearly identical tactics to push for her own favorite educational ideas.

Race to the Top was a $4.5 billion program that was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a stimulus package meant to help reverse some of the effects of the Great Recession. States would have the opportunity to get education grants, but they would have to compete for the money by showing how closely they could adhere to the administration’s goals of college- and career-ready standards, high stakes testing, teacher evaluation, and data collection. The administration had tried and failed to get these goals passed into law through Congress. The financial pressure of the Great Recession and the looming penalties for the unachievable goals of No Child Left Behind (100% of students scoring above average on the Big Standardized Test) gave Duncan leverage to bypass Congress entirely. And rather than providing funding for all schools in all states, the program picked winners and losers.

Many conservative critics argued that RTTT and the waivers that followed were illegal. The backlash against Duncan was so strong that the successor of NCLB, the Every Student Succeeds Act, explicitly stripped the office of power to behave as the nation’s school superintendent.

Betsy DeVos has existed for most of her tenure between a rock and a hard place—on the one hand, believing firmly that the federal government should let all power over education rest with the state, and on the other hand, believing that traditional public education is a “dead end” and should be replaced by other mechanisms. She has tried to get Congress to back some of her ideas, such as the “Education Freedom Scholarships” plan, but with little success. Some observers have watched carefully to see if she would finally grab the levers of power in the same way her predecessor had.

She has finally reached for the levers.

Congress has passed a massive stimulus bill meant to reverse some of the effects of the pandemic shutdown. A good-sized chunk is aimed at education, and Secretary DeVos has announced that states will have a chance to win grants, but they will compete for money by showing how well they will implement some of the administration’s favored policies.

States may compete in “one of three categories.”

First, microgrants for families. This is an idea that DeVos has floated previously. “Microgrants” is a new name for vouchers, specifically education savings accounts, in which families are given tax dollars to spend on a wide variety of educational items or activities.

Second, cyber-schooling on a state scale, a la the Florida Virtual School, a program that has experienced troubles, but is seen as a model by cyber-schooling advocates like DeVos. 

The third option is, well, something. “New, field-initiated models for providing remote education not yet imagined...”

As with Duncan’s preferred policies, there is no body of evidence to suggest that these ideas are good investment of public tax dollars. Cyber-schooling on a large scale is repeatedly shown to be ineffective. ESA, besides involving the same old issue of public tax dollars going to private religious institutions, have also presented problems with oversight and accountability; if every family is spending tax dollars, how does the state monitor that? In one case, Arizona parents were found to have spent $700,000 of ESA money on things like cosmetics and clothes. 

The grant amounts are not huge, but the hope is that current financial pressures will push states to fight for the dollars by demonstrating their compliance with DeVos’s preferred programs. 

So once again, a secretary of education, frustrated that Congress will not give their policy preferences the force of law, uses the leverage of stimulus funds during national economic troubles to push states to adopt their policies, picking winners and losers for the funding. Arne Duncan may not agree with Betsy DeVos’s policies, but he certainly can’t criticize her methods.


Nor, for that matter, can she any longer criticize his. Since this piece originally ran, DeVos has done an interview with Cardinal Timothy Dolan (New York) who has been a leader in the Catholic Church's decision to shill for the current administration in exchange for money for their school system, a goal which DeVos fully embraces.

In that interview, well-covered here by Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat:

In an conversation with DeVos on SiriusXM radio, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Catholic archbishop of New York, suggested that the secretary was trying to “utilize this particular crisis to ensure that justice is finally done to our kids and the parents who choose to send them to faith-based schools,” including through a new program that encourages states to offer voucher-like grants for parents.

“Am I correct in understanding what your agenda is?” Dolan asks.

“Yes, absolutely,” DeVos responded.

She's pursued the goal of funneling public tax dollars to private schools (particularly religious ones) and now she is using Duncan's technique of using competitive grants and the levers of power that come with her office to push that policy. And she's no longer feeling shy about it. Mind you, as Barnum notes, she tried to blunt the criticism in an interview with Rick Hess (AEI):

“I don’t see any parallels, to be honest. Race to the Top was wholly designed by the Obama administration to advance their policy priorities,” she told Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “Our discretionary grant competition is completely the opposite. … Yes, it is focused on reforms, but they are reforms that any intellectually honest person would have a hard time arguing aren’t needed.”

