WEBVTT - Learning As We Go 0:00:00.920 --> 0:00:05.880 Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day one hundred 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:11.360 and eighty since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's 0:00:11.400 --> 0:00:17.400 main story the reopening of schools. It's September seven, and 0:00:17.480 --> 0:00:20.639 by the middle of this month, nearly all teachers, students 0:00:20.720 --> 0:00:24.280 and parents will be back in the school season swing. 0:00:25.160 --> 0:00:28.240 Of course, that will look pretty different from one place 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:31.120 to the next. Some kids will be back in school 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:34.720 at their desks, others meeting in special pods with a 0:00:34.800 --> 0:00:41.199 handful of classmates, or they'll be home tethered to their chromebooks. Today, 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:45.320 with the help of trade Offs, a podcast about our costly, complicated, 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:49.800 and counterintuitive health care system, we explore how educators and 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:54.640 families are navigating what we know and don't know about 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:59.560 the risks of restarting school during a pandemic. From the 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:03.480 Anna Burke Studio at the University of Pennsylvania. A conversation 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:08.679 with Brown University economist Emily Auster about the tough choices 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:15.240 schools and families are facing this fall. Dan Gorenstein reports, 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:24.319 so Emily, we've seen lots of places, including big districts 0:01:24.360 --> 0:01:28.440 like Philadelphia, Houston, and Chicago, opt to open online this fall, 0:01:29.000 --> 0:01:32.680 while other places and even whole states are opening in person. 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:37.240 In the broadest sense, what's driving schools to go the 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:41.320 online route? So I think there's basically two things. So 0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:44.360 one is this decision feels safe from a public health 0:01:44.360 --> 0:01:48.400 standpoint when we are so focused on COVID transmission. It 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:50.360 feels like, you know, if we open in people around, 0:01:50.360 --> 0:01:52.720 then there will be some transmission, and the safest thing 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:54.920 is to not open at all, and so they'll be 0:01:55.000 --> 0:01:57.800 less COVID. I think the other piece of it is 0:01:57.840 --> 0:01:59.880 that what a lot of school districts are struggling with 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:02.040 is the realization that if they do open in person, 0:02:02.080 --> 0:02:03.680 there's a chance that they will have to at some 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:08.040 point go back to be remote if the situation gets worse. 0:02:08.080 --> 0:02:11.400 And I think thinking about that transition and how one 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:13.880 could manage that, that's really complicated. And I think that 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:16.760 for many places, this is the thing which we may 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:18.720 have to do anyway, so we want to start there. 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:20.839 So I think I think all of those things are 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:24.640 going on. Emily has built her career on helping people, 0:02:24.960 --> 0:02:28.920 often parents, making better choices with better data. When it 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:32.760 comes to schools opening online, Emily worries too many districts 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:36.280 are focused on COVID concerns and paying less attention to 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:42.560 the downsides to online learning. Emily keeping schools closed has 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:48.000 lots of repercussions. That's walked through a couple of them. First, many, 0:02:48.080 --> 0:02:51.240 if not most school districts went remote in the spring. 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:55.120 What's the data suggest that actually happened to those students? 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:57.920 Did learning end up suffering? I know in the case 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:00.760 of my uh soon to be fifteen year old and 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:03.600 soon to be thirteen year old, it did. Yeah, I 0:03:03.600 --> 0:03:06.120 mean I think certainly if you talk to parents, they 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:07.800 will tell you that their kids did not learn as 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:10.000 much in the spring as they think that they would 0:03:10.040 --> 0:03:12.280 have if they had been in school. And you know, 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:13.760 we do have a little bit of data on this. 0:03:13.840 --> 0:03:17.520 I think the best evidence comes from this company called 0:03:17.600 --> 0:03:23.720 zern Zerne is an online program that walks kids through 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:27.080 math lessons, and kids across the country used it before 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:31.399 we all went online. Starting in the spring, lesson completion 0:03:31.639 --> 0:03:36.400 dropped In district's with the lowest income levels, lessons dropped. 