U.S. Dept. of Education helps promote CDC's new school data dashboard

CDC's new school-related data dashboard tracks COVID stats, but also in-person, hybrid, and remote school operations

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) rolled out a new dashboard in early November that specifically targets data related to the nation’s K-12 schools.

A national map is included in the dashboard, which can be customized by the viewer to show the number of school districts operating fully in-person, a combination of in-person and remote ( often called hybrid), or those offering only remote instruction. The map can be filtered by state, district, and date.

The dashboard covers case rates, test positivity rates by region(for adults and children), hospitalization rates by region (adults and children), hospitalization by vaccination rate, and death rates (adults and children).

The majority of the graphs and charts in the new data dashboard are not child-specific and include "adults (18 or older) over time," unless a filter is applied.

The child hospitalizations table covers all hospitalizations since the start of the pandemic. Region Four, which includes North Carolina, shows child hospitalization rates peaked at .9% in August 2021. The historical rate was most commonly found to be .1 to .2 percent.

Case rate proportions by state is a bit odd since it appears to have logged cases in January and February of 2020 - that’s before the first case in the U.S. was even documented.

The CDC’s new dashboard also tracks vaccination rates for adults and children, with a final breakout section that is labeled as tracking “vaccination rates for adolescents aged 12-17,” however the description of the breakout chart says that visual displays “the percentage of both children (17 or younger) and adults (18 or older) who have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by individual county.”

When hovering over any particular area on the CDC’s map ( pictured above) with one’s mouse, county-level vaccination rates are displayed.

That new CDC data dashboard was then promoted by the U.S. Department of Education (USED) in its Nov. 8 newsletter. The department’s communication encourages child vaccinations, starting at age 5.

“This is an exciting moment in our fight against the virus,” the USED newsletter says of the child vaccine. “After 18 months of a pandemic, parents have long awaited this day.”

Here’s the full text of the USED Nov. 8 newsletter:

The Department of Education has been hard at work supporting school communities with offering safe in-person instruction this school year. Please see below latest updates in three key school safety areas.

COVID-19 Data Dashboard
Today, the Department of Education, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is launching a new COVID-19 data dashboard to help the public keep track of the impact of COVID-19 on K-12 schools. The dashboard aggregates in one location data on pediatric COVID-19 cases, youth vaccination rates, and numbers on schools that are operating in-person, hybrid or remote. Data will be updated each week, and where possible, the information is presented geographically so that educators and families can understand the impact of COVID in their communities. This is the first time such data will be presented in a single location to the public.

To present data on school modalities, CDC researchers partnered with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory to develop a model to estimate the most likely learning modality (in-person, hybrid, and remote) for public and public charter school districts nationwide. These findings were originally presented in a recently published MMWR, and now CDC will be providing the data on a weekly basis.

5–11-Year-Old Vaccinations
On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially recommended that children 5 to 11 years old be vaccinated against COVID-19 with the Pfizer-BioNtech pediatric vaccine. This recommendation comes after months and months of rigorous review and the FDA’s decision to authorize emergency use of the vaccine for children. This is an exciting moment in our fight against the virus. After 18 months of a pandemic, parents have long awaited this day.

The COVID-19 vaccine is the best way to keep your child safe and protect them against COVID-19, including the Delta variant. Kids are being infected with COVID-19, occasionally leading to serious illness and even death in certain cases. Even if your child doesn’t get severely ill, they could be diagnosed with what is known as “long COVID” and face long-term health consequences or pass the virus on to others.

Beginning the week of November 8th, the pediatric vaccination program will be fully up and running, and parents will have approximately 20,000 trusted and convenient locations to get their children vaccinated with more sites coming online in the weeks ahead.

The Department of Education, alongside the Department of Health and Human Services are supporting schools and communities with setting up vaccine solutions that work best for families including hosting thousands of school located vaccine clinics, matching school districts to local pharmacy providers, and supporting strong collaboration between schools, families and local pediatricians and children’s hospitals. To learn more about getting vaccinated or standing up a vaccine clinic at your school or community, visit www.vaccines.gov.

Testing
In an effort to keep schools open and safe, the Department, alongside the CDC is providing resources to states and schools for testing and other mitigation efforts. Last week, we announced a plan to partner with the Rockefeller Foundation to accelerate school-based screening testing for students and staff. ED, CDC, and The Rockefeller Foundation will collaborate on initiatives to make it easier for schools to set up testing, including by:

• Making staff available to state health departments through the COVID Workforce Initiative to coordinate, execute, and expand on school-based COVID-19 testing, contact tracing/case investigation, and other public health activities. This additional support from the CDC Foundation can be obtained by contacting CDC at this link.

• Publishing a start-up guide for schools on how to launch screening testing programs.

• Holding weekly “office hours” to connect schools to national testing experts to set up and sustain screening testing programs, the details of which can be found at The Rockefeller Foundation website.

• Launching a directory for schools to identify a provider and get started with testing within their state.

• Released guidance for school districts on using American Rescue Plan funds to provide incentives to parents and guardians to participate in screening testing program

Thank you for your continued commitment to keeping schools open and safe for students across the country. Please follow us on @USEDGov and @SecCardona on Twitter for regular updates.