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Policymakers should help students achieve, not lower the bar
There’s simply no dispute about the toll the past two years of “COVID education” have taken on students.
Michigan State researchers found that each month of remote instruction put another 1 percent of the state’s students “significantly behind” in math, and about half that many in reading. Low-income learners, who could least afford the setback, lost the most ground.
The findings of another recent study from around the country mirrored these results on a larger scale. Schools serving children in poverty were most likely to close classroom doors the longest, slowing down all students academically and widening the gap between those of different economic backgrounds.
The problem offers no easy solutions. But schools at least should stop doing harm. A new analysis published in Education Week found average student scores on the ACT college entrance exam declined over the past decade, even as high school grade-point averages rose and accelerated during the pandemic. Grade inflation may soothe some pains for the moment, but it only leaves more students at the mercy of remedial college classes that undermine their ability to earn a degree.
Rather than lowering the bar, policymakers should reinforce a shared commitment to help students overcome obstacles and reach their potential. One way to at least alleviate the effects of missing out on key months of in-person instruction is to provide quality supplemental services. For students who have fallen behind, tutoring has been shown to boost achievement. Many moms and dads understand this, and they are looking for help. About a quarter of parents told a recent national survey that they are either looking, or planning to look, for tutoring services to help their child.
Where unions and education officials fell down in providing needed continuity of learning, some states have stepped up. That includes Tennessee and North Carolina, which have directed shares of federal aid into training tutors who are providing intensive support to younger students. Ohio has observed early success in a virtual personalized tutoring program for children with disabilities. And one county in Florida is using COVID-relief dollars to pay its teachers to provide similar small-group support before and after school hours.
Yet, in some places, post-pandemic tutoring appears to be a lower priority. One news outlet found three-fourths of Michigan districts made no mention of “tutoring” in their plans to use some of the $6 billion in federal COVID relief. Local schools still had the vast majority of those funds on the table, as of April.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer belatedly joined the call to ramp up tutoring last month. Her proposal to create a $280 million program called MI Back on Track may represent a positive shift from her earlier track record, but is too light on details to offer great hopes. It isn’t clear precisely which students would be eligible for services, nor who would control the funds. Would it be the same school officials who are struggling to spend the state’s sizable haul of extra federal cash?
Given the Michigan governor’s track record, it seems safe to expect that parents will have little say in choosing services that work best for their children. In 2021, Whitmer vetoed three proposals that would have helped families afford extra academic help. The first offered reimbursements for summer school remediation; the second, scholarships for early literacy tutoring and materials.
The third piece of legislation was the most expansive. Whitmer’s veto of Student Opportunity Scholarship accounts denied thousands of public school students access to tutoring and other education services. The tax-credit donations designed to fund the accounts, which also could be used to pay for private K-12 tuition, would make a smaller dent in Michigan’s school aid budget than the amount forwarded in the governor’s tutoring proposal.
A citizen’s initiative effort aims to bypass the governor’s opposition, but the timeline for making Student Opportunity Scholarship accounts available to families has become murkier after a key June 1 signature-collecting deadline was missed.
The sobering reality is that many students need the extra academic help now — and they’ll need more in the years to come. Giving parents a stronger voice in the process will only help children catch up in the classroom.
Ben DeGrow is director of education policy for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Mich. Follow him on Twitter @bendegrow.
Source: TEST FEED1
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How Stacey Abrams is looking to win Georgia
When Stacey Abrams ran for governor of Georgia in 2018, she was relatively unknown. By 2020, though, her work in Georgia and for Democrats across the country made her a household name, in time for a second run.
Abrams ran unopposed in this year’s Democratic primaries. Now, she faces current Gov. Brian Kemp (R), whom she lost to by a narrow margin in 2018, in another contentious race. But this time, Abrams has an army of newly registered voters behind her.
In 2020, Abrams and a team of grassroots organizations registered more than 800,000 new voters, turning Georgia blue for the first time in decades and helping then former Vice President Joe Biden secure the presidency.
That mobilization will play greatly into Abrams’s chances to become the state’s first Black female governor, said Adrienne Jones, a Morehouse College assistant professor of political science and director of the historically Black college’s pre-law program. Now, Jones said, Abrams will need to grab the “multicultural vote” in higher numbers than she did in 2018.
