“People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

This week, amidst great fanfare, the State General Assembly came to a close. For many, it couldn’t have come fast enough.

I would argue that this year’s legislative session produced an overabundance of bad bills. Especially when it came to public education. From bills that devoted millions in resources to a problem that we can’t even measure, learning loss, to attacking transgender athletes, whose numbers we can’t even measure, this year legislators favored bills that favored emotion over minds.

The bizarre moments for me were when the General Assembly ignored conservative tenets despite being a conservative supermajority. The size of the government was grown. Power was shifted away from local communities to the state. The state enacted laws that seemed to indicate that local communities were incapable of solving their own issues without the heavy hand of a central government. It’s almost like Democrats without book knowledge were running the state.

The senate government even went as far as trying to pick winners and losers, going as far as to CONTINUE READING: THE ROLE OF SCIENCE AND HISTORY – Dad Gone Wild

SACRAMENTO—Even through the challenges of remote learning and the COVID-19 pandemic, California teachers continue to find ways to bring out the curiosity, excellence, critical thinking, and problem-solving abilities in students. Today, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond honored six exceptional mathematics and science teachers, naming them as finalists from California for the 2021 Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching (PAEMST).

“This has been a year full of significant challenges for students—personal, economic, and social. The teachers recognized today are giving their students the tools to help them tackle difficulties, find creative solutions, ask questions, and be the problem-solvers we need for the challenges of tomorrow,” Thurmond said. “These incredible educational mentors are driving preparation in math, technology, engineering, and science, including computer science, that connect students with the world around them and help them grow their skills to persevere in any endeavor.”

The California Department of Education (CDE) partners with the California Mathematics Council and the California Association of Science Educators to recruit and select nominees for the PAEMST program. Each applicant must display subject mastery, appropriate use of instructional methods and strategies, lifelong learning, and leadership in education outside the classroom. Each candidate is also required to submit a 30-minute video lesson in support of their application.

Mathematics Finalists

Kristen Donovan, Woodbridge High School, Irvine Unified School District, Irvine

Kristen has been teaching for 13 years and has had experience teaching Math II, Enhanced Math II, Enhanced Math III, Advanced Placement Calculus BC, and Math Foundations. Kristen previously worked as a Teacher on Special Assignment, where she built relationships with secondary math teachers across the district and led district math teams in creating new math classes, implementing integrated math courses, and reexamining high school grading practices. She also mentored teacher candidates and two early career teachers. Kristen is a National Board-Certified Teacher and has presented at the California Mathematics Council—South Conference as well as the annual National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Conference in Washington, District of Columbia in 2018. The lesson Kristen taught in her Enhanced Math III Honors class was on students discovering the relationship between Cartesian graphs and their corresponding polar graphs.

Maria Garcia, Richard Henry Dana Middle School, Wiseburn School District, Hawthorne

Maria is a grade eight Algebra I teacher. She has been teaching for 20 years and is currently the Math Department Chair. Maria was a previous California PAEMST State Finalist in 2019. The lesson Maria submitted helped students discover patterns in quadratics leading to conceptual understanding of completing the square. In addition to her teaching schedule, she hosts Math Saturday Events for parents and students. Maria has created the Girls Who Code Club at her school and has led the Mommy and Me coding event. She also launched a Hack-a-Challenge in which students from grades five through twelve came together to work on building/creating a robot that could successfully clean the surrounding beaches in the community.

Stephanie Paris, Granada Hills Charter High School, Los Angeles Unified School District, Granada Hills

Stephanie has been teaching for six years. The lesson Stephanie submitted for her Algebra I class explored exponential functions and examined patterns of growth and decay. She is a Master Teacher Fellow with Math for America, Los Angeles. As a Fellow, she has provided professional learning to teachers across the district and state. She mentored student teachers and helped teachers develop Project Based Learning units. Stephanie also co-taught classes with a science teacher who helped create interdisciplinary projects that connected mathematics and science, specifically Algebra I and Physics. During 2020, she facilitated two professional learning courses where she helped teachers create virtual math lessons and build community relationships during distance learning.

