This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, September 17th, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Cato Institute's new pandemics and policy details the federal, state, local, and

public health responses needed to give people the most

flexibility to deal with the pandemic's potentially dire consequences.

In education, policy changes needed should focus on flexibility for parents and giving respect for the

individual situations families are facing.

Cato's Neil McCluskey explains.

You, Carrie McDonald, and I have recorded several podcasts in the last few months, sort of about the, in some cases, apoplexy of public school systems, in some cases, just trying to get kids in school and provide education.

To the extent state policy makers are thinking seriously about this going forward.

What should they be doing to assure that education provided to young people is what it ought to be.

Well, I mean, we're in a very difficult position.

So everything we talk about in education when it comes to COVID-19,

as we talk about many other things I'm sure that are affected by COVID-19,

first thing we have to say is there's probably not going to be a perfect solution. As long as you have a pandemic, it's going to make things more difficult and that includes

educating people. So the gold standard for most people would still be to get their kids in in-person face to face with the teacher

in a classroom education.

The reality is for some people, that will be impossible because the concentration of COVID-19

and their school or district may be too great to make it safe.

For many people, that option will be intolerable,

even if there isn't an extreme concentration of COVID-19.

They will be worried about it for the health of their kids or the health of themselves as parents or they may have grandparents on the household and so even though kids seem to be at very low risk of getting a serious case of COVID-19.

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