Something I want to flag for #MAEdu this morning:

The Board of Ed meets next Tuesday; agenda is here:

You will note the second item on the agenda is "Proposed Amendments to Student Learning Time Regulations, 603 CMR 27.00 (Standards for Remote Learning and Hybrid Learning) — Discussion and Vote to Adopt Emergency Regulations"

You will also note there is no backup as yet:
In other words, the actual proposed emergency regulations that the Commissioner will be asking the Board to adopt on the spot next Tuesday are not actually publicly available as yet.

Note that the deadline to file to comment next Tuesday is today at 5 pm.
The Board passing regulations is roughly equivalent to school committees passing policy changes, something which generally goes through multiple readings at multiple meetings (or passes through subcommittees or both) because public process is super important.
Not so much, here.

Let me share the bit that I do know (there is, of course, nothing as yet in writing, because...see above).
You might recall that last month, the Department required all districts to fill out documentation on how they were providing education to students right now: hours in classrooms, hours of synchronous online, hours of asynchronous online, sampling by grade with exceptions noted.
What superintendents were told--and I am very clear on this part--was that it was so the Department could adequately respond to concerns being expressed that X district was doing this...in other words, to respond to hearsay about what was being provided by districts.
(You might also recall that I ever said that this made some sense, as it aligned with DESE's general "collect information about what districts are doing so as to have the story straight" mode.)

Yes, well...
The emergency regulations are, as I understand it, going to lay our requirements on precisely how remote and hybrid learning are to be provided: required numbers of hours of synchronous learning, over required number of days.
This is, of course, coming from the Department--and I could go on at length about this but will not here--that has not engaged in any meaningful way with districts that are remote learning on what is successful, what is not, and why they have made the choices they have.
I could easily dig up quotes from this Commissioner on how he intended to engage with districts, with superintendents, with teachers, with the local level in ways that were a break from past practice.
I won't because A) it's too easy and B) I have actual work to do this morning.
I will say that I am angry and sick about this.

And so so so tired.
#MAEdu
but yeah, reporters, might want to look into that.
@threadreaderapp unroll

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Time for some thoughts on schools given the revised SickKids document and the fact that ON decided to leave most schools closed. ON is not the only jurisdiction to do so, but important to note that many jurisdictions would not have done so -even with higher incidence rates.


As outlined in the tweet by @NishaOttawa yesterday, the situation is complex, and not a simple right or wrong https://t.co/DO0v3j9wzr. And no one needs to list all the potential risks and downsides of prolonged school closures.


On the other hand: while school closures do not directly protect our most vulnerable in long-term care at all, one cannot deny that any factor potentially increasing community transmission may have an indirect effect on the risk to these institutions, and on healthcare.

The question is: to what extend do schools contribute to transmission, and how to balance this against the risk of prolonged school closures. The leaked data from yesterday shows a mixed picture -schools are neither unicorns (ie COVID free) nor infernos.

Assuming this data is largely correct -while waiting for an official publication of the data, it shows first and foremost the known high case numbers at Thorncliff, while other schools had been doing very well -are safe- reiterating the impact of socioeconomics on the COVID risk.

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"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."


We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.

Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)

It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.

Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".