New studies show politics, not science, is driving lockdown policies
According to the non-partisan education news website The 74, the two factors most closely correlated with school re-openings are the share of the local vote that went to President Donald Trump in 2016, and the degree to which teachers belong to unions.
Lower support for Trump tends to be correlated with longer school closures, and higher union concentration is also correlated with longer school closures — though correlation is not necessarily causation.
In an article titled “Politics, Not Science, is Driving School Reopening Decisions to a ‘Really Dangerous’ Degree, Research Suggests,” The 74 reports:
The latest evidence, released this month as a working paper through Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform, indicates that partisanship — as exhibited by the share of voters in a given county who supported Donald Trump in 2016, as well as the strength of local teachers’ unions — drove reopening plans “far more” than public health conditions.
That conclusion echoes the work of Jon Valant, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy, who shared his own findings in a much-discussed blog post this summer. Tracking the reopening plans of over 250 districts, Valant detected “no relationship” between each locality’s decision and its per-capita COVID cases.
…
Hartney and Finger also highlighted a connection between reopening decisions and organized labor, according to two metrics: the size of a district (prior research has shown that higher student enrollments are correlated with greater union strength) and whether it permitted collective bargaining. Schools planned for a remote opening in 40 percent of districts where teachers could bargain collectively, the authors found, compared with just 15 percent of districts in which they could not.
…
Other research supports the idea that union concentration is associated with a greater likelihood of online instruction. One recent study conducted by Corey DeAngelis, a prominent union critic and director of school choice at the libertarian Reason Foundation, found evidence that school reopening decisions were correlated with four different measures of union strength — but not with COVID risk. In states with right-to-work laws, the paper found, schools were 14 percentage points more likely to reopen in person relative to states without such laws.
Read the full article — with more studies — here.
More at www.breitbart.com
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Tom O
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I have no reason to doubt this article which brings me to the point of saying it is a shame that the personal satisfaction of some people can so completely dominate what is in the best interests of their families, their communities, and the future of million of young people and their hopes and dreams. That their “personal politics” are so much more important than the discharge of their chosen professions.
But of course, my real point regarding COVID is that there are so many people willing to ruin the lives of others for personal profit, and that could never have happened had the Main “Scream” Media been what the Founding Fathers had expected it to be, and we all thought as well – our “watchdog” filled with moral characters, and built on integrity, instead of turning into yellow journalists and false tabloids, filled with all the “garbage not fit for print.”
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Matt H
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Agreed agreed agreed.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Tom O and MattH,
Why do you both seem to blame others (the media) for what is occurring?
During the past few months I have trying to encourage PSI readers like you to go to Follow MOSAiC for this was my definition (example) of what real science should be even if the ‘scientists’ involved were clearly trying interrupt their many observations and measurements in terms of what they ‘already knew’ before this grand experiment began.
But Matt, friend, want me to teach you what I know because I have read, observed, measured, and pondered about all this information. JD Hoffmann (if I remember the right name) wrote about the ‘sky temperatures’ he had observed with his inexpensive IR thermometer. And I rushed to buy my inexpensive IR thermometer. And reported to JD the sky temperatures I was observing. Does either of you now have an IR thermometer with which to actually measure temperatures of surfaces. Something which I have read that some scientists consider impossible or impossible. Why do they consider this? My answer is they believe it is useful to measure temperatures to a tenth, hundredth, or even a thousandth of a degree when it is observed the temperature of the air as conventionally measured often naturallynaturavaries by more than a degree during an hour and some hours it naturally varies by several degrees during the hours after sun rise and near sunset (both before and after). And I shouldn’t need to tell you about this generally observed ‘fact’ (?).
Galileo tried to tell us about his experiences and his book’s translation has been available to English readers since 1914. I didn’t read it until I was about 50. Have either of you read it yet? I have read no evidence that you have. Yet, you come to PSI to learn about ‘science’. Start at the beginning, always a good place to start.
And as a teacher I have experienced what Galileo is said to have written: “We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.” That (help others to discover it within themselves) is what I am trying to do when I have written any essay or comment, here at PSI.
And MattH, I see you have discovered somethings within yourself. Tom O, have not observed enough about you to make any ‘judgment’. Which should be unimportant to either of you, for you should be objectively judging yourselves.
Have a good day, Jerry
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MattH
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Hi Jerry.
Matt H, above, is not MattH who has emailed you.
When you mentioned your I.R. thermometer I was thinking we have not heard from J.D.Huffman for some time.
Regards. Matt.
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Jerry Krause
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HI MattH Given my mistake it is best if we go back to ‘two choices’ to continue the conversation that you started with your comment.
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