Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused many schools and educational programs to close or shift to virtual learning in spring 2020. Because of existing social, economic, and educational inequality, many students living in poverty were further disadvantaged because they lacked computing devices, did not have access to the internet, or did not get the individualized and specialized instruction they needed. Students with special needs frequently were unable to access the services they needed. Educators were concerned about learning loss, a term that refers not only to students forgetting what they have already learned, but also to missing out on education they should have received.

Experts discussed the possible effects of the pandemic on education at all levels, from early childhood to advanced degrees such as medical school. Many parents and educators also expressed concern about the emotional toll extended isolation and stress were taking on students’ mental and emotional well-being. Early evidence of the impact of the pandemic was largely anecdotal, especially because assessment tests were frequently delayed and many that were administered lacked data because some students stopped attending class when schools switched to remote learning. However, by late 2022 formal studies increasingly indicated substantial learning loss in K–12 students had occurred, and in some cases schools continued to face considerable challenges well after the height of the pandemic's social disruption. The full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education likely will not be known for some time.

Background

Multiple clusters of a respiratory illness in China in late 2019 suggested a major health issue was developing. China notified the World Health Organization (WHO) and identified a novel coronavirus causing the illness in January 2020. The illness was designated coronavirus disease 19—because the virus was discovered in 2019—and abbreviated as COVID-19. The official name of the virus was severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2.

WHO began monitoring the outbreak and mobilizing a response on January 1, 2020. Medical experts advised health care workers to take precautions against transmission of respiratory viruses, which often infect people through droplets in the air. By the end of the month, human-to-human transmission of COVID-19 was being reported in multiple countries, and WHO declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. As the weeks passed, the case counts continued to rise.

After several weeks of collecting data and conferring with scientists in China, WHO medical experts recognized that the coronavirus was highly contagious. On March 11, WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, which meant the infectious disease was worldwide. In countries around the world, governments responded with lockdowns, and many schools, businesses, and government buildings closed abruptly. In the United States, at least 55.1 million K-12 students in 124,000 public and private schools were affected by school closings. All states and US territories completely closed schools at least briefly during the 2019–2020 school year.

Many US schools began the 2020–2021 academic year with a hybrid system in place that allowed parents to choose whether to send their children to school or have them attend remotely. Some schools offered only e-learning. Many of these policies remained in place until April 2021, when some state legislatures began requiring all public school districts to offer full-time, in-person instruction. Parents still had the option of choosing remote learning in most states (although, for example, New Jersey eliminated the option of online learning in public schools for the 2021–22 school year).

At the start of the pandemic, experts expected general learning loss but also highly variable outcomes across the country. They were particularly concerned that disadvantaged students would slip much more than other students. At the close of the 2019–20 school year, Edutopia reported on several studies that projected US students would indeed fall behind due to school closings and remote learning. These projections were based on a national sample of assessment test results from previous years and localized results after schools closed because of natural disasters, such as hurricanes. Another concern of educators was that students who were not in school buildings were losing access to mental health services, potentially seriously impacting children’s and teens’ mental health. A pediatric study reported that more than half of adolescents who needed mental health care received it at school.

Teachers also faced many challenges when the 2020–21 school year began. Many districts offered hybrid synchronous education, so some students were in classrooms while others were required to log into school during specified class hours using videoconference programs such as Zoom or Skype. In some schools, students spent part of each week in the classroom and the other days online. Teachers reported some remote learners logged out of classes, entered late, did not return after lunch breaks, or never logged in at all for days on end, and school attendance suffered in many districts. Many districts offered asynchronous learning. Teachers posted lessons or assignments in a digital classroom environment and students could access these at any time, provided they complete the work by a deadline set by the teacher. By the fall of 2021, reports indicated that school staffing shortages had been greatly exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic; for example thirty thousand quits occurred in the state and local government education sector in September 2021 alone, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Primary and Secondary Education

According to research published in the journal PNAS in April 2021, the initial closing of schools during the pandemic may have caused a learning loss equivalent of about one-fifth of a school year or more; students from lower-income or less-educated homes may have experienced a learning loss of up to 60 percent more. While some degree of such loss normally occurs during summer vacations, during the pandemic this trend of learning loss overlapped with the school year. Other studies indicated that for the youngest students, reading suffered the most, while all grades showed significantly lower scores in math. Students from lower-income families and Black and Hispanic students showed the most learning loss. The Camden, New Jersey, school district, for example, found a 30 percent decline in math and language arts among high school students. Many districts reported significant increases in the number of students who were failing classes in the first half of the 2020–21 school year.

While assessment test results indicated learning loss, educators were also unsure about the accuracy of test scores. Administrators said it was clear parents had helped some children complete their tests, while in other cases students rushed through assessments. Some states canceled standardized testing in 2020 and the federal government permitted states to delay 2021 testing until the fall. Many schools that did test were missing a substantial number of students who simply did not attend online classes.

