Weekly Review: Schools, Students, and COVID-19 – June 21, 2021

Weekly Review: Schools, Students, and COVID-19 – June 21, 2021

Policymakers and researchers are both investigating how different student subgroups were affected by the pandemic and looking ahead to what we will be able to learn and study about education and schools during COVID-19 and how parents feel about in-person schooling in the fall.

A newly launched project, supported by the Emergent Ventures program at the Mercatus Center, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Arnold Ventures, and Brown University, will help to collect available data from state education agencies in one place and in easily useable format. The repository will serve as a data warehouse for school- and district-level data on learning modes, enrollment in different modalities, and student and staff COVID-19 case rates.

A new survey by the RAND Corporation documents parents’ perspectives about the return to school in Fall 2021. According to May 2021 survey results, 84% of parents plan to send their children back to school in-person, but two-thirds of parents would like to see some retention of COVID-19 mitigation measures. Black and Hispanic parents are the most hesitant about an in-person return this fall.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights released a report on the disparate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on students, and particular groups of students. The report highlights that the pandemic has affected academic progress and widened existing academic achievement gaps. It also notes that barriers to adequate technology have disproportionately affected opportunities for students of color. English language learners and students with disabilities have faced particularly pronounced challenges in the shifts to remote learning, and students are experiencing worsening mental health and wellbeing, and heightened risk of online harassment and virtual abuse.

|2021-06-21T09:42:48-04:00June 21st, 2021|COVID-19 Literature|Comments Off on Weekly Review: Schools, Students, and COVID-19 – June 21, 2021

About the Author: Chloe Gibbs

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Chloe Gibbs, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame where she is also a faculty affiliate of the Institute for Educational Initiatives, the William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families, and the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities. Professor Gibbs studies the effectiveness of policies and programs outside of the regular school day and year and beyond the traditional classroom to understand how different investments affect children's educational trajectories. Some of her recent projects investigate the impact of Head Start, parenting interventions, virtual summer school in the middle grades, and comprehensive supports for high school students at-risk of dropping out. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and cited by the President's Council of Economic Advisers.

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