If there is a “forgotten man” of the COVID-19 era, the unseen and under-schooled student is surely a top candidate.

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News & Commentary

The forgotten child: Pandemic policies are leaving kids behind ([link removed] )

By Joseph Sunde • October 21, 2020

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The COVID-19 pandemic has claimed many victims, from the millions who have contracted the virus directly ([link removed] ) to many others who continue to endure its social and economic disruptions ([link removed] ) .

The suffering has been particularly acute for the children who continue to be confined at home, whether struggling to adapt to remote-learning regimens ([link removed] ) or remaining mysteriously absent altogether ([link removed] ) . For low-income and minority families, in particular, the road is even more difficult. As Jonathan Chait recently put it ([link removed] ) , “The social damage will not be spread evenly.”

Meanwhile, somewhat paradoxically, the public-health case for school reopening seems only to grow stronger. According to economist Emily Oster ([link removed] ) of Brown University, “Schools do not, in fact, appear to be major spreaders of COVID-19.” Observing a range of evidence from multiple states ([link removed] ) , Oster summarizes her findings as follows:

Our data on almost 200,000 kids in 47 states from the last two weeks of September revealed an infection rate of 0.13 percent among students and 0.24 percent among staff. That’s about 1.3 infections over two weeks in a school of 1,000 kids, or 2.2 infections over two weeks in a group of 1,000 staff. Even in high-risk areas of the country, the student rates were well under half a percent. …

School-based data from other sources show similarly low rates. Texas reported 1,490 cases among students for the week ending on September 27, with 1,080,317 students estimated at school – a rate of about 0.14 percent. The staff rate was lower, about 0.10 percent.

This shouldn’t surprise us, of course. As early as last July, we saw similar results, both from daycare facilities within the United States ([link removed] ) and reopened schools across Europe ([link removed] ) . At the time, the American Academy of Pediatrics concluded ([link removed] ) that “all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school.” The group reminded policymakers that “COVID-19 policies are intended to mitigate, not eliminate, risk” and that “no single action or set of actions will completely eliminate the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.”

Unfortunately, this evidence was largely ignored, and institutional resistance to such data has continued to this day. Schools cite a range of competing factors, of course, from facility and budget restrictions to feedback from concerned parents. Each plays a legitimate and distinctive role in decision-making and ought to depend heavily on local realities. But when we step back and observe the bigger picture, we see that forces of politics and partisanship are also largely at play.

In an eye-opening article ([link removed] ) for the New Yorker and ProPublica, Alec MacGillis highlights these factors within Baltimore schools, noting that many students are being left behind due to the incentive structures of a particular set of external interests. Teachers unions have always been opposed to reopening ([link removed] ) . But according to MacGillis, the Trump administration’s direct overtures to reopen schools ([link removed] ) provided convenient political cover for them to create a cultural consensus that dismissed the actual evidence – particularly in states and cities that leaned leftward.

“Our teachers were ready to go back as long as it was safe,” says Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. “Then Trump and [Betsy] DeVos played their political bulls–t.”

And then, with little sense of irony or self-awareness, the teachers unions quickly proceeded to play their own. “It almost feels like folly now to speak about data,” says Johns Hopkins University epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo ([link removed] ) , reflecting on the political dynamics over the summer. “The decision was going to be made not on data but on politics.”

New research now affirms that narrative, showing that public health was not ultimately at the forefront of public concern. According to a study by Jon Valant of the Brookings Institution ([link removed] ) , “there is no relationship … between school districts’ reopening decisions and their county’s new COVID-19 cases per capita,” and yet “there is a strong relationship … between districts’ reopening decisions and the county-level support for Trump in the 2016 election.” In another study ([link removed] ) , political scientists Michael Hartney and Leslie Finger observed a wide set of national data, concluding that “politics, far more than science, shaped school district decision-making,” and that “mass partisanship and teacher union strength best explain how school boards approached reopening.”

At some level, the political game-playing was just an excuse – a convenient distraction to hide a more systemic variety of resistance. As Chait observes ([link removed] ) , “the union’s incentives are misaligned with those of their students.” Indeed, even where competing concerns are legitimate and understandable, the weight of all this feels different for a teacher than a student:

For kids and families, in-person education presents a trade-off between the health risks of going to school, and the economic and social costs of staying home. For younger low-income students, the costs of losing in-person school are catastrophic and permanent.

Teachers, on the other hand, are incentivized almost entirely to minimize health risks. They get paid the same salary if they go to school or teach from home. They might feel unhappy about watching their students flail, but they do not have anything like the investment that the families have.

