Democrats’ school closures revealed as disaster for students

Students that were forced into remote learning due to school closures experienced significant learning loss, which hurt poor and minority students the most, according to a study conducted by researchers at Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR).

The study looked at the consequences of K-12 hybrid and remote learning over a period of two years, starting in the fall of 2019, and found that students who were in-person for the majority of the 2020-21 school year on average lost about 20% of a year’s worth of math learning, while students who were learning remotely suffered a 50% loss of a year’s worth of math learning in the same time period.

Researchers compared the MAP test results of 2.1 million students in third through eighth grades at almost 10,000 schools in 49 states and Washington D.C. The study broke students into groups based on how much time they spent in the classroom during the 2020-21 school year.

High-poverty schools that were remote for the majority of the 2020-2021 school year suffered the most, losing half a year of achievement growth, which was about twice as much as their counterparts at low-poverty schools in the same districts.

“When districts shifted to remote instruction, students in high-poverty schools were most negatively impacted,” said CEPR Faculty Director Thomas J. Kane, according to a press release announcing the findings. “School districts urgently need to reassess their plans and ensure that the scale of their catch-up efforts matches the magnitude of their students’ losses. If they don’t, we will see the largest widening in educational inequity in a generation.”- READ MORE