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:41.480 So we're seeing even in something where it was already 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:44.160 a computerized experience, you would think it would be relatively 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:46.960 straightforward to poured into doing it at home, but it 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:52.560 really tanked. How comfortable and confident are you to site 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:56.000 Zerne and say, yeah, this probably is a leading indicator 0:03:56.080 --> 0:03:59.600 to suggest learning really did suffer across the country. That 0:03:59.800 --> 0:04:03.840 is the sharpest piece of data. What's useful about it 0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:05.760 is it aligns with a lot of what people are 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:09.680 saying anecdotally if you talk to teachers in school districts, 0:04:10.080 --> 0:04:12.080 or if you look at numbers like what share of 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:16.360 kids logged on to online learning, it's not and it's 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:18.320 not close to the share of kids who are showing 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:20.440 up in person. So I think we have a bunch 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:23.600 of these pieces of data, and almost everything we see 0:04:23.680 --> 0:04:31.920 suggests that learning suffered during the spring period. So if 0:04:31.960 --> 0:04:35.679 we accept the Zerne findings as indicative of what's actually happening, 0:04:35.960 --> 0:04:39.840 the downside to online learning comes into sharper focus. Not 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:43.400 only is coursework getting stunted, but the class and race 0:04:43.440 --> 0:04:47.400 inequities and schools are wide needed. The question are those 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:51.839 downsides worth the public health benefits? Emily says, based on 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:55.400 research she's done this summer looking at camps and childcare programs, 0:04:55.760 --> 0:04:59.400 this may be a false choice. We actually really kind 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:02.800 of need to know what happens when we bring people together. Um, 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:05.239 and so I I, at some point early on in 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:07.200 the pandemic said, you know, I think we can probably 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:09.560 learn something from summer camps because the age range is 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:11.520 sort of similar. There are other things that are not similar, 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:14.240 but there's you know, something potentially we can learn. So 0:05:14.279 --> 0:05:16.640 I've been collecting some data, which is I just want 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:19.360 to be clear, not random, And in the camps and 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:21.640 childcare settings that I have data on, and we actually 0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:24.440 have very very low infection rates, we can sort of 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:26.560 talk and we should talk about kind of counter examples, 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:28.680 but I think there are certainly examples of places that 0:05:28.720 --> 0:05:31.960 have kind of been open with kids that have been saved. Okay, 0:05:32.000 --> 0:05:37.000 so the summer camp data suggests that maybe outbreaks aren't 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:43.000 as threatening as some people think. But we've seen schools 0:05:43.040 --> 0:05:45.920 open over the summer and there are cases of people 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:50.919 getting infected and then the schools shutting down. Doesn't that 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:54.120 sort of buttress this argument that maybe we're safer just 0:05:54.240 --> 0:05:59.440 going online and not even sort of opening Pandora's box. Yeah. So, 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:02.000 I mean, I think one thing that's very frustrating about 0:06:02.040 --> 0:06:05.120 this is that we don't have a systematic data on 0:06:05.160 --> 0:06:07.520 the school so it is definitely true that as places 0:06:07.520 --> 0:06:11.600 have opened, there have been cases, multiple cases in schools, 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:14.680 places where it looks like there is some spread pretty 0:06:14.680 --> 0:06:17.200 clearly going on in the school. One of the things 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:19.560 we've learned, for example, from Georgia is if you bring 0:06:19.600 --> 0:06:23.480 back a high school full on basically no precautions, you 0:06:23.520 --> 0:06:26.719 don't require people to mask, there's no distancing, you have football, 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:30.080 and the positivity rate is you know, fifteen percent in 0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:32.400 the area, then it seems like that's a way to 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:36.359 get some COVID spread. That's not actually the same as 0:06:36.360 --> 0:06:40.159 opening a socially distanced, fully masked kindergarten or first grade 0:06:40.200 --> 0:06:43.160 in New York City or in New Hampshire. And it's 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:45.560 not the same because of the differences in prevalence rate. 