school closures harmed american education

Can you provide evidence that spanking children is beneficial? Something more than anecdote?

 

And your parents beat you a little too hard. Vibes on the abuse.

 

The Teacher's Union were advocating safer workplaces for their membership! Stop the presses! Of course the union was advocating for safer working conditions for teachers. That's their #1 purpose for existing.

And sorry, but posting one study does not make something a scientific fact. A big part of science is repeatability. If everyone runs the same experiment and get the same results, then the scientific community can accept that as fact. But if you get different results, then that should prompt further discussion. Only a grifter would look at just the results of one study and claim it to be the truth, while disregarding all other studies.

Make no mistake, there are studies out there that show closing schools had an effect in reducing the spread of COVID. Like this one from Israel, that studied the cause of an outbreak after school reopened, this observational study published in Jan, 2021, and this one published Dec, 2021 that looked at cross-country results. From the last link's results:

Our results show that having schools closed is effective in reducing the number of new cases. Countries that implement closure have fewer new COVID-19 cases than those that do not. This becomes a reality around 20 days after the implementation of the policy. Its efficacy continues to be detectable up to 100 days after implementation. The result is robust to controls for other forms of social distancing.
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The next step when you have competing study results isn't just to declare one a winner and ignore all others, but try and figure out why. Were one or more the studies flawed? Or, were there variables that would account for the differences? Schools size, class size, ventilation, outdoor learning areas, and plenty of other factors could have played a part as to one area didn't see outbreaks in COVID when schools reopened, but other areas did.

The people in charge of making the decisions were put in an impossible place. Global pandemics are fortunately rare events, and no a single adult alive was around for the previous, major global pandemic, the Spanish Flu, that hit over 100 years ago. And we all need to understand there is no winning in a global pandemic; only better outcomes that mitigate the effects. Did we make mistakes? Of course. Much of our direction early on were based on how the flu reacts. COVID, unfortunately, doesn't act like the flu. But in the end, I cannot fault anyone for making decisions that erred on the side of caution to help mitigate the spread of COVID, and keep people alive.

30% of our teachers in the US have a guaranteed comorbidity because they are 50 or older. Many more have other comorbidities such as diabetes, being overweight, asthma, and others. Until these decisions makers could be sure things were safer, they were always making a decision weighing the possible loss of lives of adults with the loss of education for the kids. An impossible situation to weigh. You could just pick one study and hope it's correct, but that's not following the scientific method. And if you are wrong, then you potentially cost of the lives of teachers and staff.

Last, I leave with this thought. Early on, Italy tried to ignore the virus, thinking it was just another flu. That was until they locked down because their hospitals and morgues were being overrun. Great Britain first tried to reach herd immunity and didn't close a thing. An early response that was later called, "The worst public health failure ever." And Sweden, despite having the greatest percentage of single occupancy households, also early on did nothing. And until they responded, the numbers speak for themselves:

 

That's only half the equation. I've said it before (so yes I'll beat the dead horse again) neither side should be educating kids in a vacuum. Parents shouldn't be educating kids without engaged teachers and teachers shouldn't be educating kids without engaged parents. And personal politics do not belong in the classroom under any circumstances (I specifically have to call out "personal" politics because there are some on here who will point to that and ask "well what if you're teaching a PoliSci class?")

 

Conservatives aren’t wasting their lives in fake research and bs journalism. That’s left to the idealistic libbies trying their best to change history.

 

Grift On!

How anyone can believe what a poster who was wrong on lockdowns, school closures, masks, natural immunity and vaxxing kids and still has the audacity to think that people would respect what he wrote is next level psychotic.

 

This pretty much nails it. It's actually quite simple. Everyone (including everyone on this thread) makes decisions based on priorities. The people with THE POWER to decide made decisions based on THEIR PRIORITIES. That goes from the federal government, to state governors, to local school boards and even movie theaters. Some of those were forced to do things as their power was lower on the food chain.

I don't think anyone would argue that educational outcomes were far worse off with distance or online learning. For states that opened up early and the teachers complained about having to go back to the classroom, well guess what, if that is your PRIORITY, then you can quit and go do something else. Someone higher up than you made the decision to go back to in school learning.

 

Perhaps they should open their minds more. It can be quite liberating.

