Approximately 56 million school-aged children (aged 5–17) resumed their education in the United States this fall. Many children returned to in-person instruction, a decision left mostly to local officials following community preferences and state guidelines. Given the patchwork of schools offering classroom instruction in most states, it’s been challenging to get comprehensive data on the impact of school re-openings on Covid infection rates across the US. However, four states - Texas, Florida, Arkansas and Iowa - ordered schools to open statewide and the numbers are coming in. A brief summary:
Arkansas: State guidance issued on August 5 required districts required districts to offer in-person instruction five days a week when classes resume. Districts were required to open their schools by August 26. There are 480,000 public school students in Arkansas. As of 10/8, the state reports 762 active cases and no deaths for children under 18.
Florida: A state order required all schools to open at least five days a week by Aug. 31. However, the order has been under legal challenge and a few school districts continued with remote-online classes in September. According to a USA Today analysis, “Florida schools reopened en masse, but a surge in coronavirus didn't follow… For perspective, about 0.17% of all Floridians tested positive in the past two weeks, according to state figures. During the state’s July peak, the figure was 0.74%.”
Iowa: On July 17, the governor ordered every student to spend at least half of their schooling inside classrooms. Districts must also provide online classes for parents who demand it, if local Covid rates spike or when the expected in-person absenteeism rate exceeds 10 percent. Iowa COVID-19 Tracker, which provides Covid information on 536 public schools, reported 364 school kids and 169 staff had active Covid infections on October 12.
Texas: Schools re-opened in early September.. However school systems can temporarily limit on-campus instruction for the first four weeks of school and beyond that with a waiver. Public schools are required to report positive COVID-19 cases on school campuses. With 1214 public schools reporting, the state website documented 350 student and 1689 school staff cases the week ending October 4.
These numbers are pretty reassuring when you consider the number of public schools and children in each state. And the story is similar in states with partial school re-openings. Here, for instance, is what California’s Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said on October 7:
“There is no indication that school re-openings statewide have led to an increase of Covid-19 spreading in the community. We have not seen a connection between increased transmission and schools reopening for in-person learning.”
It’s important to remember that the Covid mortality rate for children in the US (and across the globe) is very low. According to a joint report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association, 42 states and New York City had reported a cumulative total of 112 Covid-related deaths of children age 5-17 as of October 1 - compared to 103 deaths on September 3.* California has lost two school-age children to Covid so far this year; several states has lost none.
I’m not trying to minimize these tragic deaths, but they must be considered in context. For instance, the CDC estimates that 528 US children age 5-17 died of influenza during the 2017-18 flu season, despite the fact that around half of US children are vaccinated for the flu. We don’t close schools down during the flu season, even though hundreds of children and possibly thousands of adults die as a result. Of course, schools shouldn’t be re-opened in areas with high rates of Covid infection. But what’s happening in many communities is that local residents are demanding schools remain closed, even when infection rates are low and well within state, CDC, and WHO guidelines for reopening schools. Per Alec MacGillis in his depressing The Students Left Behind by Remote Learning:
Across the country, some 35 of the 50 largest districts opted for a fully remote opening, as did most large cities, with the notable exception of New York, which announced a hybrid approach and a delayed start. A study by the Brookings Institution found that districts’ school opening decisions correlated much more strongly with levels of support for Trump in the 2016 election than with local coronavirus case levels. “It almost feels like folly now to speak about data,” [epidemiologist Jennifer] Nuzzo told me. “The decision was going to be made not on data but on politics.”
In other words, partisan hatred is doing untold harm to children by preventing them from getting a proper education. And that will have awful life-long consequences for millions of kids, especially many of the 11.8 million low-income, 8.3 million Black, and 14.3 million Hispanic children in the US. Here are a few examples of how the Covid school closures will hurt children, care of my previous post, Covid-Related School Closures: Impact on Student Learning and How to Undo the Damage :
Previous attempts at virtual education in America have not looked promising. [One study] found significantly reduced test scores in almost all subjects, and a ten-percentage-point drop in the chance of graduating from high school.- Disrupted schooling will deepen inequality for American students/The Economist August 29, 2020
“The impact of missed education could be lasting. “If a child is not reading at grade level by the third grade, they are four times less likely to graduate high school,” says Christakis. “And low-income children are six times less likely.” - Dimitri Christakis of Seattle Children’s Research Institute, quoted in The New Scientist September 2, 2020
“Achievement gaps will become achievement chasms,” warns Robin Lake, director of the Centre on Reinventing Public Education, a research group. Analysts at McKinsey, a consultancy, reckon that the typical American pupil would suffer 6.8 months of learning loss if in-person instruction does not resume until January 2021 (which looks plausible)…The true scale of the educational fallout will be unknown for years, because it manifests itself in future decisions like dropping out of high school or university” - Disrupted schooling will deepen inequality for American students/The Economist August 29, 2020
“Learning loss will probably be greatest among low-income, black, and Hispanic students…Data from Curriculum Associates [suggest] that only 60 percent of low-income students are regularly logging into online instruction; 90 percent of high-income students do.” - COVID-19 and student learning in the United States: The hurt could last a lifetime by Emma Dorn, Bryan Hancock, Jimmy Sarakatsannis, and Ellen Viruleg/McKinsey & Company June 1, 2020.
Let’s reopen the schools as soon as we can - even if that’s also what the current administration wants.
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* Some states aren’t included in the tally because they don’t provide an age breakdown of their data.
References:
Alec MacGillis The Students Left Behind by Remote Learning . Co-published by Propublica and The New Yorker. Sept. 28, 2020
Education and the coronavirus crisis: What’s the latest? EdSource. October 7, 2020
Cases and Deaths Associated with COVID-19 by Age Group in California/California Department of Public Health October 9, 2020
Children and COVID-19: State-Level Data Report Joint report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association Version: October 1,2020
Leeb RT, Price S, Sliwa S, et al. COVID-19 Trends Among School-Aged Children — United States, March 1–September 19, 2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2020;69:1410–1415. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6939e2external icon.