In the end, however, it is the teachers, not the students, who have the bulk of power and public representation. Amid all of the illogical squabbling and self-focused risk calculations among adults, the actual science can be quickly ignored while children are left to suffer in silence.

“The voices we don’t hear are the ones who are shut up at home,” says Harvard education professor Meira Levinson, reflecting on surveys from parents and teachers who opposed reopening. “We have no mechanism to hear from them. There are no polls of 6-year-olds.”

The subsequent pain will be felt by all children in some shape or form. According to nationwide studies ([link removed] ) , last spring’s students may have gained just 70% of a normal year’s comprehension in reading and just 50% in math. In the Boston public schools ([link removed] ) , only half of students showed up for classes each day, with one in five failing to ever log in. Again, such damage is particularly pronounced among low-income and minority populations.

“One survey ([link removed] ) found four-fifths of Hispanic students, three-quarters of [b]lack students, but only half of white students lack access to in-person learning,” writes Chait. “Affluent parents have the means to cushion the blow to their children: by working from home, having one parent quit work, forming learning pods, hiring tutors, or enrolling ([link removed] ) in private schools, which are reopening for in-person learning much faster ([link removed] ) .” According to Robin Lake ([link removed] ) at the Center for Reinventing Public Education, last spring’s “elementary students [in urban districts] may have lost 30% of their reading skills.”

Noting all of these same trends, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has aptly described the situation as “sabotage in the liberal city,” ([link removed] ) wherein a convergence of narrow partisan interests and entrenched power centers fight in the ephemera of identity wars, all while neglecting the real damage being done to real people who lack the privilege and position to play such games:

The pandemic-era policies of many progressive jurisdictions are sabotaging basic civic goods, with anti-Trump zeal as an accelerant and with effects on minority communities that are likely to far outlast the Trump era. This means that for many African-Americans and Hispanics, a key legacy of 2020 may be a well-intentioned liberal betrayal of their interests, a hollowing-out of the institutions that protect and serve them, and the deepening of America’s racial inequalities even if Trumpism goes down to defeat.

This isn’t to say that there are not legitimate pressures and competing concerns across all people groups and ideological tribes. But given the increasing clarity of the data and the various concerted efforts to either ignore or subvert it, it seems evident that a particular set of interests is working to maintain control and manufacture public consensus at the expense of the most voiceless and underprivileged among us.

If there is a “forgotten man” of the COVID-19 era, the unseen and under-schooled student is surely a top candidate.

Acton Line:

P.J. Hill on religious origins of the rule of law ([link removed] )

October 21, 2020

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In his article in the June 2020 issue of the Journal of Institutional Economics, Dr. P.J. Hill, who served as the George F. Bennett Professor of Economics at Wheaton College until his retirement in 2011, begins by saying, “in any discussion of the beginning of modern economic growth, the concept of the rule of law plays a crucial role," and that, "the lack of such an order is the fundamental cause of the failure of nations."

But where did the foundations of the rule of law come from?

Hill argues that the current theories about the origin of the rule of law, while useful, are also incomplete. According to Hill, the Jewish and Christian concept of all human beings being created in God’s image is an important, but often overlooked, contributor to the rule of law in Western civilization.

In this episode, Acton’s Dan Churchwell is joined by Dr. P.J. Hill to discuss his research article, “The religious origins of the rule of law,” the way beliefs affect institutions in general, and how the beliefs of the Christian and Jewish faith traditions in particular were crucial to the establishment of the rule of law.

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Acton Lecture Series:

Divided we fall: America after the 2020 election [Virtual] ([link removed] )

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In his new book, Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation, senior editor at The Dispatch David French surveys the landscape of a politically and culturally polarized America, examining the true dimensions and dangers of this widening ideological gap. Just two days after the 2020 election, French will address the impacts the election outcomes (to the extent that they are known) will have on an increasingly divided and tribalistic nation, with each faction believing their distinct cultures and liberties are being threatened by an escalating violent opposition.

This lecture is livestream only. A free livestream of this lecture will be available to view @ 12 noon Eastern on November 5, 2020.

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The facts on Amy Coney Barrett and banning contraception ([link removed] )

By Rev. Ben Johnson • October 16, 2020

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Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee spent days prodding Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett ([link removed] ) over the hypothetical possibility that the government may one day outlaw birth control. One exchange in particular encapsulated politicians’ inability to grasp the proper role of government, the law, and economic incentives.

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