"Completely the opposite?" That doesn't even make sense. Is her argument is that Duncan was doing it for bad reasons, but she is doing it for good ones? That Obama administration policies were for their own selfish reasons, but she's on a mission from a higher power? At root, it's the oldest politician argument in the world, the personal intellectual defense against charges of hypocrisy. Because it's only hypocrisy if you think the same rules apply to everyone, but if you believe that there are different rules for people who are right and people who are wronmg, well, then-- no hypocrisy at all.

Short form: DeVos has become Duncan. Heaven help public education if she stickms around for four more years.

19 Rules for Life (2020 Edition)

I first posted this list when I turned 60, and have made it an annual tradition to get it out on my birthday and re-examine it, edit it, and remind myself why I thought such things in the first place. I will keep my original observation-- that this list does not represent any particular signs of wisdom on my part, because I discovered these rules much in the same way that a dim cow discovers an electric fence.

1. Don't be a dick.

There is no excuse for being mean on purpose. Life will provide ample occasions on which you will hurt other people, either through ignorance or just because sometimes life puts us on collision courses with others and people get hurt. There is enough hurt and trouble and disappointment and rejection  naturally occurring in the world; there is no reason to deliberately go out of your way to add more. This is doubly in a time like the present, when everyone is already feeling the stress. 

There's a lesson here, somewhere.

2. Do better.

You are not necessarily going to be great. But you can always be better. You can always do a better job today than you did yesterday. Make better choices. Do better. You can always do better.

3. Tell the truth.

Words matter. Do not use them as tools with which to attack the world or attempt to pry prizes out of your fellow humans (see Rule #1). Say what you understand to be true. Life is too short to put your name to a lie. This does not mean that every word out of your mouth is some sort of Pronouncement from God. Nor does it mean you must be unkind. But you simply can't speak words that you know to be untrue. I'll extend this to social media as well: if it's not the truth, don't post it.

4. Seek to understand.

Do not seek comfort or confirmation. Do not simply look for ways to prove what you already believe. Seek to understand, and always be open to the possibility that what you knew to be true yesterday must be rewritten today in the light of new, better understanding. Ignoring evidence you don't like because you want to protect your cherished beliefs is not helpful.

5. Listen and pay attention.

Shut up, listen, watch, and pay attention. How else will you seek understanding? Watch carefully. Really see. Really hear. People in particular, even the ones who lie, will tell you who they are if you just pay attention. Your life is happening right now, and the idea of Special Moments just tricks us into ignoring a million other moments that are just as important. Also, love is not a thing you do at people-- to say that you care about someone even as you don't actually hear or see them is a lie.

6. Be grateful.

You are the recipient of all sorts of bounty that you didn't earn. Call it the grace of God or good fortune, but be grateful for the gifts you have been given. You did not make yourself. Nobody owes you anything, but you owe God/the Universe/fate everything. I have been hugely fortunate/blessed/privileged; I would have to be some sort of huge dope to grab all that life has given me and say, "This is mine. I made this. It's all because I'm so richly deserving." I've been given gifts, and the only rational response I can think of is to be grateful.

7. Mind the 5%

95% of life is silly foolishness that humans just made up and then pretended had some Great Significance. Only about 5% really matters, has real value. Don't spend energy, worry, fret, concern, time, stress on the other 95%.  The trick is that every person has a different idea of what constitutes the 5%, and sometimes the path to honoring and loving that other person is to indulge their 5%.

8. Take care of the people around you.

"What difference can one person make" is a dumb question. It is impossible for any individual human to avoid making a difference. Every day you make a difference either for good or bad. People cross your path. You either makes their lives a little better or you don't. Choose to make them better. The opportunity to make the world a better place is right in front of your face every day; it just happens to look like other people (including the annoying ones).

9. Commit.

If you're going to do it, do it. Commitment lives on in the days when love and passion are too tired to get off the couch. Also, commitment is like food. You don't eat on Monday and then say, "Well, that takes care of that. I don't need to think about eating for another week or so. " Commitment must be renewed regularly.

10. Shut up and do the work

While I recognize there are successful people who ignore this rule, this is my list, so these are my rules. And my rule is: Stop talking about how hard you're working or what a great job you're doing or what tremendous obstacles you're overcoming. In short, stop delivering variations on, "Hey, look at me do this work! Look at me!" Note, however, there is a difference between "Hey, lookit me do this work" and "Hey, look at this important work that needs to be done." Ask the ego check question-- if you could do the work under the condition that nobody would ever know that you did it, would you still sign up? If the answer isn't "yes," as yourself why not.