Poor attendance was believed to significantly contribute to learning loss. One K-8 school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for example, reported 56 percent of students had poor attendance. Teachers often reported difficulty in taking accurate attendance; for example, many remote-learning students turned off their cameras and some did not respond when called on, leaving it unclear whether the student was having technical difficulties or had simply walked away from the computer.

Distractions at home likely contributed to poor attendance as well as overall learning loss. Many students reported siblings were also engaged in distance learning, and some families were forced to share electronic devices or faced lagging internet connections when multiple members were online at once. In many low-income households, parents could not afford to stop working, so some older children were tasked with monitoring siblings while also attempting to attend virtual classes of their own.

Many US districts and students who lacked computers and tablets at the start of the pandemic continued to struggle in the fall when the new school year began. Worldwide disruption in manufacturing and shipping, US trade controls on some devices made in China, and high demand for devices created a shortage. For example, a California school district tried to order five thousand laptops in July 2020 but was unable to secure the brand it wanted. The district ordered another brand of laptops that were to be delivered before August 26, only to have the delivery date pushed back to September and again to October. The school had only four thousand old laptops for about eight thousand students from low-income households. Other districts waiting for hundreds or thousands of laptops and tablets faced similar delivery delays, with some told they would receive their machines in early 2021.

In addition to device shortages, many students did not have adequate internet access. For example, half of West Virginia’s public school students did not have internet access at home at the start of the pandemic. Some school districts distributed Wi-Fi hotspots, but these lacked the capacity of broadband connections and left some students unable to fully participate in online learning. A year after the pandemic began, many teachers continued to provide some students with paper packets of work to do at home because they did not have internet access. School districts with more resources were widely seen as less at a disadvantage during the upheaval of the pandemic. Many students in such areas already had access to technology and the internet. Some districts had even already provided remote education before the pandemic, allowing for a smoother transition; for example, in northern states, some schools had set up remote learning for days when the weather was poor to reduce the number of snow days.

The digital divide was increasingly recognized as a worldwide issue. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimated that about 66 percent of the world’s children ages three to seventeen, or about 1.3 billion students, did not have home internet access in 2020. The disparity worldwide was greatest between urban and rural households, with students in rural areas having less access. Low-income households and minorities also reported less access. Globally, children most affected were those in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where about 90 percent lacked internet access at home.

By the end of the 2020–21 school year, studies increasingly supported the view that the pandemic had exacerbated the unequal distribution of support for education across the globe. A growing body of research backed up the assertion that children from low-income families were more likely to be excluded from online learning. On the other hand, reports also showed that remote learning offered some benefits. Primarily, remote learning could ease social anxiety stresses in some students and help some people prioritize mental health. It also lessened instances of in-person bullying and discrimination. This divide continued during the 2021–22 school even as schools returned to in-person learning.

As time went on and research accumulated, more evidence of the impact of COVID-19 on education came into focus. In April 2022, for example, the New York Times reported that a survey conducted by the consulting firm McKinsey and Company showed that US schools had reported that an average of 22 percent of students were chronically absent. That number was twice the rate of chronically absent students reported before the pandemic. A report from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) released later in 2022 found a record decline in reading achievement and an unprecedented decline in mathematics achievement among a representative group of nine-year-olds from 2019 through early 2022.

Higher Education

Higher education also faced challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the already growing adoption of e-learning at many colleges and universities. Like primary and secondary schools, many institutions of higher learning abruptly closed in March 2020, sending resident students home and finishing the semester virtually. When they reopened in the fall, some continued with remote learning, gave educators and students a choice as to how they would attend, or instituted blended methods that involved some online instruction and some face-to-face classes. This created administrative hurdles and also led to debate about whether students were getting the full value of their often expensive tuition.

Both teachers and students at colleges and universities faced many of the same obstacles as those in other schools. Teachers of synchronous classes found many students turned off their cameras, so educators viewed a series of names and black boxes instead of faces. Many instructors were unfamiliar with videoconferencing software or found it unsuitable for their classroom methods. Connectivity issues also often proved challenging, though wealthy institutions and students tended to have more adequate resources than their less well-off counterparts. Students, meanwhile, often reported feeling disconnected from their peers and professors and struggling to get answers to their questions. The overall pressures of COVID-19 were considered a significant additional stress factor for students who even before the pandemic often struggled with heavy workloads and other demands. Observers also noted that missing out on the social opportunities of a typical college experience could affect students' development and general attitudes toward higher education.

Another effect on higher education was a reduced enrollment in community colleges. Typically, these more affordable institutions see increased enrollment during recessions, but in the year after the pandemic began, enrollment dropped by about 10 percent. The greatest declines were among men, first-time students, and students of color. Enrollment data for other institutions was less clear as the pandemic continued, though some studies suggested that overall negative impacts were relatively minor. However, college and university administrators had to contend with other issues such as the debate over whether or not to require students to provide proof of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.