Science Finalists

Garrett Lim, Walnut High School, Walnut Valley Unified School District, Walnut

Garrett has been teaching for 14 years. He helped develop and currently teaches the school’s first-ever International Baccalaureate Higher Level Chemistry course. Garrett was part of a district committee tasked with brainstorming how the Common Core curriculum could be implemented and integrated within the science classroom. The topic of his lesson was how different materials have different specific heat capacities and its relationship to how they feel.

Catherine Messenger, Los Gatos High School, Los Gatos-Saratoga Union High School District, Los Gatos

Catherine teaches Advanced Placement (AP) Biology along with a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Research class. She has been teaching for 15 years. She was the Science Department Chair from 2015–2020. Previously, she also led the Los Gatos High School team participating in a multi-school program to launch a corrosion of iron experiment to the International Space Station. Catherine also shared advanced science research curriculum with San Francisco Bay Area teachers. The topic of her lesson focused on the properties of carbon and water.

Zachary Moore, Laguna Blanca School, Hope Elementary School District, Santa Barbara

Zachary has been teaching for 22 years and also teaches Physical Science, AP Physics C: Mechanics, Introductory Engineering, and Advanced Engineering. Zachary was a recipient of the Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching as a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Integration Specialist in 2019. As the early kindergarten through grade twelve STEM Coordinator, he developed the middle/upper school elective sequence in computer science, engineering, and robotics, which also integrated 3D printers, computer automated drawings, Arduino processors, and design thinking through professional development for fellow faculty. The topic for his lesson served as an introduction to the energy unit and contextualizes personal power usage.

For more information, visit the CDE Presidential Awards for Math and Science Teaching web page or the PAEMST website.

# # # #

Tony Thurmond — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5602, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

“Late last week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued updated guidance on school reopening, saying that 3 feet, not 6 feet, of physical distancing between students was sufficient in most elementary schools—regardless of the level of community spread of COVID-19.

“At the same time that CDC officials were updating school policy, they were also warning that B117, a variant strain 50% more transmissible than the wild-type virus, would likely become the dominant strain in the United States by April. In some states, such as Florida and California, the variant, which was first detected in the United Kingdom, already accounts for 25% of cases.

“Now several experts are concerned that schools may be opening during an inflection point in the pandemic and are being misguided about how to do so.

CDC, states struggle with school openings

“Across America almost all schools closed in March and April of 2020 as the pandemic entered its first wave and peaked in places like New York City. A barrier to reopening in the fall, especially in crowded, urban school districts, was that classrooms could not accommodate students with the CDC-recommended 6 feet of physical distancing.

“The CDC said mounting evidence shows little difference in school transmission rates when students are separated by 3 or 6 feet, and it points to mounting research on student mental health, physical health, and even parental job security that shows that in-person instruction is superior for most American children and families.

“‘It's a balance,’ said Ruth Lynfield, MD, Minnesota state epidemiologist. Minnesota, along with Michigan, and North Carolina, has seen school-related B117 outbreaks spread into the community in recent weeks. ‘We are in a race to vaccinate as variants spread, and currently kids and their CONTINUE READING: glen brown: "Several experts are concerned that schools may be opening during an inflection point in the pandemic and are being misguided about how to do so"

With the U.S. death toll from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic topping 541,000, the nation's two largest teachers unions responded cautiously on Friday to new guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revising its recommendation for physical distancing between K-12 students in classrooms—who are all wearing face masks—down from six feet to just three feet, based on recent research.

"We are concerned that the CDC has changed one of the basic rules for how to ensure school safety without demonstrating certainty that the change is justified by the science and can be implemented in a manner that does not detract from the larger long-term needs of students."
—Becky Pringle, NEA"While we hope the CDC is right and these new studies convince the community that the most enduring safety standard of this pandemic—the six-foot rule—can be jettisoned if we all wear masks," said American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten. "We will reserve judgment until we review them, especially as they apply in districts with high community spread and older buildings with ventilation challenges."

