Keeping kids home from school is even more harmful than we first thought

By James Pethokoukis of AEI. 

"If it wasn’t clear a couple of years ago, it should be clear by now. School is really important, and it’s really important that most kids are physically in the classroom with a teacher. Parents understand well that italicized bit without needing scholarly support. But if one desires such support, it exists.

For example: In a study out last April, “Learning loss due to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic,” researchers looked at the Netherlands as a best-case scenario for at-home learning given that it had a short initial lockdown period, equitable school funding, and globally high rates of broadband access. Their finding: “Despite favorable conditions, we find that students made little or no progress while learning from home. Learning loss was most pronounced among students from disadvantaged homes.”

A more recent analysis makes the case for in-person school in even starker terms, going beyond the problems with online classes and remote teachers themselves. (More Zoom-savvy instruction will only go so far.) In “The triple impact of school closures on educational inequality,” researchers Francesco Agostinelli (University of Pennsylvania), Matthias Doepke (Northwestern University), Giuseppe Sorrenti (Amsterdam School of Economics), and Fabrizio Zilibotti (Yale University) look at two additional factors: the impact of peers and parents. From their analysis:

During school closures, children lose connection with friends, and friendships that are maintained are more likely to be confined to the neighborhood of residence. This increases socioeconomic segregation. We also find that children who already struggle in school are more vulnerable to the ill effects of losing peer connections, which further increases the impact on educational inequality.

In addition to peers, parents also matter. When children learn from home, active engagement from parents becomes even more important than in normal times. The support parents can offer varies dramatically across families’ socioeconomic status. Adams-Prassl et al. (2020b) show that low-income parents are less likely to work from home during the pandemic, which limits their ability to support their kids’ schooling during closures.

Agostinelli-Doepke-Sorrenti-Zilibotti point out that school is supposed to be the great equalizer, which is why the “triple impact” of school closures is exceedingly frustrating. They’re modeling finds that “among 9th graders, children from low-income neighborhoods in the US are predicted to suffer a learning loss equivalent to almost half a point on the four-point GPA scale, whereas children from high-income neighborhoods remain unscathed.”

And the problem probably goes beyond high school: “Four years down the road, the school closure causes an average 25% reduction of labor earnings for the poorest children when these [kids] enter the labor market. This implies that the future society will be more unequal and have less social mobility.”

Obviously a disturbing result. It’s also a reminder that policy choices have trade-offs. (And honestly acknowledging the existence of trade-offs is what makes for serious analysis as opposed to mere activism.) Lower speed limits would save lives, but they would also waste more of our time. Sharply higher taxes might raise more government revenue, but they could reduce incentives to work, save, and invest. You know, that kind of thing. Closing schools has trade-offs, too. And with the passage of time, we are finding out just how terrible those trade-offs are."