Responses

K–12 school administrators considered a range of options to combat learning loss amid the pandemic. Some used US federal funds for pandemic recovery to create summer learning programs or purchase equipment such as laptops or tablet computers for students. Some districts planned to hire additional teachers, which would allow for more small-group instruction and remediation to help students who needed to catch up. Tutoring, mandatory summer school, and longer school years were other options under consideration. Both public and private school administrators, as well as government officials, debated or implemented varying recommendations or regulations for social distancing, mask wearing, and vaccination as part of efforts to return to in-person learning.

Importantly, the broad shift to remote education highlighted many of the problems faced by low-income families. Beyond lack of access to technology and internet, many parents struggled with child care when schools closed. Some had to quit their jobs to stay home, increasing financial concerns, which led to greater household stress. More women than men left the workforce to care for children. Spurred by the spotlight on these inequalities, some policy experts advocated for rebuilding the American public education system to take it into the twenty-first century and provide a more equitable landscape. Disparities in finances and resources between schools, districts, and individuals often lead to lifelong inequality, they noted, so equal educational opportunities should translate to a stronger future economy. More affluent families can offer their children more enrichment opportunities in the summer, on weekends, and after school, while low-income households often cannot. A push to broadly improve virtual education in public schools was seen by many as a potential way to reduce those experiential gaps.

Large-scale reform efforts were hampered by the vast scope and complexity of the issue, however, especially given the fragmented nature of education in the United States. One element on which most activists agreed was that for lasting change, local, state, and federal governments would need to work together to ensure every student and household could access the internet. Some progress was realized; by March 2021, an estimated 4 million students who began the pandemic without home internet access had gained connectivity, as reported by the Guardian, due in part to special federal funding and private sector collaboration. Still, experts noted that the digital divide remained a serious obstacle amid the ongoing pandemic.

In the lead-up to the 2021–22 K–12 school year, despite continued rollouts of COVID-19 vaccines, school district administrators continued to struggle with the question of whether to mandate the wearing of masks for everyone inside schools and, if so, for what period of time. Reports circulated in several states of parents getting angry with and even assaulting teachers over mask discussions during school board meetings or at the schools themselves. As children under the age of twelve were still ineligible for vaccination by that point and a rising number of COVID-19 cases were being noted in children, particularly due to the highly contagious delta variant, some districts and states opted to mandate masks in schools. However, some jurisdictions prohibited schools from instituting such mandates. In most cases, polls tended to indicate that the majority of Americans supported mandating masks in school. By October, about three-quarters of the largest school districts in the country had instituted a mask mandate. Many teachers unions were vocal during this time about advocating for slow reopenings, mask use and distancing, and instituting overall rules to protect both teachers and students. In some districts, teacher contract negotiations lasted past the start of the school year as some sought to push out school reopenings due to health and safety concerns. In some cases, teachers' hesitancy to return to the classroom drew vocal criticism from parents and other observers, including politicians.

Debates over vaccine mandates and their impact on schools also became a major issue. In September 2021 the administration of President Joe Biden announced plans for vaccine mandates that would impact private sector workers, including private colleges and universities, though not public schools. Some public school districts considered vaccine mandates of their own, whether for workers or potentially for eligible students. In October 2021, the governor of California became the first to announce that the COVID-19 vaccine would be added to the list of required inoculations for students attending K–12 schools across the state, public or private. (The mandate for students between kindergarten and sixth grade was dependent upon full FDA approval of a vaccine for people under the age of twelve.) Some parents organized protests against the California announcement, and the issue of vaccine mandates in schools remained controversial. Still, Washington, DC, and Louisiana followed in December with their own K–12 mandates, though with limitations.

Later in October 2021 the Pfizer vaccine became the first to receive emergency authorization for use in children age five to eleven, and the CDC soon recommended vaccination for that age group, paving the way for further considerations regarding schools and vaccination. By December, as the highly contagious Omicron variant of COVID-19 drove a major spike in case counts, many schools at all levels expressed fresh concern and evaluated prevention strategies. Hoping to limit closures after holiday break, many states equipped schools and even parents with at-home COVID-19 rapid antigen tests in preparation for students and staff to return. In addition, some school districts delayed reopening after winter break.

Although public health experts widely agreed that vaccination and masking were the best strategies for combating the pandemic overall, there continued to be considerable backlash, including in the school context in particular. Some observers argued that requiring masks for students, especially young children, was too disruptive and could negatively impact learning and social skills. By March 2022, as the Omicron surge declined sharply, states began lifting mask mandates in schools and soon no statewide mandates remained in place. Vaccination still continued to be a controversial subject, however. Some states declined to add the COVID-19 vaccine to the list of required immunizations; for example, in April 2022 the Washington State Board of Health voted unanimously against such a move. Other states passed measures actively banning any vaccine mandates for students or faculty.

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