“The GOP tends to have a lock on white voters, but the demographics in the state are changing,” Jones said. “So, [she’s] got to get some cross section of all of the groups.”
Four years ago, Abrams captured the majority of Black voters’ ballots in areas like Savannah, Atlanta and Augusta. This time around, Jones said, Abrams has to strengthen her support from LGBTQ+ voters, Asian voters and Latino voters.
“She’s going to have to … bring along some independent thinkers, as well as convince some non-traditional Democratic voters to show up in this election,” said Antjuan Seawright, founder and CEO of political consulting firm Blueprint Strategy.
That makeup would include rural white men, suburban white women and younger voters, Seawright added, a cross-section of voters some would see as a stretch for a Democratic candidate.
But the Democratic Governors Association has expressed confidence in Abrams getting those votes.
“She’s an energetic and dynamic candidate that is able to fire up the grassroots but at the same time also appeal to voters who are more in the middle because the issues that she’s talking about are things that impact everyone,” said Sam Newton, deputy communications director for the association.
Abrams’s platform focuses on combating voter suppression, providing access to higher education, expanding affordable housing and protecting civil rights. Newton added Abrams’s push for expanded health care is also a big selling point for the candidate.
“She kicked off her For One Georgia campaign by going to visit a rural hospital that is closed because Brian Kemp refuses to expand Medicaid,” Newton said. “She’s running on bread-and-butter issues that impact people’s everyday lives.”
Also working in Abrams’s favor this time around, Jones said, is that even after she lost, she didn’t “disappear for four years.”
“She maintained globalization. She’s been raising money, she’s been expanding her business prowess. She has persistently been improving her market,” Jones said.
That included endorsing other candidates running in Georgia elections, like Charlie Bailey for lieutenant governor, and urging Hollywood projects to remain in Georgia through her organization Fair Fight after several pulled their productions over the passage of restrictive voting laws. Like many Democrats, she also seized on the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion, voicing her support for pro-choice legislation and organizations.
Still, as Election Day nears, Abrams faces an uphill battle.
While the 2020 elections of Biden and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) indicated a potential shift in Georgia politics, Seawright pointed out that the political climate is very different now than it was two years ago.
“Donald Trump is no longer a top-of-mind driving factor for Democrats to be energized against, or for Republicans to be energized for,” Seawright said.
That showed when Kemp pulled in nearly 74 percent of the Republican primary votes, easily beating his competitors – including the Trump-endorsed David Perdue.
Kemp also has stepped up his campaigning, telling voters Abrams thinks Georgia is the worst state to live in.
“Incumbency has its benefits, especially in this polarized environment,” Jones said. “Kemp’s able to advertise his bonafides and what he’s done as governor. He can claim to have beaten [Abrams] in the past, or the Democrats generally.”
And that’s exactly what keeps the Georgia Republican Party confident in Kemp’s reelection campaign.
“Governor Brian Kemp’s record stands for itself: he raised teacher pay, returned over a billion dollars to Georgia taxpayers and secured over $400 million for rural broadband access expansion, just to name a few accomplishments,” said Dani Repass, Georgia Republican Party press secretary, in a statement to The Hill. “Governor Kemp’s record puts Stacey Abrams’ to shame; while she’s been getting rich, the governor has been fighting for Georgians.”
But it’s not just Kemp’s record Abrams is fighting against — it’s been a tough year for Democrats across the country.
Biden’s approval rating in late May was only 36 percent, the lowest it’s been since he took office. Just this month, only 28 percent of voters said they approve of his handling of inflation. And when it comes to the generic congressional ballot, FiveThirtyEight polls show Democrats trail Republicans by more than 2 points.
But, Newton said, it’s the rest of Kemp’s record that gives Abrams an edge.
“He’s passed some of the most extreme laws in the country when it comes to banning abortion with no exceptions,” said Newton.
“His criminal carry bill was even opposed by law enforcement because it makes it easier for dangerous people to carry hidden weapons,” he added, referring to a law signed in April that allows Georgia gun owners to carry a concealed handgun in public without a state license.
Seawright said that what will really put Abrams over the edge is if she makes her campaign about Georgia and not national politics.
“Republicans … try and nationalize every election,” Seawright said. “What Abrams has to do is over-localize the election and make it all about Georgia: the needs of Georgia, not about the Democrats, not about the National Democratic Party. It has to be about the people of Georgia. It has to be a personalized election for her.”
