The sudden closure of every school district in the nation, including two-thirds of them in a three-day stretch, required a massive retooling effort to shift classes to remote learning. While a few districts were immediately up and running, the shift cost students days of instruction. Across the country, the average public school canceled more than 8 days, equivalent to about 16 percent of the school year remaining after closures were announced.
Unfortunately, canceled days weren’t the largest cause of lost instruction—non-participation was. Los Angeles Unified School District reported that on average, 40 percent of middle and high school students did not participate. In Seattle, less than half of K-5th grade students logged on to the city’s online learning platform even once between March and June, and participation was lowest among disadvantaged students.
Non-participation was a problem across the nation. How much lost instruction did it cause? In a new report, I estimate that 11 days of instruction were lost to non-participation, on average—about 20 percent of the year after closures. Participation was lower in high-poverty districts, which lost an estimated 12 days on average compared to just 8 in more affluent districts. Combined, canceled days and non-participation meant students lost more than a third of instruction after closures, and on average 41 percent in the highest-poverty districts.
Lost instruction left students behind and made achievement gaps grow, and those outcomes were amplified by the weakness of the instructional offerings students received when they did participate. At the end of the spring, asynchronous platforms like Google classroom were available in 86 percent of schools. That may seem like a lot, but it took time for districts to reach those heights. Students had access to asynchronous learning platforms for just 68 percent of the year after closures. Synchronous learning platforms, like Zoom, were offered by 44 percent of districts at the end of closures, but were available to students for just 32 of the time after schools were closed. The glass looks more than half empty, given how much time students could actually use those platforms.
Again, that access was lower in higher poverty districts, but also in historically low-achieving districts, which had access to synchronous platforms for 22 percent of the year after closures, compared to 39 percent in higher scoring districts. It was also lower in communities with higher rates of single-parent families, lower rates of college-educated adults and where there was less access to broadband internet. “Emergency learning” was bad for most students last spring, but it left the furthest behind even further back.
Improving remote learning platforms is only part of the challenge. All these comparisons assume remote learning is better where online platforms let teachers connect to students, and those online platforms are the primary way superintendents plan to improve remote learning this fall. That highlights the unequal broadband access that left less connected counties providing less robust “emergency learning” last spring. With no quick broadband fix, that digital divide will continue to frustrate remote learning this fall.
Why belabor all these depressing statistics? Because they should inform when in-person instruction resumes in two ways. First, they clearly demonstrate that the losses from the spring are large, and still larger for disadvantaged students. That means the nation’s students have a great deal of ground to make up, and they need to make it up starting now.
Second, they highlight major challenges from the spring that will continue to frustrate remote learning this school year. “Ghosting” remote instruction will always be easier than skipping classes at school. Broadband access will continue to frustrate equity in online learning platforms in ways that are already showing at the start of a new year. To improve their participation problems from the spring, Seattle schools used the first week of the year for a “soft start” focused on maximizing student engagement with their improved remote platforms, only to see less than half their students log on.
Whatever forces caused disadvantaged students to get shortchanged last spring, it is hard to argue those forces will disappear this school year. That means just when students need to gain ground, many will remain in remote learning where they will struggle to tread water.
Students’ best chance to make up lost ground will happen in school buildings with in-person instruction. Certainly that should lead us to prioritize reopening schools over reopening sporting events and restaurants. Just as it would be foolish to ignore the pandemic threat and blindly reopen schools, it would be equally foolish to ignore the cumulative threat remote learning poses to students’ educations and their long term success.
Nat Malkus is a resident scholar in education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