 

I would disagree on this. Other countries(pretty much all of Europe) had schools open far quicker than the US. So we were an outlier(especially dem led states) to keeping schools closed so long. I was fine with schools closing in the spring of 2020 when we didn't have all the data. BUT, in July of 2020 we did have the European data showing that covid was not spreading anymore in schools than the community. And one thing I have a problem with is when people defend the teachers unions for defending the teachers, well who is supposed to stand up for the students? They got screwed.

 

I think you’re a smart guy with a lot of good info at your fingertips.
But I think life and reality aren’t always truly explained by textbooks and journals.
I say this specifically to you for a reason.

 

You disagree that the people in charge are the ones making the decisions to close school did so for prioritizing trying to control the spread of covid over the kids education? Not saying I agree with it and when infections were winding down teachers still complained about going back to the classroom. I have a big problem with that.

 

Florida killed a lot more people with its covid policies than other states. Florida school children are not performing better than California students but California killed a lot less people people. Mass shootings also set back learning but who cares. Guns are more important than students every day of the week

 

But the data showed schools weren't vectors for covid spread in JULY 2020. Hell, we still had schools closed thru 2021. The Teachers unions played hardball and extorted tons of money while also not having to work in schools. I have a big problem with Teachers unions helping make CDC school policies. The data was out there and ignored. Randi wanted to keep schools closed and extort money for the Unions. Who was advocating for the kids? No one but parents unfortunately.

 

The data was inconclusive. Only grifters take the results from one study and ignores the results from all other studies that doesn't fit their agenda.

We can argue some schools were closed too long. Especially after the vaccine was introduced. With vaccinated teachers and staff, no reason to keep schools closed. Some places in CA still kept school closed even with high vaccination rates. That didn't make any sense.

But the Fall of 2020, the CDC took advice from the Teacher's Union, which again, is charged with ensuring teachers have a safe work environment, and proposed the model many school districts employed. In areas with low spread, schools should be open. Moderate spread, a hybrid was encouraged, with some in school, and some at home, and high spread, schools should be closed. That's what my district adopted, as the state of Arizona produced maps with green, yellow, and red area correlating with areas of low, medium, and high spread respectively.

Hindsight is always 20/20. And yes, mistakes were made and some schools were closed too long. But it's not just as simple as stating here's one study that shows school should be open, and then ignoring everything else that may have come out prior, or studies that come out later that may have different conclusions.

 

The Grift that never ends! What a clown. The best is this poster tries to copy everything I do. Not intelligent enough to come up with his own thoughts.

 

You're right. I should know better. You should never argue with an idiot. They only bring you down to their level and beat with you experience.

But at least I don't ignore studies that disagree with my already formed conclusions. That's not how science works. A study or experiment that isn't repeatable should lead to more questions. Not a declaration that Study A is right and everything else must be wrong. Plenty of studies out there that showed closing schools helped mitigate the spread of COVID. Why rely on just one European study that showed otherwise?

 

Grift continues. And some on here still buy it. No idea why when said poster was wrong on every major covid issue. Too funny

 

This is turning into the Covid thread part 2. It’s impressive.

 

The second half is certainly fair to bring up. But there is no evidence that schools were a major spreading factor when it came to Covid. And done right you could alleviate the risk even more.

There was no avoiding Covid. Whether you took shots or not. Whether it was delta/omicron. We had the data to understand risk benefit. We cost children so much more than any minor benefit from staying home. If a teacher was morbidly obese or unhealthy/dealing with a certain cancer or disease. There was ways to protect them and allow them to work from home while healthy teachers did their job. It is unconscionable what we did to kids. Criminal in my book.

Most of us posting here on too hot have no clue what some kids deal with. I got to see it first hand a month ago as news broke about a shooting in Marion County. I had been a part of their lives from Coaching. My daughter as a player. Two young ladies murdered. Yes these things happened before Covid. But I bring this up to point out these are the type of situations that define the gap and who was harmed the most from Covid policies. Would/Could this tragedy had happened without Covid. Sure. But those who needed the most help had the place that could provide the most help taken from them. It was evil.

 

So what is the source of intellect for conservatives? Seriously, bluke. . . let's hear it. I find it troubling that a former school counselor rejects the problematic nature of spanking children. It's further troubling that a college graduate roundly dismisses research and academic publication, esp. regarding an overwhelmingly conclusive issue.