Chapter Three | School Closures

Background

Schools closed in March 2020 across the USA, initially for 2 weeks, but then extended for the vast majority until the end of the school year, with in-person teaching replaced by online instruction. Some schools opened in the fall of 2020 while other schools remained virtual throughout the 2020/21 academic year. Some schools were even virtual or experienced brief closures during the 2021/22 academic year, while many others went remote during surges. In some school districts, a hybrid approach was used, with in-person schools on some days and online schools on other days. In other districts school was entirely remote with little in person synchronous instruction for most of the 2020/2021 year. In contrast, most European children returned to school after a short shut down while Sweden never closed schools for children under the age of 15.

Closing Schools

Keeping Schools Closed

In fall of 2020, the USA was a patchwork of closed and open schools, even though a great deal of reassuring data had become available here and abroad. Sweden kept daycare and schools open throughout the spring of 2020, for all children ages 1 to 15, without social distancing, masks, or testing. As of June 2020, among the 1.8 million children in this age group, zero died from COVID-19 and only a few were hospitalized. Early data also indicated teachers did not have a higher risk of serious COVID-19 than other professionals. On July 7, 2020, Swedish and Finnish Public Health Agencies issued a public report comparing the two countries, concluding that “closure or not of schools has had little if any impact on the number of laboratory confirmed cases in school aged children in Finland and Sweden. The negative effects of closing schools must be weighed against the positive effects, if any."

Sweden’s and Finland’s report should have ensured that all American children returned to in-person teaching in the fall of 2020. Why were these results ignored by the CDC and many governors and state health departments?
On July 29, 2020, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published an article concerning “reopening primary schools during the pandemic”, without mentioning data from the only major western country that kept schools open throughout the 2020 spring semester. Were they aware of Sweden’s and Finland's report?
Except for CNN-Español, we are not aware of any major U.S. media covering the positive results from Sweden. Why did journalists not report on the safety of the open schools in Sweden?
On August 7, 2020, the CDC published an MMWR study based on COVID-Net data from March 1, 2020 through July 25, 2020, which clearly established the low risk to American children. In the analysis, children comprised less than 0.01% of hospitalizations and 0.0005% of associated COVID-19 mortality. Why did the CDC not use these data to reassure concerned parents that in-person schools were safe for children?
In Australia and South Korea in August 2020, data showed that secondary infection rates were very low in schools. The UK, as well as Norway and other Scandinavian countries, showed that in-school spread was low and that teachers were at no higher risk of infection than the general population. In fact, schools tended to have lower transmission rates than the general community. Similarly, in May 2020, the Center for Global Development released a report that failed to find any increase in community COVID-19 case rates related to school reopenings internationally. Why did US policy makers and the CDC ignore data from the US and Europe showing COVID-19 transmission in schools was low and teachers had lower risk of contracting COVID-19 or having severe outcomes from COVID-19 than other essential workers?

Graph published June 12th, 2020 by the Center for Global Development. https://www.cgdev.org/blog/back-school-update-COVID-cases-schools-reopen

California data on preschools and daycares were similar, with 33,773 preschools and daycares remaining open, and state data through July 2020 showing that only about 450 students had tested positive for the virus in the preceding six months. Were US policy makers and the CDC aware of these data from daycare centers that had stayed open and which showed low rates of COVID-19 transmission?
In the USA, a large-scale analysis from Brown University using fall 2020 data found that school opening did not raise transmission significantly, if at all, and that schools reflected community rates. Data from New York City schools, the largest and most diverse district in the USA, identified only 28 cases after random testing of 16,000 staff and students. In 2021, two large-scale studies in Wisconsin and North Carolina showed very low within-school transmission rates in public and private schools, no transmission to teachers and lower case rates within the school than in the surrounding community. Were policy makers aware of these data? If they were, why did they not take these data into account when making recommendations around school openings and closures?

CDC Reopening Guidelines

The CDC originally set reopening guidelines for fall 2020 with a recommendation of staying remote when cases exceeded 20 per 100,000. While these were recommendations and not requirements, many county health departments adopted them as requirements and school boards and district officials turned them into preconditions for re-opening. Under these conditions, 99% of American schools could not reopen in fall 2020. As a result of these guidelines, public schools in e.g., San Francisco, Atlanta, Seattle, Chicago, Portland, OR, and other cities did not reopen for in person instruction until April 2021, and then for only a few hours per week, with attendance often limited to 50% capacity.

Why did the CDC use community transmission rates as a metric for school guidance given available data showing schools were not meaningfully driving spread?
Data from states that reopened schools in August 2020, such as Florida, showed low rates of severe COVID-19 in children. Why did the CDC not adjust guidelines given these data?
Why were outdoor school options not explored in the warmer southern parts of the US as they were in parts of Europe?
There were no data indicating differences in transmission rates between social distancing of 6 feet or 3 feet (or fewer). Why was the CDC slow to decrease distancing requirements, which kept millions of children at home due to the 6 foot requirement? Even with 6 foot distancing, why did the CDC provide classroom diagrams that severely underutilized classroom space instead of giving guidance that would have maximized the number of students that could have returned?
Why were privately-funded academic centers collecting data on school transmission and the effectiveness of mitigation measures instead of the CDC? Why did the CDC not offer to fund these projects after they were established and were clearly providing useful and important information?

Lobbying for School Closures

Released emails have shown that leaders of teacher unions provided input on and previewed CDC guidance on school closures and opening.