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:47.520 It's not the same because of the differences in precautions, 0:06:47.560 --> 0:06:57.919 it's not the same because of the differences in age groups. Emily, 0:06:57.960 --> 0:07:02.040 based on the conversations you're having with WOOL officials, are 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:07.120 you getting the sense that people are making decisions based 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:12.160 on the outbreak level in their communities, or do you 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:15.720 find that most school districts are just responding with this 0:07:15.800 --> 0:07:18.000 sort of worst case scenario fear and saying, you know what, 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:20.880 let's just go dow online learning. The people that I 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:23.880 have talked to in school districts are incredibly thoughtful about this, 0:07:24.440 --> 0:07:27.440 and they are trying to do everything they can to 0:07:27.520 --> 0:07:32.800 simultaneously serve their students and also do it safely, and 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:35.920 they are really really confused about what to do, and 0:07:35.920 --> 0:07:38.880 the guidance that they get is really variable. So you know, 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:42.040 people in Iowa have been told basically, you need to 0:07:42.080 --> 0:07:46.680 be fully in person unless the positivity rate is above 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:49.200 and then there are people who are being told, you know, 0:07:49.280 --> 0:07:52.160 you absolutely cannot be in person and all of the 0:07:52.200 --> 0:08:00.040 positivity rate is above two. So I think that it 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:02.640 is just a tremendous amount of frustration and kind of 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:06.240 feeling of being like a little abandoned honestly in making 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:12.200 these decisions. Of course, opening up physically or remotely is 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:15.440 all new. There's little specific guidance at the federal level, 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:20.280 meaning there's no clear path forward, leaving schools, teachers, parents 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:24.000 and students groping in the dark. But Emily hopes to 0:08:24.120 --> 0:08:27.600 change that. In August, Emily announced she was partnering with 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:31.320 schools superintendents and data wongs to begin gathering evidence on 0:08:31.400 --> 0:08:35.719 schools that do reopen to help the Chicago's, Philadelphia's, Houston's, 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:39.120 and everyone else who's opening online. There are a lot 0:08:39.160 --> 0:08:41.160 of places that are opening online that are hoping to 0:08:41.240 --> 0:08:44.920 open in person later. They're waiting to see what happens 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:46.640 with the places that are open in person, so they 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:48.840 can try to figure out is it safe to open 0:08:48.840 --> 0:08:50.240 in person? And win is going to be safe to 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:52.720 open in person. But they can't figure that out because 0:08:52.840 --> 0:08:54.920 they don't know what's happening with the places that are open. 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:56.680 And that's kind of the meta point of we've sort 0:08:56.679 --> 0:08:59.760 of fallen down on learning the kind of information that 0:08:59.800 --> 0:09:03.640 we would need to make good choices here. Both my 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:08.160 folks were teachers, and my mom, who's still with us, 0:09:08.160 --> 0:09:10.840 would not be psychedific. I didn't ask a question about 0:09:10.840 --> 0:09:14.160 the safety of teachers. What do we know about the 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:19.880 risk that teachers and other adults in the building are 0:09:19.960 --> 0:09:25.120 taking with in person learning. We don't have a lot 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:27.320 of data. But what I will say is probably the 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:29.760 best day I've seen is from Sweden. I think there's 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:32.040 a bit from Denmark too, So in Sweden they kept 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:34.839 schools open the whole time, and so you can look 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:37.680 at given that that happened. Our teachers a high risk group. 0:09:38.080 --> 0:09:40.800 So there are some groups where they make up a 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:44.880 pretty large share of the hospitalizations relative to their size 0:09:44.920 --> 0:09:47.920 in the labor market. So for example, bus driver and 0:09:47.960 --> 0:09:51.280 food service worker in Sweden were very high risk professions, 0:09:51.320 --> 0:09:54.480 but teacher was not. That data kind of suggests that, 0:09:54.520 --> 0:09:57.800 you know, teaching is not an especially high risk profession. 0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:00.000 But you know, I think that we have a huge 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:03.040 uphill battle in trying to work with teachers and with 0:10:03.200 --> 0:10:06.280 unions to try to both convince them but also you know, 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:08.600 make them make people feel safe. I don't think we 0:10:08.640 --> 0:10:11.959 want people coming into schools feeling unsafe and anxious. We 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:13.480 need to figure out how are we going to make 0:10:13.559 --> 0:10:15.520 clear the ways that they are going to be protected. 