For several days now, the New York City Department of Education’s COVID-19 case map has had a significant error: on this dashboard, a number of schools are erroneously located in Colombia. Like, the South American country.
Read More
The COVID-19 Data Dispatch has, clearly, been pretty focused on school reopening in recent weeks. But our “Opening” project is primarily retrospective, looking back at schools that were successful last school year. This fall, the Delta variant and additional political pressures have made reopening success even harder to achieve.
Read More
P.S. 705 went above and beyond New York City school reopening guidance, with a particular reliance on the city’s surveillance testing program. This elementary school had a 55% enrollment by the end of the 2020-2021 school year, above the city’s average of about 40%, and made it through the year with just 11 total cases — and zero closures.
Read More
The divided communities made the news — but not all U.S. schools were fighting grounds. In fact, many districts managed to bring the majority of their students back into classrooms without breeding a dreaded COVID-19 outbreak. Here, at the COVID-19 Data Dispatch, we’re sharing stories from five such districts. The series will be published in installments: one profile a week for the next five weeks, followed by a conclusion with overall insights and lessons for fall 2021.
Read MoreVaccine options for children ages 12 and older (now Pfizer, soon Moderna) make in-person education a safe bet for a lot of families. But younger students will likely have to wait much longer for their shots. As a result, regular testing will continue to be a key safety strategy… but school testing data continue to be hard to come by.
Read More
On November 18, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city’s schools would close until further notice. The NYC schools discrepancy is indicative of an American education system that is still not collecting adequate data on how COVID-19 is impacting classrooms—much less using these data in a consistent manner.
Read MoreNew school data for mid-September include reopening indicators from the CDC, New York City, and Los Angeles.
Read MoreNew York state is launching a dashboard that will provide data on COVID-19 in public schools. This dataset promises to be much more complete than any other state’s reporting on COVID-19 in schools. But I haven’t been able to closely examine these data yet, because the dashboard has yet to come online.
Read MoreSince last week’s issue, four more forms of official state reporting on COVID-19 in schools have come to my attention. Plus, national sources on reopening plans and college cases.
Read More