Links on why we need to get kids back in school, from ed reform advocate and political liberal.
"Years from now, when we look back at the coronavirus pandemic, it is very possible that the most damaging element we will identify is its catastrophic effect upon public education. The devastation will be social and economic, permanently degrading the skill base of the workforce and robbing a generation of children, especially low-income students, of any chance to enter the middle class. And the question we will have to ask is whether the tragedy was truly necessary....The damage to the future workforce will be far worse. Students denied in-person education will suffer permanent learning loss that will degrade their skills for decades to come. One estimate by the OECD roughly pegs the long-term cost in foregone productivity to the United States at around $15 trillion. That number is obviously speculative, but it provides some sense of the economic scale of the calamity.
The social damage will not be spread evenly. The undeveloped mental potential and stunted careers will be concentrated disproportionately among low-income and minority students. One survey found four-fifths of Hispanic students, three-quarters of Black students, but only half of white students lack access to in-person learning. 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 in private schools, which are reopening for in-person learning much faster." www.facebook.com/1142672288/posts/10223447261506699/?d=n ... See MoreSee Less
Back in March, Dr. Deborah Birx, one of the experts advising President Trump, predicted that “if we do things almost perfectly,” there would be up to 200,000 deaths in the United States.
“If we do things together well, almost perfectly, we could get in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities,” Birx told Savannah Guthrie on Today.
Of course, things weren’t perfect, thanks largely to New York and New Jersey, the states with the worst responses to COVID-19 in the country, and the worst in the world—particularly New York. Roughly 22 percent of all COVID-19 deaths in the United States come from New York and Jersey.
The fact is that a small number of poorly managed states skew America’s COVID-19 death numbers significantly.
For example, if you take the COVID-19 death counts of the top four states per capita (New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut), they account for 28 percent of all COVID-19 deaths in the country.
That’s an incredibly high concentration of deaths in just four states. Yet despite these states’ disproportionately bad responses to the pandemic, the United States is basically where Dr. Birx said we’d be if things had been done almost perfectly. ... See MoreSee Less
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How are you doing Thanksgiving this year? Are you going to spend the time with family and friends? ... See MoreSee Less
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Just a reminder that the Pittsboro Root Cellar is now open on Fridays and Saturdays from 4-8pm and is offering a pop-up menu, giving customers the chance to experience different dishes each week! This weekend, join us for the Seafood Shack, which will feature some of our favorites from the shore, including lobster rolls, shrimp and grits, clam chowder, fried grouper platter and sandwich and more! This is a takeout event, but our large patio is open! Check out our menu here: orderstart.com/rootcellarpbo ... See MoreSee Less
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