11.  Assume good intent.

Do not assume that everyone who disagrees with you is either evil or stupid. They may well be either, or both-- but make them prove it. People mostly see themselves as following a set of rules that makes sense to them. If you can understand their set of rules, you can understand why they do what they do. Doesn't mean you'll like it any better, but you may have a basis for trying to talk to them about it. And as a bare minimum, you will see yourself operating in a world where people are trying to do the right thing, rather than a hostile universe filled with senseless evil idiots. It's a happier, more hopeful way to see the world. But yeah-- there are still evil dopes in the world.

12. Don't waste time on people who are not serious.

Some people are just not serious people. They don't use words seriously. They don't have a serious understanding of other people or their actions or the consequences of those actions. They can be silly or careless or mean, but whatever batch of words they are tossing together, they are not serious about them. They are not guided by principle or empathy or anything substantial. Note: do not mistake grimness for seriousness and do not mistake joy and fun for the absence of seriousness. Also, yes, sometimes these not serious people can hold a position of power, even high political office. This is where the "waste" part becomes important; do spend time on them and particularly on dealing with the bad effects that come from not serious people with power, and make sure that time is well-invested. One of the great tricks of not serious people in power is to get you to waste time on them, to spend thinking, fretting, arguing acting about shiny foolishness, leaving them free for larger abuses that go unchecked.

13. Don't forget the point.

Whatever it is you're doing, don't lose sight of the point. Don't lose sight of the objective. It's basic Drivers Ed 101. If you look a foot in front of the car, you'll wander all over the road. If you stare right at the tree you want to miss, you will drive right into it. Where you look is where you go. Keep your eye on the goal. Remember your purpose. And don't try to shorthand it; don't imagine that you know the path that guarantees the outcome you want. Focus on the point (even if it's a goal that you may never reach) because otherwise you will miss Really Good Stuff because you  had too many fixed ideas about what the path to your destination is supposed to look like.

14. People are complicated (mostly)

People grow up. People learn things. People have a day on which their peculiar batch of quirks is just what the day needs. Awful people can have good moments, and good people can have awful moments-- it's a mistake to assume that someone is all one thing or another. Nobody can be safely written off and ignored completely. Corollary: nobody can be unquestioningly trusted and uncritically accepted all the time. People are a mixed mess of stuff. Trying to sort folks into good guys and bad guys is a fool's game.

15. Say "yes."

Doors will appear on your path. Open them even if they are not exactly what you were expecting or looking for. Don't simply fight or flee everything that surprises or challenges you (but don't be a dope about it, either). Most of what I've screwed up in life came from reacting in fear-- not sensible evaluation of potential problems, but just visceral fear. Most of what is good about my life has come from saying "yes." And most of that is not at all what I would have expected or planned for.

16. Make something.

Music, art, refurbished furniture, machinery. Something. 

17. Show up.

The first rule of all relationships is that you have to show up. And you have to fully show up. People cannot have a relationship with someone who isn't there, and that includes someone who looks kind of like they're there but who isn't really there. You have to show up. In the combination of retirement and parenting again, I'm reminded that this also means nor just being fully present, but remembering to show up at all. You put your head down, do the work, and then a week or two later you're suddenly remembering that it's been a while since you checked in with someone. Rule #2 applies.

18. Refine your core.

Know who you are. Strip the definition of yourself of references to situation and circumstance; don't make the definition about your car, your hair, your job, your house. The more compact your definition of self, the less it will be buffeted and beaten by changes in circumstance. Note: this is good work to do long before you, say, retire from a lifelong career.

19. How you treat people is about you, not about them.

It's useful to understand this because it frees you from the need to be a great agent of justice in the world, meting out rewards and punishments based on what you think about what people have done or said. It also gives you power back that you give up when your stance is that you have to wait to see what someone says or does before you react to it. Treat people well because that's how you should treat people, not because you have decided they deserve it. But don't be a dope; if someone shows you that they will always bite you in the hand, it's prudent to stop offering them your hand. 

Student-Run Start-Up Takes On Civics Education

When you pull up the front page for LexGen, it looks like many other slick, professional websites. It’s clean and open and focuses attention on the organization name and their goal— “to make civics education simple, fun and accessible.” Scroll through the site, and you see that LexGen has big goals. They are concerned about the level of civics education in this country and their rallying cry is nothing less than “Let’s change America.” Their goal is to create student-friendly curriculum materials and to set up chapters of the organization throughout the fifty states. Like most education start-ups, this one has a bold vision.

