Education Week - October 7, 2020 - 2

ǦǲǹǬǧ-19 Rates Go Up
Among Schoolchildren
As Schools Reopen
The coronavirus is increasingly infecting American
children and teenagers in a trend authorities say appears fueled by school reopenings and the resumption
of sports, playdates, and other activities.
Children of all ages now make up 10 percent of all
U.S cases, up from 2 percent in April, the American
Academy of Pediatrics reported last week. Also last
week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the incidence of COVID-19 in schoolage children began rising in early September as
many youngsters returned to their classrooms.
About two times more teenagers were infected than
younger children, the CDC report says. Most infected
children have mild cases; hospitalizations and death
rates are much lower than in adults.
The CDC report does not indicate where or how the
children became infected.
Public-health experts say the uptick probably reflects increasing spread of the virus in the larger
community. While many districts require masks and
other precautions, some spread in schools is thought
to be occurring, too. Experts also say many schoolage children may be contracting the virus at playdates,
sleepovers, sports, and other activities where precautions aren't being taken.
The CDC report says more than 277,000 children
ages 5 to 17 were confirmed infected between March
and Sept. 19, with an increase in September after a
peak and a decline over the summer.
The new data came out the same week that federal
officials announced plans to distribute 100 million
point-of-care coronavirus tests to states and territories. Rather than waiting days for a laboratory-processed test, users will get results in minutes.
Governors can use the tests as they see fit, President
Donald Trump said, but officials hope they will use
them to "reopen their schools and their economies immediately, as fast as they can," he said.
However, Michael Mina, a Harvard University
epidemiologist who has advocated the expansion
of rapid virus testing, tweeted that the number
of tests federal officials plan to distribute is "nowhere near what's needed" to test on the level
Trump has touted.
About 50.8 million students are enrolled in U.S. public schools, and about 3.2 million full-time teachers,
according to the most recent federal data.

Teacher Aid
A decade after the
Great Recession,
teachers' paychecks have
yet to fully recover, and the
pandemic isn't likely to prod
policymakers to fix that
anytime soon. A new report
finds that in most states, a
midcareer teacher who is the
sole earner in a family of four
would qualify for government-assistance benefits such as health
insurance and rental assistance.

Teachers Qualifying for Government Benefits
SOURCE: Southern Regional Education Board

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Despite All the Talk, Southern Schools Still Clinging
To Names of Confederate Figures, Segregationists
Four months ago, what with all the protests going on over police misconduct and racial injustice, it looked like schools across
the South at last were going to bury their Confederate names.
So far, not much has changed.
An Education Week analysis shows that just 11 of 211 of the
nation's Confederate-named schools have been renamed
since June.
The most celebrated change occurred in Virginia, when the
school board in Fairfax County renamed Robert E. Lee High
School for John Lewis, the late civil rights icon and longtime
Democratic congressman. Schools in Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, Texas, and West Virginia also took on new names.
At least 11 other districts across the South have started the
name-change process or approved plans to consider renaming
schools. That list includes Duval County, Fla., where six buildings are named for Confederate figures.
Many of these schools were built or dedicated between 1950
and 1970-decades after the Civil War-amid coordinated efforts by white Southerners who opposed the Brown v. Board of

Three Court Rulings Later, DeVos Surrenders
In Quest to Expand Private School COVID-19 Aid
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos seems to have gotten the message: Courts and Congress don't want her spending
coronavirus-relief aid on all students in private schools.
In a recent letter to chief state school officers, DeVos said the U.S.
Department of Education will not appeal a Sept. 4 ruling from U.S.
District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich that vacated her July 1 interim
final rule. In essence, that rule sought to direct significantly more
federal coronavirus aid to private school students-under a part of
federal law called equitable services-than is typically required.
Public school officials had argued that DeVos was deliberately misinterpreting the CARES Act in order to ultimately

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provide private schools a federally backed bailout. Members of Congress weighed in as well, including some Republicans, saying the law was not meant to cover all private
school students.
But DeVos and her team said that Congress intended to help
private school students as much as their public school peers
through the law, which provided roughly $13 billion in direct
coronavirus aid for K-12 schools.
The fight also renewed long-running and intense disputes
over the extent to which DeVos supports traditional public
schools versus private schools. 

Education Supreme Court decision that deemed racial segregation in schools unconstitutional.
Other schools bear the names of individuals with racist histories, including 22 named for politicians who signed the Southern
Manifesto opposing school integration after the Brown decision.
As schools have turned away from Confederate figures, some
celebrate civil rights figures such as Lewis and educators who
persevered against racial bigotry.
In July, the Grand Prairie Independent district in Texas renamed its Robert E. Lee Elementary School for 89-year-old
Delmas Morton, a former student, teacher, and principal in
the district. As a teenager, Morton was forced to attend high
school in nearby Dallas because Grand Prairie did not have
high schools for nonwhite students.
That same month, the Prince William County, Va., school
board renamed a middle school that commemorated Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson as Unity Braxton Middle School,
to honor the contributions of civil rights activists and residents
Carroll and Celestine Braxton.

A total of four federal lawsuits were filed in federal courts
to stop the rule. Two judges granted preliminary injunction to
halt its implementation before Friedrich, a judge appointed
by President Donald Trump, ordered that the rule be voided
nationwide. 
In her letter, DeVos said that even though her department
will not appeal the rulings, private school students and the
people they serve still deserve aid and consideration. She
stood by her view that Congress never intended for CARES
aid to benefit some students but not others and added that
this "did not stop some from suing us, attempting to deny
private school children and teachers help they needed."
With DeVos' rule no longer in effect, schools will still have
to set aside CARES money for equitable services but only to
provide support for certain at-risk and disadvantaged students in local private schools. 

BRIEFLY STATED CONTRIBUTORS: Associated Press, Evie Blad, Maya Riser-Kositsky, Corey Mitchell, Holly Peele, Andrew Ujifusa, and Madeline Will. Edited by Karen Diegmueller.
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Education Week - October 7, 2020

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