As more districts commit to offering in-person learning for most or all of their students, many are grappling with the costs and benefits of conducting routine COVID-19 testing as part of their comprehensive prevention approach, as recommended by the CDC’s recent guidance for K-12 schools. School districts now have access to tremendous resources to stand up testing in K-12 settings, including the recent allocation of $10 billion for school testing in the American Rescue Plan, as well as implementation guidance including The Rockefeller Foundation’s K-12 National Testing Action Program (NTAP) and Playbook for Educators and Leaders. However, many may need more data on the impact of testing to make an informed decision.
As many school districts work to make routine testing a reality, Mathematica, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Duke Margolis Health Policy Center partnered to create an interactive online dashboard that allows users to explore the benefits and drawbacks of routine testing in their schools to guide decisions about which testing strategies to implement.
You can view the dashboard here. For more information, please contact Divya Vohra or John Hotchkiss. Click here for a description of agent-based models.