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History is Coming for the School Closurists

History is Coming for the School Closurists

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The the quite liberal The Economist:

https://www.economist.com/international/2022/07/07/covid-learning-loss-has-been-a-global-disaster

From the even more liberal The Atlantic:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/covid-learning-loss-remote-school/661360/

Snarky thread from liberal Nate Silver ripping the Dem-come-lately "freedom" lovers.

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1545816161241051136?s=20&t=D5G7cqnnphIeQvKaLU810A

Also calling school closures "one of the most predictable policy mistakes of all time."

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1545776204388610050?s=20&t=D5G7cqnnphIeQvKaLU810A

Forget the first few months. I get it. We were panicked and had no idea what to do.

But there was no excuse to have not opened schools in the Fall of 2020.

And certainly, certainly, CERTAINLY, those who kept schools closed after the teachers had vaccine access (Jan/Feb, 2021), made a policy error for the ages.


@sh76 said
The the quite liberal The Economist:

https://www.economist.com/international/2022/07/07/covid-learning-loss-has-been-a-global-disaster

From the even more liberal The Atlantic:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/covid-learning-loss-remote-school/661360/

Snarky thread from liberal Nate Silver ripping the Dem-come-lately "freedom" lovers.

https://twitt ...[text shortened]... ools closed after the teachers had vaccine access (Jan/Feb, 2021), made a policy error for the ages.
I would love to see an actual cost/benefit analysis taking into account how many deaths, hospitalizations and sicknesses were avoided by this measure v. the ................................................. what actually? Some test scores weren't as high?

I respected Nate a lot more before he became a simple minded COVID minimizer.

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@no1marauder said
I would love to see an actual cost/benefit analysis taking into account how many deaths, hospitalizations and sicknesses were avoided by this measure v. the ................................................. what actually? Some test scores weren't as high?

I respected Nate a lot more before he became a simple minded COVID minimizer.
This one, done pre-vaccine even, calculated about a 10:1 cost:benefit ratio for closing schools.

https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2020/12/16/school-reopening-covid-phl


As far as I can tell, everyone who has seriously studied the issue has concluded similarly.

e.g.,


https://www.adb.org/publications/cost-benefit-analysis-closure-schools-covid-19-philippines

https://www.economicsreview.org/post/how-keeping-schools-closed-does-more-harm-than-good-a-cost-benefit-analysis

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8909310/

I can't find a study that concluded otherwise.


@sh76 said
As far as I can tell, everyone who has seriously studied the issue has concluded similarly.

e.g.,


https://www.adb.org/publications/cost-benefit-analysis-closure-schools-covid-19-philippines

https://www.economicsreview.org/post/how-keeping-schools-closed-does-more-harm-than-good-a-cost-benefit-analysis

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8909310/

I can't find a study that concluded otherwise.
I can't do links from my phone but do tell: how many dead folks equal a 1 point drop in SAT scores?

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@sh76 said
The the quite liberal The Economist:

https://www.economist.com/international/2022/07/07/covid-learning-loss-has-been-a-global-disaster

From the even more liberal The Atlantic:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/covid-learning-loss-remote-school/661360/

Snarky thread from liberal Nate Silver ripping the Dem-come-lately "freedom" lovers.

https://twitt ...[text shortened]... ools closed after the teachers had vaccine access (Jan/Feb, 2021), made a policy error for the ages.
Yes. The numbers say that it probably would have been a better decision to reopen in person schools in the Fall semester 2019, after the initial wave leading into the summer of 2019.

This analysis, however, downplays the reality faced by many school administrators, community health directors, local politicians, and our feckless leaders at the federal level. Publicly, Trump said over and over again it was Democrat hoax. He said it'd be gone by Easter. Privately, he was recorded admitting what everyone on the ground who had to make real-time decisions already knew. It was very bad.

People were scared. Parents were scared. Teachers were scared. Their leaders were lying to them and they didn't know what to believe.

We were unprepared. Blaming the libs helps no one, as it seems very apparent that while the libs were making (wrong) decisions the conservatives were operating on the stellar leadership principle that the less they do the less they'll be blamed for. In my community the public health officials, who were hired by the governors office, were making decisions just to have the governor publicly condemning those decisions the next morning. Let's learn and move forward with better preparation and planning for when this happens again.


@no1marauder said
I can't do links from my phone but do tell: how many dead folks equal a 1 point drop in SAT scores?
You asked for an "actual cost/benefit analysis taking into account how many deaths, hospitalizations and sicknesses were avoided by this measure" and are now scoffing at the concept?

Every societal rule is a tradeoff. We could eliminate auto accidents by banning the automobile. We could severely limit them by capping highway speeds at 30 MPH. Would you like to know how many traffic deaths are worth being at your party a few minutes earlier?