National Education Association (NEA) president Becky Pringle said that "for the sake of public trust and clarity, we urge the CDC to provide far more detail about the rationale for the change from six feet to three feet for students in classrooms, clearly and publicly account for differences in types of school environments, new virus variants, differences in mitigation compliance, and how study participants were tested for the virus."

"We are concerned that the CDC has changed one of the basic rules for how to ensure school safety without demonstrating certainty that the change is justified by the science and can be implemented in a manner that does not detract from the larger long-term needs of students," Pringle explained.

The CDC now says that U.S. elementary school students should be at least three feet apart while in classrooms, as should middle and high schools students, except in areas of elevated community transmission, where the six-foot recommendation still applies CONTINUE READING: Teachers Unions Want More Details on New CDC Guidance of Desks Only 3 Feet Apart | Common Dreams News

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that students attending in-person instruction only need to stay 3 feet apart, rather than 6, as long as universal masking is maintained.

The agency’s new guidance, released Friday, recommends 3 feet of separation at elementary, middle and high schools in communities with low, moderate or substantial transmission. But the agency says middle school and high school students should stay 6 feet apart in communities where test positivity rates are 10 percent or higher and cohorting — when groups of students are kept together with the same staff throughout the day — is not available.

Six feet of distance is still in all schools recommended for staff, between staff and students, in common areas, when students are eating and during activities that require increased exertion such as gym class, choir or band practice.

The change comes more than a month after the Biden administration announced its school reopening guidelines Feb. 12. The CDC’s advice then recommended schools “establish policies and implement structural interventions to promote physical distance of at least six feet” and that “cohorting or podding” could help minimize exposure.

The agency soon after came under intense scrutiny by public health officials and scientists across the country who argued it was safe for schools to maintain 3 feet of physical distance to keep children safe. The dialogue was part of a larger conversation about how the agency’s guidelines included too many restrictions and would limit schools’ ability to reopen.

In a testimony this week before the House Energy and Commerce Oversight CONTINUE READING: CDC cuts school distancing requirements to 3 feet - POLITICO

John Thompson writes below about the ongoing confusion about whether it is safe to reopen schools. Trump and DeVos demanded that schools reopen without the resources to reopen safely. Now, the debate continues, with a mixture of science, hope, and fear. I am not a public health expert, and I offer no advice. But common sense suggests that teachers should be vaccinated first, along with other essential workers. Teaching in a room with a large group of students all day long, it seems to me, is materially different than shopping in a store where one enters and leaves within 15-20 minutes. If we expect teachers to be frontline workers, they should get the vaccinations and PPE equipment they need.

He writes:

Today we’re in a situation in regard to reopening schools that is similar and different to that of the first six months of the Covid pandemic. Then, it seemed likely that schools could reopen by the fall semester as long as we respected public health evidence, and set smart priorities, such as reopening schools not bars. But Trump and his acolytes politicized the pandemic, even leading the way to super-spreadings by holding crowded political and CONTINUE READING: John Thompson: The Debate About Reopening Should Not Be Politicized | Diane Ravitch's blog

I am getting dizzy from the whipsawing of information and advice about whether, when, and how schools should reopen. They were open in Europe, and we envied Europe; then they were closed in Europe. Schools open, then close, then open again. I am not a scientist so I offer no advice. The scientists agree that schools can open safely if they observe the medical protocols. If I were a teacher, I would want to be vaccinated first, but that is not what the scientists say here. Teachers are in an enclosed space with students most of the day; they are essential workers. Why not prioritize them for vaccination?

This story appeared in the New York Times:

Many of the common preconditions to opening schools — including vaccines for teachers or students, and low rates of infection in the community — are not necessary to safely teach children in person, a consensus of pediatric infectious disease experts said in a new survey.