Source: TEST FEED1
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Thousands to rally in D.C. for gun safety
Thousands of young people are set to descend on Washington, D.C., on Saturday to urge Congress to pass stricter gun laws as bipartisan negotiators work to reach a deal following a spate of recent mass shootings.
The March for Our Lives demonstration will take place less than a month after 19 students and two teachers were killed in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and 10 Black people were gunned down in a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y. Similar marches are set to be held the same day in more than 450 cities in the U.S. and around the world on Saturday.
In an exclusive interview with The Hill, Yolanda Renee King, the 13-year-old granddaughter of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. who will give one of the keynote speeches at this weekend’s Washington rally, said youth activists are frustrated after several years of demonstrating and countless deaths.
March for Our Lives was founded after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Fla., in 2018, drawing more than a million participants that March to its first demonstration in Washington and sister events around the country.
“We’re all coming together because this is unacceptable, and we are demanding that our politicians ban the big rifle assault weapons,” King said. “We have to reduce kids’ anxiety of just going to school and reduce people who look like me’s anxiety to go to the grocery store.”
Saturday’s marches come after the Senate on Friday left town without reaching a deal on gun control legislation in the wake of recent high-profile mass shootings.
Democrats say they are “close” to an agreement with Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) picked to lead the GOP’s negotiation efforts, but some differences over language remain to be worked out.
The House passed its own version of so-called “red flag” legislation, which allows courts to bar people deemed to be risks to themselves or others from accessing firearms, earlier this week. The legislation faces a difficult road in the evenly divided Senate, however, where Democrats need bipartisan support to reach the 60-vote threshold required to pass most bills.
“Now is the moment to act and I urge the Senate to pass commonsense gun reforms before more innocent lives are lost,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said in a statement. “These gun violence prevention bills will make a difference – but only if the Senate joins the House in passing them.”
King said she couldn’t predict if things will change in the wake of the recent massacres.
“I think definitely with the shooting people pay attention,” she said. “But here’s the issue: after two weeks, the news always has different stories … We don’t stay with it. People almost forget that we have this problem in this country until another mass shooting happens.”
About 50,000 people are expected to gather Saturday near the Washington Monument, according to a permit filed with the National Park Service. The event is scheduled to take place from noon to 2 p.m.
“I think more people have joined this movement and a lot of people are concerned about this issue,” King said.
She said her parents never pressured her to live up to her assassinated grandfather’s activist legacy.
“In fact, they would always tell me ‘Yolanda, this work can be hard and you do not have to do this work if you don’t want to,” she said.
But she’s taken on the activist role to speak out about gun violence.
“It’s been left to my generation to face this—to fight this issue and make sure that generations after us do not have to go through the same thing,” she said. “No one has really done anything and no one has done enough to to really, really tackle this issue and make it easier for people to not be scared.”
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How the Jan. 6 panel is trying to reach the apathetic and apoplectic
The Jan. 6 committee’s prime-time rollout this week was its first attempt to reach the nearly unreachable: those who have long moved on from the attack.
From the apathetic to the apoplectic, the committee is hoping its investigative findings will resonate not just with those who have tuned out in the almost 17 months since the attack, but also with even a sliver of those who are indignant that its investigation has continued.
Its goal is to not just to show former President Trump at the center of an illicit plot to remain in power. It’s to shake the country by the shoulders and demonstrate the fragility of American democracy.
“Over the next few weeks, we’re going to remind you of the reality of what happened that day. But our work must do much more than just look backwards. The cause of our democracy remains in danger. The conspiracy to thwart the will of the people is not over,” Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said at the top of the Thursday night hearing.
The committee certainly met its goal of reaching a wide audience.
Early numbers from Nielsen indicate some 20 million people tuned in for the hearings, toppling the nearly 12 million that tuned in for the start of the NBA finals earlier this month.
But their secondary hope is to reach those who may have been exhausted by a whirlwind four years of the Trump administration, or even excited by the chaos he brought to a system they see as long in need of an overhaul.
“If we reach people with an open mind and inform the public of how close we came to losing our democracy and provide a sense of urgency about how we’re not out of the woods, I think we’ll have succeeded,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told The Hill earlier this week.