When you look at the pictures of the team members, however, you might be struck by how young this group of leaders looks—even for an ed tech start-up. That’s because they are all high school students.

LexGen founder Abhi Desai shared that he had become interested in politics and government in 8th grade, but as a high school student became discouraged at how little his peers knew and understood about civics and government. He spent last summer as a research intern at the William Monroe Trotter Collaborative for Social Justice at the Harvard Kennedy School. Last April, he launched LexGen.

The timing is propitious; just in the last month, education critics have pointed at the low history and civics marks on the National Assessment of Educational Progress and tried to explain the cause. For the last few years, there have been increasing calls for more civics education for K-12 students. 

Desai is a student in Phoenix, Arizona; he started LexGen as a smaller community initiative. With only a few similarly-interested teens at his own school, Desai reached out over social media and five other civically-engaged teens contacted him. A leadership team and a broader vision were born. LexGen’s leadership team comes from across the country, from California to Illinois. 

Their focus is on the 21st century concerns of their generation. Desai says, “This means going above and beyond, promoting not just basics but also skills such as media literacy. In an internet world, being able to evaluate sources of information is an integral part of civics.” LexGen also sees civics as a tool to increase “the engagement of minority and lower-income groups in the political system.”

LexGen started out developing units for classroom use as part of their plan to create an open source collection of resources that were clear and engaging (One sample is available on their site and others are available upon request). But when pandemic school closures began, the group pivoted more heavily to their other focus—short informational videos, some of which can be viewed on their Instagram account @projectlexgen. 

The organization has six chapters up and running and a panel of adults helping them manage the legalities. For adults who think that these students are overstepping in trying to design civics curriculum, Desai points out that this is a subject that students find easy to tune out as nonessential; “having the input of teens,” says Desai, “helps to mitigate this.” As a thirty-nine-year classroom veteran, I will add that having students who identify an issue and put their energy and passion into making their world better is just about as exciting as it gets. I have heard thousands of students complain that history is boring and stupid; it’s pretty awesome to see students set out to push back against that. In the end , part of the beauty of LexGen is that while it is promoting civics education, it is itself a civics project.

LexGen is nonpartisan, and the website provides all the necessary information, including a tab to help you register to vote. It’s just one other way that LexGen is trying to meet a need for more civics education in the US. Many critics have called for improved civics education in this country. This student-run nonprofit is answering the call.

Originally posted on Forbes.com

AEI's Back To School "Blueprint"

Everyone has ideas about how schools can re-open again, from thoughtful and responsible educators to gun-waving loons on the steps of capitals. So why not have the American Enterprise Institute take a shot at it by calling together a reformsters' roundtable to look at the issue.

The blueprint brought together a "task force" loaded with familiar names-- Chris Cerf, Sharif El-Mekki, Kaya Henderson, Candice McQueen, Nina Rees, Gerard Robinson, Andrew Rotherman, Hanna Skandera and John White, to name a few. But hey-- they aren't waving guns or yelling threats at people in masks, so that makes them part of the rational part of the right tilted world, so let's see what they've come up with.

Let me begin with a digression on the nature of thinky tanks

Rick Hess and John Bailey are the nominal authors of this, and I want to pause for a moment to note that they offer an actual explanation for why thinky tanks should even be messing with this kind of thing:

At times like this, think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute can play a constructive role. Because we are not burdened with the day-to-day responsibilities of serving students and families, we have the luxury to look further ahead. We can also bring together experts and veteran leaders who are versed in the particulars of what schools are facing and give them a platform to share their recommendations and guidance. Equally important, we can do all this with a degree of autonomy and independence, which can be more difficult for professional associations or partisan entities. 

The "this is our only job" argument is indeed part of the thinky tank raison d'etre; not having another day job does automatically give these groups an outsized voice in discussions about the work that keeps the people who actually do it too occupied to easily weigh in on it. It gives them the financial freedom to advocate for their point of view in outlets that don't pay a living wage for writing. And it gives them time for things like this.

"Autonomy and independence"? I don't really buy that part-- AEI, like most all thinky tanks, has its agenda. Think tanks are not research labs; they don't approach issues by asking, "I wonder what the answer is." Think tanks start with "Here's the answer we want to argue for-- let's craft an argument for it." Sometimes their chosen argument is a matter of their ideological bent; sometimes they are hired guns. And, of course, that's why they tend to assemble "experts" who fit the conclusion they want.