Instead, the 175 experts — mostly pediatricians focused on public health — largely agreed that it was safe enough for schools to be open to elementary students for full-time and in-person instruction now. Some said that was true even in communities where Covid-19 infections were CONTINUE READING: New York Times: Scientists Say Schools Should Reopen | Diane Ravitch's blog

President Joe Biden promised that his administration would lead with “science and truth,” a continuation of a campaign message that he’d prioritize and elevate government scientists, in a sharp break from the Trump administration's pandemic response.

But nearly a month into Biden’s presidency, the push to reopen schools is laying bare the thorny balancing act between science and politics. After promising to reopen schools by his 100th day in office, Biden's already walked back the pledge to just elementary and middle schools, and then, as White House press secretary Jen Psaki said this week, "the majority of schools — so more than 50 percent."

The shifts reflect the challenges the White House faces in restoring a sense of normalcy. Blanket vows to “follow the science” create expectations of a fixed path toward defeating the coronavirus, without factoring in the inherent politics.

“You can take science and reach a number of different policy conclusions and policy directions that are different, but are still true to the science,” said Rich Besser, a former acting Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The CDC on Friday released guidance for reopening schools, outlining strategies to safely bring students and teachers back while mitigating the spread of the virus. The CDC was clear, though, that it was not mandating schools reopen. That, for the moment, circumvented the bitter fight that's pitted teachers seeking strong safeguards as a precondition for returning to CONTINUE READING: Biden’s follow-the-science mantra on school meets political reality - POLITICO

After four years of science-denial, Biden is introducing a new era. Science and facts are in again. Truth matters. No alternative facts. Ignorance and stupidity are no longer honored or tolerable.

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. said on Saturday that he was “always going to lead with science and truth” as he announced top science and technology officials on his White House staff, reaffirming trust in the kind of expert research that the Trump administration often ignored or disdained.

Extolling what he called “some of the most brilliant minds in the world,” Mr. Biden said his new team’s mission would be to ask: “How can we make the impossible possible?” He vowed to elevate scientific research and thinking on topics like the coronavirus, cancer research, climate change, clean-energy jobs, artificial intelligence, 3-D printing and other fast-advancing technologies.

The appointees included Eric S. Lander, whom Mr. Biden will nominate to be director of the White House Office of CONTINUE READING: Biden Announces: Science and Facts Are Back! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Early on in the pandemic the thinking was that masks were not necessary. In fact, there is a video circulating online that shows Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), saying “there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.” Fauci’s remarks were made on March 8, 2020 and do not represent his current stance or the national conversation about the importance of face coverings nor the updated guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That was then, this is now.

In early November, a staff writer for the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) argued that “An emerging body of evidence suggests that young children do not spread the coronavirus easily. Does that mean it’s safe to bring them back to class?” Here were the core arguments of the piece:

• The virus spreads in schools — but schools are rarely superspreaders
• School outbreaks typically come from the community — not vice versa
• Children transmit the virus — but not how adults do

For months, the common conversation in the media and research was that schools were not heavily documented sites for Covid or superspreading events. But I kept hearing anecdotally from the field that the situation was different. A friend that works in a Texas school district was infected in a public school by another teacher. The friend relayed that the teachers were rapidly getting sick in her school, but the students were not showing symptoms. This is not the only Texas superspreader event that flew under the radar. The Texas State Board of Education hosted their own superspreader event when they were forced to meet in person by Board leadership to make a political point. The argument made was if the State Board of Education couldn’t meet in person, why would school districts across the state of Texas agree to do so? While I am not an epidemiologist, anecdotally, this information seems quite problematic compared to the public discourse about school reopening. The AAMC article did include an important caveat and/or hedging.

The early data suggest that schools can reopen safely under certain conditions, but the analyses come with follow-up questions and multiple caveats — the most basic of which is some form of, “That’s what we know so far.” “We’re nine to 10 months into a brand-new disease,” cautions Helen Bristow, MPH, program manager of Duke’s ABC Science Collaborative, which guides schools on COVID-19 safety. “We’re regularly learning something we didn’t know before.”

