When students return to school after a lengthy pandemic-induced absence, the consensus is they will have lost significant academic ground. Still unresolved for governments and educators are the questions of how — or even whether — teachers should try to make up for lost learning.
Some have proposed holding evening or Saturday classes for students to catch up. A Maryland senator has proposed school year-round. In California, the governor has suggested the next school year could begin as soon as July.
But any remediation plans will be complicated by social distancing mandates that may require smaller class sizes and budget cuts that appear imminent because of falling local and state revenues. Read the full story here:
Here's an update on all developments. Scroll or swipe further for in-depth coverage.
- Advice from the top U.S. disease control experts on how to safely reopen businesses and institutions during the coronavirus pandemic was more detailed and restrictive than the plan released by the White House last month.
- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled a more than $3 trillion coronavirus aid package, a sweeping effort with $1 trillion for states and cities, “hazard pay” for essential workers and a new round of cash payments to individuals. The House is expected to vote on the package as soon as Friday. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said there is no “urgency.” The Senate will wait until after Memorial Day to consider options.
- New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday that New York is now investigating about 100 cases of children with a mysterious inflammatory syndrome, which affects blood vessels and organs and has symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease and toxic shock.
- Authorities in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the coronavirus pandemic first broke out, are planning to test all 11 million residents in the next 10 days, Chinese media reported.
- Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's onetime presidential campaign chairman who was convicted as part of the special counsel's Russia investigation, has been released from federal prison to serve the rest of his sentence in home confinement due to concerns about the coronavirus, his lawyer said Wednesday.
- The U.S. has the largest coronavirus outbreak in the world by far: 1.37 million infections and over 82,000 deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University that experts say understates the true toll of the pandemic.
- Even with 20,000 dead, there’s a debate among headstrong New Yorkers over just when and where it is necessary to wear a mask. The state’s governor has ordered masks for anyone out in public who can’t stay at least six feet away from other people.
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For more summaries and full reports, please select from the articles below. Scroll further for new data on increasing traffic across the US, interactive maps tracking the spread, and free websites to help with learning.
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On the road again
Cars travel along the Dolphin Expressway, Monday, May 11, 2020, in downtown Miami. Americans are slowly getting back on the road after hunkering down amid the cornonavirus pandemic, though driving still is well below what it was before many states issued stay-at-home orders.
Data: Virus-weary Americans slowly return to the road
Americans are slowly getting back on the road after hunkering down due to the coronavirus, though the volume of traffic is still well below what it was before many states issued stay-at-home orders.
Drivers in the U.S. have been more active in the past week than at any time since mid-March, according to an AP analysis of StreetLight Data Inc., an analytics software company that aggregates data from smartphones and other GPS-enabled devices and combines it with information from maps and other sources to provide county-level data on vehicle miles traveled.
The most recent data shows that activity during the seven-day period ending May 8 was 60% higher than the lowest point since the COVID-19 crisis began. However, activity still was down 49% compared to January 2020 and well below what would be expected in the spring under normal circumstances.
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