But to answer your question, "how many dead folks equal a 1 point drop in SAT scores?" I don't know, but it's more than zero (though, not having studied that particular question, I can't say with certainty that it's not less than one).

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@wildgrass said
Yes. The numbers say that it probably would have been a better decision to reopen in person schools in the Fall semester 2019, after the initial wave leading into the summer of 2019.

This analysis, however, downplays the reality faced by many school administrators, community health directors, local politicians, and our feckless leaders at the federal level. Publicly, Tru ...[text shortened]... ning. Let's learn and move forward with better preparation and planning for when this happens again.
The only people I'm blaming are the people who argued for school closures. I don't care what their political orientation was. As I demonstrated in the OP, most "libs" have come around on this issue by now.

If any politician who came around on this issue by, at the latest, middle of 2021 comes clean and says "okay, I made a mistake. I was afraid, etc." I'm willing to give him/her a mulligan. But people who still insist it was a good idea? People who were still arguing for school closures late into 2021? Nope. Never getting my vote again (unless running against someone even worse, I suppose).


@sh76 said
The only people I'm blaming are the people who argued for school closures. I don't care what their political orientation was. As I demonstrated in the OP, most "libs" have come around on this issue by now.

If any politician who came around on this issue by, at the latest, middle of 2021 comes clean and says "okay, I made a mistake. I was afraid, etc." I'm willing to give him/ ...[text shortened]... into 2021? Nope. Never getting my vote again (unless running against someone even worse, I suppose).
When you kept writing "liberals" in the OP, I assumed you had some blame placed on specific political orientations.

I blame Republicans for feckless leadership. They may have said lots of things loudly, but they never made the case convincing to the American people or to decision makers on the ground that keeping schools open was the best option.


Most American kids are below average when compared to other countries so does it really matter?

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@wildgrass said
When you kept writing "liberals" in the OP, I assumed you had some blame placed on specific political orientations.

I blame Republicans for feckless leadership. They may have said lots of things loudly, but they never made the case convincing to the American people or to decision makers on the ground that keeping schools open was the best option.
===When you kept writing "liberals" in the OP, I assumed you had some blame placed on specific political orientations.===

I meant that EVEN liberals are saying this. If I just quote Fox News about how school closures were bad, nobody from the left side of the political spectrum will care. I'm taking liberal sources because I'm not just preaching to the choir.

I don't think school closures are inherently a "liberal" position (one could argue the opposite, in fact), but that's today's political orientation.

===I blame Republicans for feckless leadership. They may have said lots of things loudly, but they never made the case convincing to the American people or to decision makers on the ground that keeping schools open was the best option.===

While I don't deny that the Trump administration was awful in many respects on covid, blaming the people who (largely) didn't make the decisions for not convincing those who did is a stretch.


@sh76

My man, @sh76, I am sure you realize that democrats err on the side of totalitarianism.


@sh76 said
As far as I can tell, everyone who has seriously studied the issue has concluded similarly.

e.g.,


https://www.adb.org/publications/cost-benefit-analysis-closure-schools-covid-19-philippines

https://www.economicsreview.org/post/how-keeping-schools-closed-does-more-harm-than-good-a-cost-benefit-analysis

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8909310/

I can't find a study that concluded otherwise.
Just a suggestion, @sh76, placing some pertinent text from a link that you post is a big help to some of us.


@earl-of-trumps said
@sh76

My man, @sh76, I am sure you realize that democrats err on the side of totalitarianism.
Today, yes. But it wasn't always that way, even just a decade or two ago.

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@sh76 said
As far as I can tell, everyone who has seriously studied the issue has concluded similarly.

e.g.,


https://www.adb.org/publications/cost-benefit-analysis-closure-schools-covid-19-philippines

https://www.economicsreview.org/post/how-keeping-schools-closed-does-more-harm-than-good-a-cost-benefit-analysis

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8909310/

I can't find a study that concluded otherwise.
I said I'd love to see one not that I agree with the shoddy analysis in one like this: https://www.economicsreview.org/post/how-keeping-schools-closed-does-more-harm-than-good-a-cost-benefit-analysis

I checked, but I could find neither a monetary analysis of deaths, hospitalizations or sicknesses avoided by such measures. Nor could I find an actual monetary estimate of the losses of having public school students miss in person classes as compared to virtual ones. Nor could I find any estimates of what would have happened to test scores even if schools were opened in the middle of a raging pandemic (ridiculously, many analyses of COVID prevention measures use baselines estimates of pre-COVID data and assume that a deadly pandemic would not have effected human behavior).

Until these studies address these issues, they have not "seriously studied" it and their conclusions are worthless.