"We are not public health experts," they admit. Well, no. Nor are they education experts. Experts in the ins and outs of policy wonkery, but this task force is most devoid of anybody with real classroom experience (no, your two years with Teach For America and that charter you ran do not make you a teaching expert).

All that said-- the prospect of starting school up in the fall is scary and uncertain and unlike anything we've tackled lately. I firmly believe that solutions will be very, very specific and therefor the successful solutions will be crafted by the people there on the ground. But that doesn't mean we can't look at what this crew came up with.

Premises

The group assumes that school will open in the fall, but that we probably won't have a vaccine, so all manner of accommodations will be needed to deal with Covid-19. Those are fair assumptions.

Guiding principles? That decisions are best made by people close to the situation. That schools will have to figure out how to serve all students. That schools will need help from state and federal sources to provide resources that schools have had no time to prep for. Let me underline that--in Pennsylvania, teachers would have prepared their budgets for next fall around 6-8 months ago; meanwhile, districts don't get solid numbers for state financial support until this coming summer. It's a screwed up process that is extraordinarily ill-suited for the current problems.

Also, the health stuff piece is complicated and hard. I am summarizing brutally here.

So here are the areas that the committee recommends addressing

General Stuff

Coordinate with the community, mostly because the business of tracking and avoiding Covid-19 will occur everywhere. That means lots of good communication with the school system.

Also, regulatory flexibility. This is not wrong (PA, for instance, waived the 180 day requirement for this year), but it's a tricky issue. Of course, Reformsters have a whole list of school regulations that they would like to sweep away. So while the "hugely expedited timeline" for fiddling with regulations advocated here isn't wrong, it also requires some vigilance-- e.g., just how close Betsy DeVos came to saying that everyone could just scrap all regulations regarding students with special needs.

Privacy issues. For sure. I'm personally a bit shocked at how many people are adamant that they will not cooperate with contact tracing, a hugely important tool for figuring out where the disease is and where it's headed. Basically, someone asks you who you've been around since you got sick, and there are people out there determined to resist to the max. Add the issues surrounding juveniles and FERPA and HIPPA and this is going to be a contentious area. And it should be-- as with flexible regulations, a necessary response to the pandemic could be used to slip more shenanigans through.

School Operations

Everything will need to be deep cleaned, regularly. Protective gear for everyone. Playgrounds and sporting events may have to shut down. Not impossible, but not going to be cheap, either.

School meals? One of the areas of the blueprint where the committee basically says, "Yeah, this will be hard and schools are going to have to figure out what to do. Which is honest, but not very blueprint. Ditto for transportation. It's the fancy beltway equivalent of my local mechanic looking at engine pieces flying out through the hood of my car and saying, "Yeah, well, that right there's gonna be a problem."

Whole Child Supports

Educating the “whole child” is not a single set of courses, policies, or activities, but rather a mindset that should inform both school reopening plans and the support students receive.

Schools should consider an SEL needs assessment "to understand the full range of student and faculty needs" and I suppose an assessment could be any number of things, but I'm suspicious of any instrument that claims to know exactly what the SEL standards are and I'm doubly suspicious of anyone who needs these kinds of tools to connect with live human beings. The committee suggests connecting with "national organizations to provide the expertsie and support for schools and systems," and I'm not even sure who they could be talking about.

But here's a concrete solution. Since extracurriculars and sports are "critical" components of SEL, and schools will be hard-pressed to continue them, then let's privatize them. I am not sure how that helps-- do sports played by private athletic associations somehow involve more distancing? Also, one of the SEL benefits of extracurriculars and sports is that these groups are identified with the school itself (even more hugely true in rural areas like mine).

They do correctly identify mental health supports as a biggy. I'm not sure we can over-estimate some of the problems stemming from social distancing and isolation itself; there are students who haven't interacted with anyone but immediate family members for weeks, and that's likely to add to any stressors they're already dealing with. Add in financial issues, job loss, and plain old toxic family dynamics, and some students will be returning with huge amounts of emotional baggage.

So hire more counselors. And sign up for that telemedicine thing, because an internet counselor might help.

School Personnel

Here, more than anywhere in the plan, the group misses the boat.

Plenty of staff is over 55, so the group suggests getting rid of them. Early retirement incentives. Reassign the olds. This will obviously create some staffing shortages, so they have some thoughts. One is to "relax" class size regulations, presumably to allow larger classes, which is problematic for many reasons, not the least of which is that maintaining social distancing in a classroom of 100 students is nearly impossible unless you're holding class on a football field.

