Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Before the 2020–2021 school year, policymakers and parents confronted the uncertain trade-offs implied by the health, educational, and economic consequences of offering instruction remotely, in person, or through a hybrid of the two. Most public schools in the United States chose remote-only instruction, and enrollment fell dramatically (i.e., a loss 1.1 million K–12 students). We examine the impact of these choices on public-school enrollment using panel data that combine district-level information on enrollment and instructional mode. We find offering remote-only instead of in-person instruction reduced enrollment by 1.1 percentage points (i.e., 42% greater disenrollment). The disenrollment effects of remote instruction are concentrated in kindergarten and, more modestly, elementary schools. We do not find evidence that hybrid instruction had an impact.

Keywords

comparative interrupted time series design COVID-19 school policies parent preferences remote instruction student enrollment

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bai

(2009). Panel data models with interactive fixed effects. Econometrica, 77(4), 1229–1279. https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA6135

Barnum

(2022, June 23). Catholic schools have lost students during the pandemic. Chalkbeat. https://www.chalkbeat.org/2022/6/23/23180432/catholic-school-enrollment-pandemic

Bassok

Dee

Latham

(2017). The effects of accountability incentives in early childhood education (NBER Working Papers No. 23859). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/23859.html

Bettinger

E. P.

Fox

Loeb

Taylor

E. S.

(2017). Virtual classrooms: How online college courses affect student success. American Economic Review, 107(9), 2855–2875. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20151193

Bound

Turner

(2007). Cohort crowding: How resources affect collegiate attainment. Journal of Public Economics, 91(5), 877–899. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2006.07.006

Bravata

Cantor

J. H.

Sood

Whaley

C. M.

(2021). Back to school: The effect of school visits during COVID-19 on COVID-19 transmission (NBER Working Paper No. 28645). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w28645

Card

(1999). The causal effect of education on earnings. In Ashenfelter

O. C.

Card

(Eds.), Handbook of labor economics (Vol. 3, pp. 1801–1863). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1573-4463(99)03011-4

Collins

J. E.

Nuamah

S. A.

(2020, August 19). Analysis | Americans overwhelmingly oppose school reopenings, data finds. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/19/americans-overwhelmingly-oppose-school-reopenings-new-data-finds/

Cook

T. D.

Campbell

D. T.

Shadish

W. R.

(2002). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for generalized causal inference. Houghton Mifflin.

10.

Cooper

Allen

Patall

Dent

(2010). Effects of full-day kindergarten on academic achievement and social development. Review of Educational Research, 80, 34–70. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654309359185

11.

Courtemanche

C. J.

A. H.

Yelowitz

Zimmer

(2021). School reopenings, mobility, and COVID-19 spread: Evidence from Texas (NBER Working Paper No. 28753). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w28753

12.

Dee

T. S.

Murphy

(2021). Patterns in the pandemic decline of public school enrollment. Educational Researcher, 50(8), 566–569.

13.

Digital Learning Collaborative. (2020). Snapshot 2020: A review of K-12, blended, and digital learning (The Annual Report of the Digital Learning Collaborative). Digital Learning Collaborative.

14.

Education Commission of the States. (2020, September 28). 50-state comparison: State K-3 policies. Education Commission of the States. https://www.ecs.org/kindergarten-policies/

15.

Eggleston

Fields

(2021, March 22). Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey shows significant increase in homeschooling rates in Fall 2020. U.S. Census Bureau. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/03/homeschooling-on-the-rise-during-covid-19-pandemic.html

16.

Friedman-Krauss

A. H.

Barnett

W. S.

Garver

K. A.

Hodges

K. S.

Weisenfeld

G. G.

Gardiner

B. A.

M. S.

Jost

T. M.

(2022). The state of preschool 2021 (p. 184). National Institute for Early Education Research.

17.

Fry

C. E.

Hatfield

L. A.

(2021). Birds of a feather flock together: Comparing controlled pre–post designs. Health Services Research, 56(5), 942–952. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6773.13697

18.

Goldhaber

Imberman

S. A.

Strunk

K. O.

Hopkins

B. G.

Brown

Harbatkin

Kilbride

(2022). To what extent does in-person schooling contribute to the spread of Covid-19? Evidence from Michigan and Washington. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 41(1), 318–349. https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.22354

19.

Goldstein

Parlapiano

(2021, August 7). The kindergarten exodus. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/07/us/covid-kindergarten-enrollment.html

20.

Grossmann

Reckhow

Strunk

K. O.

Turner

(2021). All states close but red districts reopen: The politics of in-person schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic. Educational Researcher, 50(9), 637–648. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X211048840

21.

Hale

Angrist

Goldszmidt

Kira

Petherick

Phillips

Webster

Cameron-Blake

Hallas

Majumdar

Tatlow

(2021). A global panel database of pandemic policies (Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker). Nature Human Behaviour, 5(4), 529–538. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01079-8

22.

