Making the case against remote schooling

The following letter was sent to the Omaha, Nebraska school board:
Dear Members of the OPS Board,

I am writing to you to express my disappointment in OPS.  OPS’ delay in resuming in-person instruction is lowering educational outcomes for an entire generation of children.  According to an article that appeared yesterday, the Tennessee Department of Education estimates that remote learning is causing substantial drops in reading (-50%) and math proficiency (-65%) among third graders.  Since all education is cumulative, those drops will compound over time.

Tennessee projects big math, reading drops due to COVID-19

Even worse, these lowered outcomes are disproportionately affecting the most at-risk students.  OPS’ racial gap in outcomes, which is already significant, will certainly get worse. 

As bad as these outcomes are, they are wholly unjustified by the risks.  Data clearly show that school-age children have virtually no risk of adverse health outcomes.  Teachers and staff have a lower-than-average infection rate compared to other occupations.  Perhaps counter-intuitively, school staff in districts that resumed in-person instruction have a lower infection rate than those in districts that operate remotely.  https://twitter.com/NahasNewman/status/1308893886429962240/photo/1

In light of these data, it's not surprising that, according to a story in yesterday’s Washington Post, viral outbreaks in schools are much lower than some expected. 


The following article was published earlier this week by The Manhattan Institute, which is one of the leading think tanks in the United States, especially in the areas of urban affairs and K-12 education.  It has a good summary of the research on Covid risk in schools. 

The Moral Case for Reopening Schools—Without Masks

Parents are well aware of the profound adverse effects remote learning is having on their children and removing their children from districts that refuse to resume in-person instruction.  The Nebraska Department of Education received more than 13,000 fillings this school year for homeschool students, a 56% increase compared to last year. http://netnebraska.org/article/news/1234961/more-nebraska-parents-are-homeschooling-year

Nationally, support for school choice among parents with children in public schools has increased substantially.  According to a new poll, for parents with kids in public schools, there’s been a ten point jump in support for the concept of school choice, from 67% in April to 77% today.  https://www.federationforchildren.org/support-for-school-choice-surges-as-schools-start/ 

It occurred to me the other day that OPS is enjoying a financial windfall this school year.  By delaying in-person instruction and by cancelling Fall sports and extracurricular activities, it has substantially reduced its cost structure in some areas, transportation being an obvious example. 

In other words, OPS is collecting money for services that it isn’t offering.  If a private organization did this, it would face liability under a number of legal theories, including fraud.  I know OPS doesn’t want to be accused of unethical practices, so I would expect OPS will rebate the windfall to taxpayers.
I think most of the districts that refused to reopen did so for political purposes and at the demand of teachers' unions with an agenda that is unrelated to reality at best.  That is certainly the case in California where the unions have made outrageous demands including abolishing competitors like charter schools which actually do a better job than regular public schools.

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