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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

It was well established before COVID that missing in-school days has a major adverse effect on learning. Keeping kids out of school had exactly the predicted effect—reading and math scores fell significantly: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/news/24/01/despite-progres....

We also knew early on that COVID posed little risk to kids themselves. So it was entirely rational for parents, especially of young children, to value keeping those kids in school over the negligible health risks (to the kids) of COVID exposure.

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The point (as I understand it) was not to protect the kids themselves from covid, but that kids are active vectors of illness: they get sick easily and rapidly spread it to everyone around them. Sending kids to school during a pandemic is basically asking to fast-track that sickness to everyone in the community.

There was never any scientific basis for that belief. It was just made up without conducting experiments. And if fact we saw that some countries like Sweden kept primary schools open throughout the pandemic (without mask mandates) and it was fine.

> There was never any scientific basis for that belief.

This is an incorrect statement that can be fixed with minutes of research.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.0610941104 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00916...

One might argue about the quality of the research or point out contradicting studies, but saying there was zero basis is flat-out false.

Adding that the idea was "made up" is a great example of bending the idea of science to prop up a point.

COVID is not the Spanish Flu or asthma. Rayiner's point was about SARS-CoV-2 and he is correct. You can read papers published in 2020 to see.

And COVID and the Spanish Flu essentially targeted opposite populations, the former being dangerous to those with compromised immune function while the latter turned strong immune systems against the body in a “cytokine storm”.

That’s why you focus resources on protecting those who you don’t want kids to spread it to, the sick and the elderly, a la the suppressed Great Barrington Declaration.

It wasn't 'suppressed'; it was announced to wide acclaim, others took issue with its premises, and there were significantly more of the latter than the former. There was considerable skepticism of the sponsorship of the libtertarian AEIR, and the fact that hundreds of thousands of people had already died in the US by the time of its publication probably had a lot to do with its lack of popularity.

Or uh, we could stop the virus in its tracks and go back to normal? This was the New Zealand plan, and it worked.

Fewer days in school reducing test scores is very much expected. Going from that to claiming an adverse effect on learning, much less an overall harm, is quite a leap.

Test scores accurately measure learning. That’s one of the most robustly supported facts in all of education, and something virtually nobody in Asia or Europe disagrees with.

> Test scores accurately measure learning.

I think you claim to much here. Or are using odd definitions, to me at least.

Sure you can extract something about what has been learned with properly made tests administered correctly. It is the tool that is used because it is the tool we have, not because it 'measures learning' in all the ways we want to measure.

Which is why reorganizing all school systems around teaching the standardized test and judging teachers by these results has been such an overwhelming success that "virtually nobody [..] disagrees with".

The US has probably the least test-focused education system in the developed world (you don’t need to take any exam to graduate high school except in some cases an extremely easy one as a formality). Would you claim the US education system is better than the UK, France or Germany?

The fact that we even have year-by-year, grade-by-grade test figures for the US implies it's significantly more test-focused than the UK, where those tests simply don't exist for most grades.

Whether you get any qualification at all in the UK is entirely determined by high-stakes standardized tests, at least on the main academic track (GCSE and A levels)

Sure. But students have very little influence on the system. How test-focused a schooling system is isn't going to depend on how much test results affect the students, it's going to depend on how much test results affect the teachers and especially the administrators.

Are you talking about finals or standardized tests? Because from my experience at least, the latter has minimal impact on the track that kids follow (could put on you advanced math or reading track but there is opportunity for mobility regardless) and only the SAT/ACT (highest score of however many times on chooses to take them) is used to determine where someone can go to college. But test scores (even MCAT/LSAT) will never determine what someone can study, just where, which is not the case in the UK per my understanding.

There is no "US" education system in reality. There is a "Maine" education system, and a "Colorado" education system, and a "Florida" education system.

They have wildly different rules, designs, systems, and results.

> The US has probably the least test-focused education system in the developed world

And there I was, in American schools being told test scores were 80% of my grade with homework accounting for 10% and class projects another 10%. Both high school and university. Fucking liars.

Presumably random exams made up by your teachers, not nationwide or statewide standardized tests, though.

I'm sure the brain damage that COVID still causes (there are 3x more cases this year than in 2020, fun fact) is more of a danger to kids than staying home.

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