Midnight Book Club

Covid-19 and the impact on schools

Background & Context

With September quickly approaching, many schools have released decisions and guidelines on reopening. The goal of this week’s discussion is to gain insights on the importance of an in-person education, our perspectives on the ramifications of education with coronavirus guidelines in place, and our insights for the impact coronavirus has had/will have on education.

Some relevant articles:

• How schools are faring internationally after reopening, with many reporting an increase in infections as schools reopened
• McKinsey report quantifying the economic consequences of lost learning in the US, with estimated losses to GDP up to $480 billion
• Do the consequences of staying at home outweigh the consequences of an in-person education? Being forced to stay at home has caused Italian children to develop unhealthy habits and lifestyles (see Economist_Unhealthy).
• Moreover, we see a damning effect in developing countries from Vietnam to India, especially on girls who are now forced into labor, abuse, and premature marriage with closed schools (see Economist_Girls).

School re-openings and COVID-19

With September quickly approaching, many schools have released decisions and guidelines on re-opening. This raises an interesting dilemma - do the consequences of staying at home outweigh the consequences of an in-person education?

Summary

On one hand

School is important primarily for education and child care. Missing out on school results in lost learning, which can have dire economic consequences for many students. A McKinsey report quantifies the economic consequences of lost learning in the US, with estimated losses to GDP of up to $480 billion link.

Furthermore, students being forced to stay at home puts a strain on both students and their parents. Students must participate in remote learning, which has been shown to be far less effective, and may develop unhealthy habits and lifestyles as a result. The adults must now provide childcare for their children during typical school hours. The Economist argues that being forced to stay at home has hurt children even further in developing countries like Vietnam and India, where some girls are now forced into labor, abuse, and premature marriage as a result of lost schooling.

On the other hand

Sending children to school can result in a resurgence of COVID cases, which may endanger the health of local communities that choose to reopen schools. This problem is even more complex in the US due to its poor response to containing COVID compared to other developed nations. Internationally, other nations have reopened schools with varying policies, and many have reported an increase in infections as schools reopened link.

Arguments For Re-opening:

We discussed a variety of arguments for re-opening schools, focusing on 3 groups of people—students, parents, and teachers—who are affected greatly by schools re-opening.

For Students:

• In-person education is more effective than remote learning
  • Reports project that extended remote learning could result in losses to students’ reading comprehension equivalent to an extended “summer slide”
• Negative effects beyond education
  • Kids will develop bad and unhealthy habits
    • Concentration during remote learning will be more difficult
    • Students will be (1) behind computer screens and (2) sitting all day, both of which are bad for health
    • Limited social interaction with peers
  • Poor education from remote learning could lead to more dropouts
    • This is turn may lead to worse future economic outcomes
  • Social consequences - in some countries, closed schools is very harmful for girls, who are being married off now that they are no longer being educated

For Families:

• Parents will be busier with both childcare and home-education
• Gap between rich and poor families will expand
  • Rich families can afford to pay for tutors and apps, and they have more leisure time to take care of their kids. Furthermore, richer families are more likely to have jobs that allow them to work from home.
  • Poorer families will not have the same ability to pay for extra education or care for their kids
    • Many poor families are already impacted moreso by COVID, with many jobs and layoffs occurring
    • Now, they also have to add the burden of childcare to their plate
• Despite this, a poll taken on June 15th showed that 54% of parents prefer children staying at home until there is no health risk, even at the cost of a worse education and increased childcare burden for families. 36% preferred re-opening as soon as possible, and 11% were unsure.

For Teachers:

* Remote teaching is difficult, it requires teachers investing a lot of time into changing the way they teach to fit this new medium

Arguments Against Re-opening

Of course, there are many reasons why (in-person) schooling is an important part of human society. COVID is the elephant in the room when it comes to arguments against re-opening schools, as having students show up en masse in crowded indoor spaces could lead to increased risk of viral transmission. While some may argue that students are a low-risk population when it comes to COVID, the teachers and the relatives (e.g. parents, grandparents) that these students will come in contact with will also be at increased risk of catching COVID.

In schools, it is very hard to maintain social distancing in classrooms. Kids are unlikely to wear masks consistently (especially younger ones), and schools may not even enforce such policies. One possible suggestion is to have an “opt out” system for showing up to in-person schooling. However, the students who opt-out might be disadvantanged, and the context switching (between in-person and remote education) may be disadvantageous for teachers and parents too.

Next, varying protocols exist for responding to COVID cases when they do inevitably arise. For example, different countries have different rules for how they will respond to COVID outbreaks in schools. In Israel, hundreds of high schools re-opened, then closed again whenever they detected even a single case of COVID. However, in Taiwan, isolated cases of COVID in schools did not prompt immediate closures, as long as larger outbreaks did not occur. In the US, each state will have the ability to choose its own policies regarding school re-openings. Many US colleges have different levels of re-openings planned. It’s important to answer the question - if a few cases pop up, what’s the protocol? Will schools shut down again? If so, students may have to switch back and forth between remote and in-person learning, which could be more disorienting than a year of completely-remote learning.

Other Factors

After discussing the main arguments for and against re-opening schools, we also reflected on what school meant to us, and discussed possible alternatives to school re-openings and solutions to the harms caused by remote learning.

First, we discussed what we thought were the most important parts of in-person education. The primary one we focused on was actually childcare; by sending children to schools, parents are free to work and earn money during the day. The role of schools in childcare is especially important for poorer families, who rely on this income.

Next, we discussed possible alternatives to school re-openings. In some more affluent places such as the Bay Area, parents are establishing tutoring pods in which small groups of students are educated by tutors. However, this is only achievable by wealthier families. While there are legitimate reasons for and against re-opening, it was hard to come to a clearly better alternative.

Overall, we hope that COVID cases fall and that schools can safely re-open. Until then, schools should try to have a consistent policy regarding re-openings, remote vs. in-person learning, and how they will respond to COVID cases if they do resume in-person learning. Above all, schools should follow the advice of local health experts.

Since our discussion (updated October):

• Primary and secondary schools across the US have reopened, to varying degrees depending on the state (e.g. California is not open, while Georgia is).
• When primary schools in Georgia first opened, photos circulated across the internet showing many students without masks. Many people were angry about this.
• Some colleges have reopened, but some such as Notre Dame have had to temporarily shut down for weeks after COVID outbreaks occurred.
• Every few days, there are news reports of delayed re-openings in different parts of the US (e.g. New York has delayed school re-openings multiple times).
• Overall, there has not been any huge news linking school re-openings to increases in COVID that has caught national headlines (beyond college students being foolish).
• Arguably, primary and secondary schools are more important to re-open, but the USA is opening many colleges (which should be easier to support in a virtual manner). Is the US opening the wrong set of schools (colleges)? Is it doing it for the wrong reasons (financial reasons)?