0:10:16.559 --> 0:10:20.440 How do you think we should be dealing with this situation, Emily, 0:10:21.160 --> 0:10:24.679 where there's just a lack of good evidence, there's a 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:28.160 lack of guidance, there's a lot on the line, and 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:33.640 there's a ton of emotion. What have you learned as 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:35.960 an academic, as a researcher, as a writer, as a 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:39.560 thinker about how to juggle things that are going on 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:41.760 right now. One of the things people are really struggling 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:44.520 with is once they make a decision, they rarely feel 0:10:44.520 --> 0:10:47.880 good about it because no decisions are good, and that 0:10:48.000 --> 0:10:49.960 I think has been a very valuable thing to name 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:53.240 for people. Then I think that knowing that may actually 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:55.760 make it easier for people to move forward because they 0:10:55.760 --> 0:11:00.040 are not continually expecting that somehow the next moment, but 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:03.400 they'll feel great about the choice understanding that the trade 0:11:03.400 --> 0:11:06.559 offs exactly that there are trade offs. Somebody should have 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:09.760 a podcast about that, I think. So that seems like 0:11:09.800 --> 0:11:16.440 a really great name, really good name. Amazing. So to 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:22.680 wrap this up, Emily, I'm curious what you're expecting to 0:11:22.880 --> 0:11:28.839 see over the first ten twelve weeks of the fall 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:33.679 when it comes to school. So I would say what 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:36.800 I suspect will happen is that some places will open 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:40.600 in some places will not. The places that open will 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:45.000 stay open pretty much regardless. I think the places that 0:11:45.080 --> 0:11:47.680 do not open will not open for the whole semester. 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:50.880 So I think it will be very difficult for places 0:11:50.920 --> 0:11:53.920 to transition from remote into in person. It sort of 0:11:53.920 --> 0:11:56.040 feels like, in some ways the worst of both worlds, 0:11:56.080 --> 0:11:58.439 that we have a bunch of places open that kind 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:00.240 of shouldn't be. From a public health stamp point and 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:02.240 a bunch of places that don't open that could from 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:05.360 a public health standpoint, So we're losing the learning but 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:09.120 not really protecting public health. Emily hopes by working with 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:13.120 superintendents and principles, data will finally start to make its 0:12:13.120 --> 0:12:15.920 way to school leaders in the hopes of arming these 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:20.400 districts with reliable information to make incredibly difficult decisions about 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:23.800 whether to physically open up schools. Again, the project may 0:12:23.920 --> 0:12:27.360 lack the heft that comes with federal guidance, but it 0:12:27.480 --> 0:12:31.480 beats more than thirteen thousand school districts making decisions with 0:12:31.760 --> 0:12:36.439 very little data. I'm Dan Gorstein and this is Trailers. 0:12:46.040 --> 0:12:48.960 That was Dan gost on, a segment brought to us 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:52.559 by the podcast trade Offs. If you like this story, 0:12:52.679 --> 0:12:55.199 you can hear more from the trade Offs podcast by 0:12:55.240 --> 0:12:58.840 subscribing wherever you get your podcasts, or by going to 0:12:58.920 --> 0:13:03.840 trade offs dot org. Trade Offs is produced by Sabrina Ms, 0:13:04.160 --> 0:13:09.720 Ryan Levy, Vicki Stern, Andrew Parella, and Leslie Walker. Music 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:15.400 by Thy Siderman, unheard music concepts, Blue Dot sessions, and miscellaneous. 0:13:17.360 --> 0:13:19.920 And that's it for our show today. For coverage of 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:22.680 the outbreak from one D and twenty bureaus around the world. 0:13:23.080 --> 0:13:27.520 Visit Bloomberg dot com, slash Coronavirus and if you like 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:30.079 the show, please leave us a review and a rating 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:34.040 on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to 0:13:34.080 --> 0:13:38.840 help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily 0:13:38.960 --> 0:13:43.800 edition is produced by Tophor foreheads Jordan Gaspoure, Magnus Henrickson 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:49.280 and me Laura Carlson. Original music by Leo Sidrin. Our 0:13:49.480 --> 0:13:53.640 editors are Rick Shine and Francesca Levi. Francesca Levi is 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:56.880 Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.