That was then and this is now.

So what is the latest? The Guardian reported on January 2, 2021 that Symptomless cases in schools could be key driver in spread of Covid-19. Please read that again. They report that “Up to 70% of schoolchildren infected with coronavirus may not know they have it until after a positive test result.” Please read that again. In my own experience, I have heard many stories of people testing negative and then not soon after testing positive and/or having symptoms. Has this “negative” test situation happened to your friends and family too? This is now being borne out in the broader data.

A key factor in the spread of Covid-19 in schools is symptomless cases. Most scientists believe that between 30% and 40% of adults do not display any Covid symptoms on the day of testing, even if they have been infected. For children, however, this figure is higher. “It is probably more like 50% for those in secondary school while for boys and girls in primary school, around 70% may not be displaying symptoms even though they have picked up the virus,” says Professor Martin Hibberd of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The Guardian

We don’t know what we don’t know. Proponents of immediate school reopening often point to contact tracing and testing. However, in the United States the number of cases has rapidly overwhelmed contact tracing and testing. It’s hard to argue that testing and contact tracing is currently adequate for K-12 schools.

The US Department of Education has absolutely failed in its responsibility to track the spread of Covid in higher education and K-12. LITERALLY FAILED. Besty DeVos said it was not her job. In the absence of leadership from Betsy DeVos and the US Department of Education, the free press of our nation have stepped into that glaring gap. The COVID Monitor is a US News database that tracks coronavirus cases in K-12 schools. They’ve shown there had been nearly 250,000 student and staff cases across the United States since Aug. 1— and that data doesn’t include the massive December surge. Read that again. 250,000. While those have been tied to schools, we also know that more than 1 million children have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in the United States.

The most distressing part of this pandemic is the death. Every time I have been forwarded an article by a reader of Cloaking Inequity about the death of an educator, I have posted it on my Twitter to make point. Educators are being infected with Covid and they are dying.

Inaccurate, unproven claims have filled the data gap, aiming to assuage anxieties about reopening schools for in-person classes, with seemingly little regard for the potential impacts the virus may have on the students, staff and communities affected by such choices. With uncertainties about the long-term effects of infection on an individual’s health, the evidence of children being asymptomatic spreaders and the increase in pediatric cases recently, public pleas for closing schools have grown.

In guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, schools are called a “potential source of COVID-19 outbreaks, due to the number of individuals intermingling in close proximity for extended periods of time.”

It makes sense when you think about it. Stuff a bunch of people into a confined space for eight hours a day and the likelihood of catching the virus increases. 

And internationally, data indicates how quickly schools may become superspreaders.

In Israel, for example, many schools closed due to COVID-19 outbreaks only two weeks after the country fully reopened classrooms. Districts in Georgia and Mississippi experienced similar scenarios when they started school in August. 

A recent study from the United Kingdom in November also showed a decline in cases in every age group except, apparently, among school-aged children and teens.

US News

Yes, internationally, they have already figured out in the public consciousness that schools are platforms for superspreading. It is very clear that Covid has taken advantage of some of American’s most challenging traits— denial and hubris— in the debate about reopening schools.

So what does the national data reported in early December by US News tell us about the situation with communities, schools, and Covid?

• Their analysis of their national data shows that the high school student case rate (13 per 1,000 students enrolled for in-person classes) is nearly three times that of elementary school students (4.4 per 1,000). 
• They observed that the higher the community case rate, the higher the school district case rate, as depicted in the graphic below.