The Democratic caucus has diverse goals for the hearings. Some want to see it as a pathway to prosecution for Trump and his allies.
Others say success lies not in holding Trump to account, but whether the average voter begins to rethink the day and see how tenuous the transfer of power was.
Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.), one of the panel’s members, said she won’t be taking cues on the success of the hearing from critics or talking heads.
“The measure of success is not going to be, you know, what’s said on national news or social media, but what do I hear from people in my community?” she said.
“Is it important to them that the committee was able to lay out a very clear, comprehensive reporting of what led up to January 6, what happened that day, and that they feel like we’ve gotten to the bottom of it?”
But making that case could be difficult.
Fox opted not to preempt its regular programming to cover the hearing, instead airing special coverage of the proceedings on its business network as well as its various other channels and streaming platforms.
“They’re all upset that Fox isn’t covering it live. We actually do something called, ya know, cater[ing] to our audience. Our audience knows what this is. We’ll cover it, we’ll do plenty of coverage,” Fox News host Lauran Ingram said Wednesday, later calling it “total theater.”
In the hours after the hearing, Fox was running a segment about the Disinformation Governance Board that was so widely panned by conservatives that the Department of Homeland Security shut it down before it ever had a chance to formally meet.
The select committee is also up against some steep attitudinal barriers when it comes to attracting viewers.
A May poll from the University of Massachusetts Amherst found the country is nearly evenly divided between those who say it’s important to learn more about what happened on Jan. 6 (52 percent) and those who say it’s time to “move on” (48 percent). It’s a sentiment that breaks down largely along partisan lines.
“I think it will be a challenge,” Schiff said.
“Those that are only getting their information from right wing media are probably beyond our reach. We’re hoping to reach everyone else that has an open mind. And hopefully even some viewers of Fox will begin to question what the network is so afraid of and why they don’t want the public to hear the truth about Jan. 6.”
Digging deeper into the numbers suggests there are some who have not yet developed strong feelings about what the committee may have to lay out.
Another May poll from CBS News had more optimistic numbers for the committee when asking more broadly how important the panel’s findings might be.
While 46 percent said it was very important to learn more, another 24 percent said it was somewhat important “to find out what happened that day and who was involved.”
“You’re going to have a certain segment of the population that is absolutely resistant to any ounce of information about Jan. 6, and they want it done. But then, you know, there’s a ton of people who are kind of non-political information avoiders. They’re not looking at the news, but they see things posted on Facebook. There’s a lot of people who are kind of in the middle somewhere,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) told The Hill.
“Those are the people I’m looking for. Not the hardcore guys who, you know, if they had their druthers would have been here on Jan. 6. You’re never going to get those guys.”
Slotkin wondered whether some might learn about the events highlighted in the hearing through a sort of osmosis, even if they aren’t actively paying attention — the same way people were familiar with the developments of the Depp-Heard trial or were even sprung into action by news that the Supreme Court had drafted an opinion overturning the abortion rights protected under Roe v. Wade.
“What I’m interested in, in a similar way, … is there an absorption by people who would otherwise not be watching the actual hearings?” she said.
Even if the answer is yes, the committee has a long, tough road ahead in the effort to sway public sentiment in any significant measure toward the notion that Trump committed crimes that make him either prosecutable or unfit to hold future public office.
Even sixteen months after leaving the White House, Trump remains the single most popular figure in the national Republican Party, and he’s leveraged that acclaim to raise tens of millions of dollars for his campaign war chest, while showering endorsements that have proven crucial in a number of GOP primaries around the country.
Additionally, the committee’s claims of having “explosive” new evidence of Trump’s conspiratorial intentions to remain in office ignore the reality that such evidence was revealed months ago, to little effect.
In January of last year, just days before the Capitol attack, Trump had called Georgia’s secretary of state and urged him to “find 11,780 votes” — just enough to overcome Biden’s margin of victory — or face the threat of an unnamed “criminal offense.”
Democrats, and many Republicans, considered the phone call to be the smoking gun to prove Trump’s illegal drive to cling to power. But his allies rallied around him, and the political costs to the then-president were negligible.
The committee will try to confront that apathy head on, with Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) promising to deliver evidence that “Trump oversaw a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election.”
