ok, couple of things: first, I do want to share these, as it’s among the first attempts to comprehensively look at what has happened so far: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/schools-arent-superspreaders/616669/

This is the project @AASAHQ is in on (that I suggested @MASchoolsK12 could share data with), as, nationally, there isn’t centralized data collection.

Let’s note that it would be great to find that schools aren’t super-spreaders (and, as has been noted elsewhere, there are places that have been safely running schools in other countries)

(Some out there seem to think folks are cheering on coronavirus contagion in schools, and...that is a disturbing perspective)

Anyway, the piece itself notes what it is based on: “data on almost 200,000 kids in 47 states from the last two weeks of September”

Again, it’s more than we’ve had! That’s good.

There’s about 56.4 million students in K-12 education in the U.S. this fall (that’s U.S. DoE numbers).

More to the point, what the dashboard has isn’t a representative sample of the U.S.

And (again as noted in the article, though not to that end): the big city systems aren’t back in person.

And this interacts with race and with class in the ways that public education in the U.S. does: which districts are taking which precautions and what can be afforded and what are the choices both policy makers and parents are making for kids.

The headline thus definitely seems premature, and the conclusions pretty broadly drawn for what is know.

I offer this because I am seeing this odd navigation tending almost towards “see, it isn’t that bad!” in some ed circles in the rush to do What Is Right For Other People’s Children (yikes)

@threadreaderapp unroll