Education Week - September 9, 2020 - 4

As COVID-19 Spreads,
Bands and Choirs
Face Tough Choices
By Corey Mitchell
For Penelope Cruz, the first disappointment was the canceled Carnegie Hall performance.
The second came on Friday, March
13.
On that day, as more schools shut
down nationwide, Cruz, who directs
the choir at White Plains High School
in New York, delivered a prescient
warning. It came a day after her
students learned that Carnegie Hall
had canceled their scheduled performance and all others for the month
of March as it shut down to slow the
spread of coronavirus.
"One of my students said to me,
'Do you remember that last Friday
and you said to us, 'This may be the
last time we sing in this room together for this year?' We all thought
you were kind of crazy,'" Cruz recalled. "I kind of said it not to be
doomsday about it, but we needed to
be emotionally prepared."
Not much has changed in the time
since. Carnegie Hall is still shut down,
Cruz is still separated from her students, and the White Plains school
district, where Cruz teaches, will
begin the school year with all-remote
learning for at least the first week.
Group singing, musical performances and rehearsals, once a source
of glee for millions of students, are
now potential disease vectors-especially if those performances are conducted indoors.
Science has established a link between the spread of particles when
people speak, sing, and play instruments by mouth and potential coro-

navirus infection.
Choirs have been tied to several
coronavirus outbreaks around the
world, and marching band competitions have been shut down in dozens
of states.
At Biloxi High in southern Mississippi, all 240 members of the school
marching band undergo temperature
checks with digital thermometers
and answer a series of coronavirus
screening questions before practice
each day. During drills, students and
staff must remain six feet apart.
"These are the hoops we're trying to
jump through to make this possible,"
said Travis Coakley, the school marching band director. "My philosophy the
whole time has been, if we can find a
way to do this safely, we have to try."

Taking Notes
The University of Colorado and the
University of Maryland are leading a
six-month study that explores how
singers and musicians transmit aerosol particles. The research is funded
by organizations trying to determine
how in-person performances and
practices can take place safely in person amid a global pandemic.
Preliminary findings, published in
July, revealed that singing and the
playing of brass and wind instruments generate respiratory aerosols
at high rates, but that requiring participants to wear masks and using
bell covers for instruments reduces
the range of emissions.
A second round of research released in August reinforced the findings that, when indoors, the risk of

Band director Kylie Coyne
instructs the color guard
during practice last month
at Washington High School
in Sioux Falls, S.D.

coronavirus infection spikes if someone is exposed to viral particles for
more than 30 minutes.
The researchers, who released
preliminary results to help educators
understand how they can safely resume instruction in classrooms, band
rooms, and rehearsal spaces, expect
to complete their work in December.
In March, a two-and-a-half-hourlong church choir practice in Mount
Vernon, Wash., was one of the first
events that shed light on the dangers of mass gatherings and aerosol
spread.
In the week after the practice, three
people were hospitalized and two
eventually died; 52 of the 61 attendees
became ill, with 32 confirmed to have
COVID-19. The other 20 had symp-

toms consistent with the virus. Investigators with the Skagit County Health
Department determined that only one
person at the practice had symptoms
a few days prior. Doctors later confirmed that person had COVID-19.
That reality has made teachers in
places such as New York's Westchester County, hard hit by the pandemic
in the spring and summer, leery
about in-person practices and performances.
Fear of COVID-19 transmission
is widespread among school band
programs, too. In a fall where many
states will not have high school football, there also will not be marching
band performances at halftime or
anytime in many places: More than
20 states have already canceled fall

WHAT THE

RESEARCH SAYS

How does pandemic-related learning loss
affect different subjects and grades?
By Sarah D. Sparks
Educators are bracing for students to return to school this fall with significant learning
loss, after more than six months of disruption from the coronavirus pandemic. New
research suggests schools will need to target interventions differently for students in
different grades and subjects.
Researchers with the assessment group Illuminate Education tracked more than
500,000 computer-adaptive test scores for students in kindergarten through 5th grades.
The scores captured reading and math tests given between fall and spring in the 2018-19
and 2019-20 school years. The data were used to project the difference in growth between
the two years and the extent of learning loss in each grade and subject.
They found students in all grades and subjects had learning loss during the pandemic school
closures, but they followed different patterns. Kindergartners and 1st graders lost the most
ground in general reading growth, but 5th graders lost the most fluency in reading aloud.

4 | EDUCATION WEEK | September 9, 2020 | www.edweek.org

Across every grade, students lost more learning in math than in reading, losing two and a half
to four and a half months of learning, compared to a month or two in reading.
"It's a little bit like riding a bike," said John Bielinski, a co-author of the study and
Illuminate's senior director of research and development "If we were to start teaching a
kid how to ride a bike and then stopped and then three months later said, 'OK, can you
ride a bike?', they probably won't be able to-they will have forgotten what they learned.
But once they've mastered riding a bike, if they don't ride for few months, they probably
can get on a bike and ride again."
"So in K-2 we see relatively dramatic losses, from the foundational reading skills that
kids build on to become proficient readers like phonics and phonological awareness," he
said. "By grades 4 and 5, reading is more about comprehension ... and we see very little
loss in reading."
Christine Willig, CEO of Illuminate Education, serves on the board of Education Week.
From remote learning for young children to playground infection risks, schooling under the pandemic
is raising a lot of questions for teachers and education leaders. This new research column aims to help
readers understand what the research says-and doesn't say-about our new context for learning. If you
have a question, please send it to ssparks@educationweek.org.

http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - September 9, 2020

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