“All Americans should keep this fact in mind: On the morning of January 6th, President Trump’s intention was to remain President of the United States despite the lawful outcome of the 2020 election and in violation of his Constitutional obligation to relinquish power,” she said.
Source: TEST FEED1
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Trump backs Katie Britt against Mo Brooks in Alabama Senate primary runoff
Former President Trump announced late Friday that he would be backing Alabama Republican Senate candidate Katie Britt against Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) in the GOP primary runoff, less than three months after withdrawing his endorsement from the congressman.
In a statement issued through his Save America PAC, Trump doubled down on previous rhetoric he used when he withdrew his endorsement from Brooks several months ago, again calling him “woke” and lamenting his push to move on from the last presidential election — an election Trump has baselessly claimed was stolen from him.
“He foolishly started listening to the wrong consultants and not to the people, and his 54-point lead evaporated overnight. Likewise, his words caused me to withdraw my Endorsement, and Mo has been wanting it back ever since—but I cannot give it to him!” Trump claimed.
“Katie Strongly Supports our under siege Second Amendment, Stands Up for Parental Rights, and Will Fight for our Military, our Vets, and Election Integrity. Above all, Katie Britt will never let you down,” he added.
Not long after Trump issued his endorsement, Britt touted it on Twitter.
“President Trump knows that Alabamians are sick and tired of failed, do-nothing career politicians. In the Senate, I will fight to defend Alabama’s values, advance the America First agenda, and preserve the American Dream for generations to come. #alsen,” Britt tweeted, including a link to a story about Trump’s endorsement.
Trump’s endorsement comes less than two weeks before voters will head back to the polls to weigh in on the Alabama Republican Senate primary runoff after neither candidate was able to clench at least half of the vote.
Brooks, who had upset the former president last year by suggesting people move on from the 2020 election, lost his endorsement from Trump in March. But the Alabama Republican has since campaigned to win back the former president’s support.
Source: TEST FEED1
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DHS policy encouraging discretion in deportations blocked by judge
A judge in Texas on Friday threw out a policy instituted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last year that directed border officials to exercise discretion in deportation cases.
Introduced last September, the policy encourages officials not to deport noncitizens who have lived in the country for years without incident and to focus on those who have a serious criminal record.
In a scathing 96-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton argued that the policy overstepped the executive branch’s authority regarding immigration enforcement.
“True, the Executive Branch has case-by-case discretion to abandon immigration enforcement as to a particular individual. This case, however, does not involve individualized decisionmaking. Instead, this case is about a rule that binds Department of Homeland Security officials in a generalized, prospective manner—all in contravention of Congress’s detention mandate,” Tipton, an appointee of former President Trump, wrote.
Last September, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas argued both that the policy was just, saying most undocumented immigrants “have been contributing members of our communities for years,” and that it was needed due to limited resources.
“The fact that an individual is a removable noncitizen should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them,” he added. “We focus our resources because they are limited, and because of our dedication to doing justice.”
Tipton pushed back on the argument for the policy based on resource limitations in his ruling.
“It is also true that the Executive Branch may prioritize its resources. But it must do so within the bounds set by Congress. Whatever the outer limits of its authority, the Executive Branch does not have the authority to change the law,” he said.
The decision was cheered by the attorneys general of Louisiana and Texas, who had challenged the policy.
“I just dealt Biden another massive defeat in fed court. He tried to throw out immigration law, saying DHS didn’t have to detain criminal illegals. The court now says he must. I will always hold the line with the Dems and the rule of law,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) tweeted.
“This is a major win for our #NationalSecurity and the #RuleOfLaw!” Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry (R) said in his own tweet.
The Hill has reached out to DHS for comment.
Source: TEST FEED1
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Pence's legal team found election fraud claims minor, unverifiable before Jan. 6
The legal team of former Vice President Mike Pence found allegations of election fraud either unverifiable or minor in a memo issued just days before a mob stormed the Capitol and tried to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election.
In the 10-page memo addressed to Pence and dated Jan. 1, 2021, which was obtained and published Friday by Politico, his legal team assessed allegations of election law procedural violations and fraud in the 2020 election in six swing states made by “the GOP and related plaintiffs.”
“In general, there is strong evidence that state and local election officials committed numerous procedural violations that reduced transparency and/or favored Democrat candidates. However, most allegations of substantive voter fraud – defined to mean the casting of illegal ballots in violation of prevailing election laws – are either relatively small in number, or cannot be verified,” his legal team noted, according to the memo.