Why did the CDC incorporate policy language proposed by leaders of teachers unions on the scientific and public health aspects of school reopening without soliciting expertise of outside scientists in public health, infectious diseases, or other related fields?
As a result of educator union heads’ input, social distancing with evidence-free metrics, such as 6 feet of distance, were maintained into spring of 2021. Why did the CDC follow requests from teacher union leaders instead of examining the epidemiological evidence?
Some school districts created in-person “hubs” which were opened for students but staffed by low-wage workers while teachers worked remotely. What was the rationale for having “hubs” instead of in-person teaching? Were these low-wage workers assumed to be at less risk for COVID-19 than teachers? Having to pay both teachers and hub workers, how much money did school districts spend to transfer minimal COVID-19 risks from teachers to low-wage workers? Was the fact that many of the lower-wage workers in school buildings are nonunionized a factor in creating this set up?

Harms from School Closures

Decades of research established that remote learning provides worse academic outcomes, and that low-income students rely more heavily on the social services and safety net resources that public schools provide. Several pre-pandemic studies showed that students relegated to online learning performed worse than their in-person peers and that even students who used computers in the classroom had lower test scores than those learning without them. Absence rates are well known to predict graduation rates and even snow days can significantly impact academic performance. In districts such as the Los Angeles Unified School District, more than half of students never logged on at all in spring 2020 and fall 2021 and nearly half continue to be chronically absent in 2022.

Why were lessons ignored about the negative effects of prior school closures, such as during the polio pandemic, the floods in Thailand in 2011, teacher strikes in Argentina in the 1980s, and the earthquake in Pakistan in 2005?
Why were plans to avert and ameliorate learning loss not immediately put in place and rolled out aggressively?
Removing school sports and extracurricular activities led to predictable weight gain, development of sedentary behaviors, increased screen time, and a loss of the mental health benefits of exercise and sports participation. Why were these activities canceled? Are there plans to ameliorate the resulting damage to children’s physical health?
Standardized tests show that children have lost decades worth of academic progress due to school closures. What plans are in place, nationally and locally, to help students recover some of these academic losses?
Three million students are thought to have left the public education system altogether during the pandemic. What efforts are being made to find those students and bring them back into the system?
Children’s anxiety, health care utilization for suicidality, and depression, and eating disorders are at an all time high. Why were plans to avert and ameliorate mental health effects not in place? What is being done to provide mental health care to these children?
What are the short-term and long-term effects of missed school screenings for vision, hearing, and dental problems?
What were the short- and long-term consequences of the unavailability of school- based health education programs, including preventive health, mental health counseling, wellness education, physical education, reproductive health services and alcohol and drug counseling?
Schools are important for detecting child abuse. How many child abuse cases went undetected and how many children experienced continued abuse because of school closures?
Childhood vaccination rates fell during the pandemic. How much of this was due to school closures, such as a lack of school vaccine clinic or school vaccine requirements, versus other factors?

Children with Special Needs

Millions of children received no special education services during school closures, and students with learning disabilities, autism, and other neurodiverse issues, and English as a Second Language (ELL) students experienced disproportional harms due to remote school and mask mandates.

What effect did school closures have on autistic children, children with other learning disabilities, and their families? How were the needs of these children weighed in the decision to close their schools?
What effects did school closures have on English language learners, not only in terms of the lack of in-person ELL teaching, but also in missed opportunities to interact with and speak English with their peers?
Why were school districts allowed to suspend Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE, section 504) requirements?
Were there requirements for districts to use Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds to help these students to catch up? If not, why not?
Why were districts not required by the Department of Education to let students unable to learn remotely come into school buildings for in-person instruction?

Inequity of School Closures

Children with more affluent parents, with parents with flexible work schedules, and who had better access to high-speed internet did better, for the most part, with online learning. Affluent families were also better equipped to hire tutors, to set up pod schools and to pay for enrichment. Some could afford to move their children from public to private schools that were still offering in-person teaching, thus exacerbating the equity gap in education. Low-income students and students from racial minorities, who already suffer from low graduation rates and lower college enrollment, came back to school at lower rates when schools finally reopened. Students who were in remote learning longer, students of lower socioeconomic status, and students of color were all found to have greater educational losses during the pandemic, widening racial and socioeconomic divides in the United States.

While governors closed public schools, many private schools continued with in-person teaching. Why were public schools in some states closed while private schools were not? Why did public schools not open when private schools were opening successfully?
Why were concerns about differential impacts of school closures dismissed when schools were closed and remained closed?
Why did the Department of Education not require districts to have a plan to retain the most at-risk students in order to receive Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds? How are ESSER funds monitored and accounted for to ensure that the most at-risk students receive more of the money?
Studies emerged in fall 2020 that women were leaving the workforce and that the burden of overseeing their children’s education at home was falling disproportionately on women while the burden of maintaining the family income was falling disproportionately on men. Were the disproportionate and long-term impacts of school closures on gender equality, women’s careers considered when school closures were implemented?

Extra-Curricular Activities

School closures not only affected class-room education but also extra-curricular activities that form a very important part in the lives of children in terms of social life, physical exercise, and social bonding. Even after schools were re-opened, some extracurricular activities remained in lockdown.

To what extent did the canceling of extracurricular contributions contribute to the increasing mental health problems that children experienced during the pandemic?
How did the lockdown of extracurricular sports activities harm children's physical health? What was its effect on obesity?
Were differential effects of extracurricular activity cancellations on low-income children considered, for example since wealthier families could move to states where their children could compete, or travel for club sports?