• They found that case rates for school districts are often much higher than case rates in the community. Meanwhile, within their data, a recent review of school district case rates based on total enrollment showed that less than 3% of all districts reporting two or more cases met a lowest-risk, case-rate threshold advised by the CDC for communities.
• They also show that the percentage of students enrolled for in-person classes directly impacts the case rate in school districts. A recent study based on their data found school districts can reduce COVID-19 case rates by about 40% by reducing the in-person class size by 50%.
• Based on data from Florida, their data show that school districts without mask mandates have an average case rate (12.1 per 1,000) nearly twice as high as those with mask mandates (6.9 per 1,000).

Do you come away from this independent national data thinking that schools are safe to reopen under current circumstances and do not contribute to the spread of the virus?

Also, there is worrisome new data. @DrEricDing say “new B117 Covid variant is not only more infectious, it’s potentially more infectious in children 0-9 (+24%) and 10-19 (+14%), and less among 60-79, compared to common strains. More sobering—the R estimate is much higher.” See more at this thread h/t to LH.

Arguments about social and mental well-being of students due to online learning have been made by experts in various fields. However, now that we have data, research and experience strongly indicates we need to prioritize the health of communities in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. We must do this until ALL states prioritize the vaccination of educators and provide the financial and strategic resources to reopen safely. States should immediately prioritize this goal so that we can both address the social and mental well-being of students as well as protect the health of the nation.

We’ve seen how problematic and absent leadership has led to less than a quarter of Covid vaccines (as of right now) being used for vaccinations in Florida, Texas and other states. Yet many states are insisting and placing enormous political and financial pressure on school to reopen. It’s a severe and gross failure of leadership to allow vaccines to sit on shelves and at the same time demand educators reopen schools. I have been impressed by the leadership in Kentucky prioritizing educators for inoculation as a high priority group so that schools can reopen more safely. Furthermore, absent inoculating all educators and providing the financial and strategic resources for districts to reopen schools safely (i.e. PPE, smaller class sizes etc.) for students and families, President-elect Joe Biden’s promise to open all schools in the first 100 days is a problem and a national disaster waiting to happen. I am sure President-Elect Joe Biden is aware that Secretary of Education-Designate Cardona pressured schools to reopen in Connecticut throughout 2019. So, considering the current knowledge in the data and science, it is my hope that Biden and Cardona get it right on school reopening in the upcoming months, otherwise history and voters won’t be kind.

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More than 40 years ago the brilliant musician Stevie Wonder released an interesting and highly relevant song called: "Superstition". Part of the lyrics to the song are as follows: 

By Paul Horton.

In the introduction to his widely used introductory text, The Scientific Revolution, Steven Shapin, a professor of the History of Science at Harvard, caused quite a stir in mid 1990s academic and public circles when he provocatively proclaimed that “[t]here was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution,” effectively challenging the accepted paradigm in the field that pushed the idea that what made Europe exceptional was a series of discoveries in the fields of astronomy and mathematics that culminated in Newton’s Principia.

Indeed, if we are to listen to contemporary historians of science describe their field today, twenty-five years beyond Shapin’s declaration of independence quoted above, it would seem that they are describing a different history altogether.

The former Director of the Max Planck Institute for Science in Berlin and presently a member of the Committee of Social Thought at the University of Chicago, Lorraine Daston, maintains that current history teachers are forced into “the uncomfortable position of teaching our students a narrative that we know is gravely flawed if not outright false, as shown by three decades of the best research in the field.” (Daston, “The History of Science as the History of Knowledge,” Know V1N1, Spring 2017, 133). As Director of the Max Planck Institute, Daston assembled a strong group of scholars who dug deep into the global origins of scientific ideas that created the foundations for the theories, calculations, observations of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton that concluded that Islamic, Chinese, and South Asian achievements that were known by these exceptional progenitors of the European Scientific Revolution. And similar “soul-searching” is presently going on in other fields according to Daston:

Medievalists point out that the traditional division between “Latin” and “Muslim” science is nonsensical when referring to intellectual traditions with common origins and countless exchanges…; historians of science and empire argue that it is CONTINUE READING: Interrogating European Exceptionalism: The Scientific Revolution - Living in Dialogue