The document then detailed and responded to specific allegations made regarding each of the six states. In Georgia, for example, Pence’s legal team addressed “Trump Campaign’s Numerical Allegations,” which included claims that underage people and felons with uncompleted sentences voted within the state.
His legal team noted before listing the slew of allegations made by the Trump campaign that the Office of the Vice President “has not been able to verify” them.
In states including Michigan and Arizona, Pence’s legal team addressed “statistics-based allegations,” noting that they could not verify cited numbers that suggested potential voter fraud.
A person familiar with the document told Politico that it was provided to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot by the National Archives and Records Administration.
Former Pence chief of staff Marc Short told the news outlet that the thinking of the vice president’s team aligned with what was included on the memo. A committee spokesperson declined to comment to Politico about the matter.
“We often observed the irregularities that occurred during the 2020 election, the reality that Democrats effectively weaponized election changes that were the result of Covid,” Short told Politico. “But ultimately it was important to catalog the various allegations and where there was hard evidence, or lack thereof, of actual theft.”
The new memo comes after the committee held the first in a series of public hearings set for this month in prime-time on Thursday. The meeting included testimony from Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards and documentarian Nick Quested, as well as excerpts from recorded interviews with Trump officials.
The Hill has reached out to a Pence spokesperson, the committee and the National Archives and Records Administration for comment.
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CDC director signs order ending COVID-19 testing requirement for international travelers
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky signed an order on Friday ending a requirement for international travelers to show a negative COVID-19 test or proof of recovery from the virus before boarding flights to the United States.
The order, which becomes effective on Sunday at 12:01 a.m., acknowledged that the United States was in a different phase of the pandemic when the requirement was put in place last year.
“The Order was one of several actions taken by the federal government during earlier phases of the COVID-19 pandemic to help mitigate the further transmission and spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants into and within the United States. At that time, CDC concluded that it was a reasonable and necessary measure in light of the increased risk of transmission and spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants by international air travel into the United States, as well as the low rate of vaccination and infection-induced immunity in the United States, and emergence of new variants of concern,” the order noted.
“Since then, many circumstances have changed, including the widespread uptake of effective COVID-19 vaccines and accompanying vaccine- and infection-induced immunity, as well as the availability of effective therapeutics,” it added.
The Biden administration had earlier said on Friday that the requirement would be rescinded, with a senior administration official saying that the CDC had “determined based on the science and data that this requirement is no longer necessary at this time.”
The decision to end the requirement was lauded by travel and airline groups.
It comes after a federal mask mandate was quashed by a federal judge in April. The Biden administration asked for that judge’s ruling to be overturned in a brief it filed with a federal appeals court late last month, according to NPR.
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FDA says Moderna COVID vaccine safe and effective for young children
Reviewers at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in briefing documents released on Friday that Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine is both effective and safe for children under 6 years old.
The analysis comes ahead of several advisory committee meetings next week to weigh giving approval to Moderna’s and Pfizer’s vaccines for young children.
“Available data support the effectiveness of the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 in pediatric age groups from 6 months through 17 years of age,” staff at the FDA wrote.
The FDA staff noted that rates of adverse reactions were found to be similar between young adults and those aged between 12 and 17 years old.
“In children 6 months through 11 years of age, rates of solicited local and systemic adverse reactions were generally lower compared to those observed in adolescents and in previous clinical trials with young adults, with the exception of fever which was reported more frequently in the younger age groups compared to adolescents and adults,” FDA staff said.
The FDA’s analysis of the Moderna vaccine is promising news for parents who are anxious to vaccinate younger children. So far, children aged 5 years and older can only receive the Pfizer vaccine, and no vaccine has been authorized for children under 5 years old.
An FDA advisory committee is set to meet Wednesday to weigh allowing Moderna’s vaccine for children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years old and Pfizer’s vaccine for children under 5.
If the advisory committee recommends approval the vaccines for young children, approval from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and FDA authorization could follow soon after.
The advisory committee will also meet Tuesday to discuss changing emergency use authorization for the Moderna vaccine so children and adolescents aged 6 to 17 years can receive it.
Source: TEST FEED1