Pandemic-era SATs: Pencils Down, Face Masks Up

This is the Coronavirus Schools Briefing, a guide to the seismic changes in U.S. education that are taking place during the pandemic.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the SATs are:

A) Extra stressful

B) Socially distant

C) Making inequality worse

D) All of the above

The answer is clearly D according to our colleague Emma Goldberg, who took the SAT this weekend, and talked to students who struggled to find a test center and cope with new social restrictions, on top of the normal anxiety that comes with a test that can decide your future.

“Normally, you’d have this foreboding sense that comes from taking a test in a room with 100 other students,” said Nikola Kasarskis, 17. “Now, instead, you have this foreboding sense of taking the test in a room with someone who might have a deadly virus. I don’t know what’s worse.”

In the spring, the College Board, which produces the SAT, abruptly abandoned plans for an online, at-home option. In-person testing is still disrupted: Four out of every 10 testing centers, mostly in the Northeast and California, are closed. And testing centers in major metro areas are often packed while those in suburban and rural areas generally have spots available — a split that exacerbates the inequities inherent in admissions testing.

“Clearly, this year, students whose families can afford to send them vast distances to take the test are doing so,” Emma said. “Those who can’t afford to do so are sometimes unable to take the test. It’s another indicator of the deep inequities that are endemic to standardized testing and the admissions system.”

Many colleges and universities dropped test scores as an admissions requirement this year because of the pandemic. And even before the coronavirus arrived, many were already abandoning standardized tests because of concerns that they are unfair to poor, Black and Hispanic students.

Emma says she struggled on some sections of the test. But it sounds like her attempt at blending in mostly succeeded: When Emma gave the test registrar her admissions ticket, which featured her professional headshot, “she looked at it and said: ‘Wow, your senior portrait is lovely!’”

Moms are struggling

On top of everything, the pandemic may set back progress toward gender equality. Or, at least, maternal equality: Substantial research has shown that most professional gender gaps are, in fact, motherhood gaps. (Women without children are much closer to parity with men when it comes to salaries and promotions.)

Now that school has started, working mothers, who already bore the brunt of child care, are facing brutal choices. Returning to work might mean no one can watch their remote learners — private child care is expensive and grandparents are at high risk. Staying home could cost them their career — or, in more immediate terms, their ability to pay rent.

The hybrid model, in which students do some days remotely and some in person based on a complex schedule, is especially difficult for parents.

“How are you supposed to say to your job: ‘I will need some days off work but they’ll be different each week?’” asked Francesca Donner, the gender director at The Times and the editor of our sister In Her Words newsletter. “It’s just devastating.”

In the U.S., where many parents do not have parental leave or affordable child care:

• Women are three times as likely as men to have left their job because of child-care issues during the pandemic, according to a study last month by the Census Bureau.

• Women accounted for 54 percent of pandemic-related job losses in the U.S., although they are only 46 percent of the work force, according to a report from McKinsey Global.

Lower-income women have been hit the hardest. In particular, women working in retail are dealing with their own unpredictable schedules: Shifts can vary widely week to week and employees have little choice but to take the hours they are given.

“I am not asking you to take care of my kid,” Rachel Belz, who was an Amazon warehouse worker in West Deptford, N.J., told The Times. “I am asking you to make it easier for me to take care of my kid.”

Why children rarely get sick

Why does the coronavirus terrorize some adults but leave children relatively untouched?

Most children do not get sick at all; if they do contract the virus, almost all recover fully. A new study — the first to compare the immune response in children and in adults — suggests that in children, a branch of the immune system that evolved to protect people from unfamiliar pathogens quickly destroys the virus before it can damage their bodies.

When our bodies encounter new germs, they respond with a flurry of immune activity. Children’s bodies typically respond with an innate response that is quick and overwhelming, because most pathogens they encounter are new to them. Adult bodies, on the other hand, react in a more specialized and sophisticated way, since it’s rare that they encounter new germs. Children and adults have both systems, but the innate response is much stronger in children.

Our colleague Apoorva Mandavilli put it this way: If the strong innate immune response resembles emergency responders first on the scene, the adaptive response represents the skilled specialists at the hospital. And in the time it takes for an adult body to get the specialized adaptive system up and running, the virus has had more time to do harm.

Across the country

College

• A Times survey of more than 1,600 American colleges and universities has revealed at least 130,000 cases and at least 70 deaths since the pandemic began. There have been more than 123,000 additional cases at colleges since late July.

• The University of Missouri is one of several colleges that has hired six of its own students as social media influencers to share coronavirus safety information.

• In Minnesota, college students are breathing life into local businesses. But they’re also a public health risk.

• The Boston Globe took a look at how the pandemic has changed campus life. It’s worth a read. The paper also has a list of coronavirus outbreaks at New England colleges.

K-12

• The union representing New York City’s principals said on Sunday that it had lost confidence in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to reopen schools and called on the state to seize control. The mayor has twice delayed the start of in-person classes, and most of the city’s 1.1 million students have already started the school year remotely.

• Also in New York: Around half of Asian, Black and Hispanic students are learning remotely. Only about a third of white students are, The Washington Post reported.

• Florida’s education commissioner ordered public schools in Miami-Dade County to fully open buildings five days a week by Oct. 5., more than two weeks earlier than the system had planned.

• Louisiana’s attorney general has opened an investigation into a public elementary school for suspending a Black student after his teacher noticed a BB gun in his room during an online class.

• Public schools in St. Paul, Minn., don’t have enough staff to bring students back to school yet.

• Teachers in Little Rock, Ark., won’t show up for in-person classes because of concerns about the spread of the coronavirus.

• A 53-year-old teacher in Carson City, Mich., died of the coronavirus on Thursday, one day after the district closed down because of an outbreak.

• West Virginia will post data on outbreaks in public schools online. Here’s the website.

Tip: Be careful with play dates

It is tempting, as winter creeps nearer, to soak up the last hours in the sun with family and friends. But play dates are still risky.

Kids are often asymptomatic, so you might not know if your child is contagious. And when we’re with close family and friends, we let our guard down. “I think the settings where people are now feeling safe are the settings where the risk is, in many ways, actually highest,” said Dr. Allison Arwady, the commissioner of the Chicago Health Department.

Even when you’re hanging out with family and friends, be careful. Remind kids to keep their masks up and stay at least six feet apart.