Harris

D. N.

Chen

(2022, May 10). How has the pandemic affected high school graduation and college entry?Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2022/05/10/how-has-the-pandemic-affected-high-school-graduation-and-college-entry/

23.

Harris

D. N.

Oliver

D. M.

(2021, July 12). Why do so many public schools stay remote during the COVID crisis?REACH. https://reachcentered.org/publications/why-did-so-many-public-schools-stay-remote-during-the-covid-crisis

24.

Harris

D. N.

Ziedan

Hassig

(2021). The effects of school reopenings on COVID-19 hospitalizations (Working Paper). REACH. https://reachcentered.org/publications/the-effects-of-school-reopenings-on-covid-19-hospitalizations

25.

Hartney

M. T.

Finger

L. K.

(2021). Politics, markets, and pandemics: Public education’s response to COVID-19. Perspectives on Politics, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592721000955

26.

Heckman

Moon

S. H.

Pinto

Savelyev

Yavitz

(2010). The rate of return to the HighScope Perry Preschool Program. Journal of Public Economics, 94(1–2), 114–128.

27.

Heinrich

C. J.

Cheng

(2022). Does online credit recovery in high school support or stymie later labor market success? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.22376

28.

Henderson

M. B.

Peterson

P. E.

West

M. R.

(2021, January 19). Pandemic parent survey finds perverse pattern: Students are more likely to be attending school in person where Covid is spreading more rapidly. Education Next.

29.

Heppen

J. B.

Sorensen

Allensworth

Walters

Rickles

Taylor

S. S.

Michelman

(2017). The struggle to pass algebra: Online vs. face-to-face credit recovery for at-risk urban students. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 10(2), 272–296. https://doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2016.1168500

30.

Jacob

Somers

M.-A.

Zhu

Bloom

(2016). The validity of the comparative interrupted time series design for evaluating the effect of school-level interventions. Evaluation Review, 40(3), 167–198. https://doi.org/10.1177/0193841X16663414

31.

Jacobson

(2022, April 6). “Those kids did not come back”: Exclusive enrollment data shows students continue to flee urban districts as boom town schools and virtual academies thrive. The 74. https://www.the74million.org/article/covid-school-enrollment-students-move-away-from-urban-districts-virtual/

32.

Kurtz

(2020, October 15). In-person learning expands, student absences up, teachers work longer, survey shows. Education Week.

33.

Liu

Wang

(2022). A practical guide to counterfactual estimators for causal inference with time-series cross-sectional data (arXiv:2107.00856). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2107.00856

34.

MIT Election Data and Science Lab. (2018). County presidential election returns 2000-2020 [Data set]. Harvard Dataverse. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/VOQCHQ

35.

Molnar

Miron

Elgeberi

Barbour

M. K.

Huerta

Shafer

S. R.

Rice

J. K.

(2019). Virtual schools in the U.S. 2019. National Education Policy Center. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED595244

36.

Musaddiq

Stange

K. M.

Bacher-Hicks

Goodman

(2021). The pandemic’s effect on demand for public schools, homeschooling, and private schools (NBER Working Paper No. 29262). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w29262

37.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2020). Reopening K-12 schools during the COVID-19 pandemic: Prioritizing health, equity, and communities. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25858

38.

National Center for Education Statistics. (2021, June 28). Press Release—Nation’s public school enrollment dropped 3 percent in 2020-21. National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/whatsnew/press_releases/06_28_2021.asp

39.

Oster

(2020, October 9). Schools aren’t super-spreaders. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/schools-arent-superspreaders/616669/

40.

Oster

(2021). Beyond past due: Data to guide US school reopenings. Nature, 589(7840), 8. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03647-w

41.

Peltzman

(1975). The effects of automobile safety regulation. Journal of Political Economy, 83(4), 677–725. https://doi.org/10.1086/260352

42.

Rambachan

Roth

(2022). A more credible approach to parallel trends (Working Paper).

43.

Roth

Sant’Anna

P. H. C.

Bilinski

Poe

(2022). What’s trending in difference-in-differences? A synthesis of the recent econometrics literature (arXiv: 2201 .01194). arXiv.

44.

The New York Times . (2021). Coronavirus (Covid-19) data in the United States. https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data

45.

(2017). Generalized synthetic control method: Causal inference with interactive fixed effects models. Political Analysis, 25(1), 57–76. https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2016.2

46.

Welsh

R. O.

(2017). School hopscotch: A comprehensive review of K–12 student mobility in the United States. Review of Educational Research, 87(3), 475–511. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654316672068

47.

Will

(2020, July 24). Surveys: Most teachers don’t want in-person instruction, fear COVID-19 health risks. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/surveys-most-teachers-dont-want-in-person-instruction-fear-covid-19-heath-risks/2020/07

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

1.83 MB

The Revealed Preferences for School Reopening: Evidence From Public-School Disenrollment

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References

Supplementary Material