The White House has offered very little when it comes to setting standards for dealing with the pandemic. This lack of an immediate response and failure to strongly push guidelines have resulted in the terrible situation we now experience. There seems one recent exception to this lack of taking a strong position and that concerns the recent pronouncement that schools will be open for face to face instruction in the Fall.
There are multiple issues about opening schools that trouble me. I am concerned that the resources needed to deliver quality instructions are not being made available. Schools have been cutting back at a time when more personnel (teachers, mental health workers, school nurses, maintenance workers, technology support personnel) are needed. Government expectations influence community expectations and at a minimum should come with the resources necessary for implementation.
The pronouncement from Trump, DeVoss that schools must open bothers me in two other important ways. First, there are the threats that financial pressure will be brought to bear to assure local and state compliance. Aside from this lack of ethics in this tactic, it is difficult to argue that you value the importance of education if your remedy when education experts disagree with you is to take actions that reduce educational effectiveness. My second annoyance is that to address the incompatibility between the pressure to open schools and the guidelines of the CDC, the WH is now pressuring the CDC to change their guidelines. This expectation has resulted in the CDC claiming that their recommendations are based in science and they will not change. Now what – do those with political power trump (haha) those with scientific expertise.
Why some in the public would accept that expectations based on the best science can simply be changed is troubling. This is not the way science works. However, the resistance it expertise has been part of the Trump approach from the beginning. The reasons this is accepted by some is an important issue and the notion that any idea advanced has equal value is a troubling development in public thinking.