They suggest relaxing regulations in order to recruit from neighboring states-- but if all the states are going to be experiencing this shortage, which state would have all the excess teachers? And of course, that old favorite-- loosening certification requirements. All this to get the older teachers out of there, which is coincidentally a lo9ng-time goal of this crowd and their arguments against seniority protections.

There's another issue here as well. So we retire Mrs. McGeezer for her own safety, so that if Pat brings the virus to school, she won't get it. But what if Pat just gives it to Chris, another student who then takes it home to the grandparents. Removing the old folks doesn't really reduce the spread. Most importantly, since this report was whipped up, evidence has increased that plenty of the under-55 crowd are in danger from the virus as well.

The group would also like to take this opportunity to reframe the old argument that contractual obligations limit the district's freedom to Do Stuff. So they'd still like to see contractual limits on schedules, class sizes and work hours to go away, only now the idea is that this would be for the teachers' own good.

Money is going to be tight, so the group suggests looking for corners to cut and ways to right-size the district. Also, look to philanthropists to help plug the gaps. Sure.

Academics

There will be problems, particularly if there are more shutdowns.

Some of the suggestions for coping are a little silly, like getting ahold of the curriculum provider for help in using the publisher's materials to identify student learning gaps, modify instruction, etc. Is there any particular reason to think that book publishers have a better handle on current issues than actual classroom teachers?

Also, have printed copies of materials, and make adaptation for students with special needs. Yes, there is much of this report that may intend to just be thorough, but comes across as suggesting that teachers are dullards and dolts. Recommendations stop short of "Don't forget to eat food" or "The sun generally rises in the East," but they comer pretty close at times.

I do like this one-- have drills for internet education stuff, like fire drills. Which makes sense except that every teacher has a story about that time that they checked and checked and checked their tech, but when showtime came, the whole thing crashed. (See also: a few thousand frustrated AP test takers who had no trouble with the practice tests but whose actual test failed).

Time? Well, alternate days, longer days, longer years, summer school. Also, they'd like policymakers to consider using this opportunity to go with competency based education over seat time.

And once schools open-- test, test, test to see where students are. I just addressed this elsewhere, but the short answer is that teachers do this every regular fall already and now how to manage intake of new students, thanks. But as good fans of high stakes testing, these guys are afraid that by canning the Big Standardized Test this spring, we've missed all sorts of super-important data that's unavailable from any other source. They should relax.

Distance Learning

They don't call for replacement, but it's "better than nothing" and can support instruction. But now that we've been forced to use it, maybe check to see what worked or not.

Connectivity matters, and the report calls for every student to have a device and the "connectivity they need," which is a hell of a big ask. They also recommend take home mobile ho0t spots, which is not a solution if there's no connectivity for the hot spot either--it's like giving hooking their tv up to coaxial cable that isn't connected to anything on the other end.There are a lot of folks who have no connection, and a lot of other folks who have a crappy connection, and because connectivity is the realm, mostly, of private businesses, that's not going to change soon. It's just not cost effective to run the necessary infrastructure miles off the beaten path just to reach a handful of families. It's the same problem as mail delivery, electrical connectivity, and roads--there will not be a solution until government gets in the drivers seat. High speed high quality internet connection should be a public utility. Until it is, the solutions they propose are not actually solutions.

They also call for professional development, and here we hit a curious problem-- who exactly is going to deliver the training. Cyber-schools have had years and years to devote single-mindedly to the challenge of distance learning, and they have no real success to point to. There are teachers out there who have got a good handle on it, but they will be hard to locate and hard to connect to all the teachers who need the assistance.

When it comes to distance learning, mostly what we've got is a tool that few folks really know how to use effectively.

Blueprint?

Well, maybe a little. As is often the case on Food Network competition shows, this might have worked better if you hadn't given it that name. Because a blueprint is specific detailed instructions, everything you need in order to build something. This is not that. It's more of a List Of Things Somebody Is Going To Have To Figure Out, and that's really the most I would expect from a bunch of reform advocates, faux education experts, and thinky tankers. The detailed plans are going to have to come from people who are actually there on the ground, doing the work.

Some of the things on this list are obvious, some hardly explain anything, and some are off the mark. Read through if you like, but understand that far more useful things will come from local teachers and administrators, even if they aren't wrapped up in slick reports.