Learning Loss Due to School Closures During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Suspension of face-to-face instruction in schools during the COVID-19 pandemic has led to concerns about consequences for student learning. So far, data to study this question have been limited. Here we evaluate the effect of school closures on primary school performance using exceptionally rich data from the Netherlands (n≈350,000). The Netherlands represents a best-case scenario with a relatively short lockdown (8 weeks) and a high degree of technological preparedness. We use the fact that national exams took place before and after lockdown, and compare progress during this period to the same period in the three previous years using a difference-in-differences design. Our results reveal a learning loss of about 3 percentile points or 0.08 standard deviations. These results remain robust when balancing on the estimated propensity of treatment and using maximum entropy weights, or with fixed-effects specifications that compare students within the same school and family. Losses are up to 55% larger among students from less-educated homes. Investigating mechanisms, we find that most of the effect reflects the cumulative impact of knowledge learned rather than transitory influences on the day of testing. The average learning loss is equivalent to a fifth of a school year, nearly exactly the same period that schools remained closed. These results imply that students made little or no progress whilst learning from home, and suggest much larger losses in countries less prepared for remote learning.

Academic performance of K-12 students in an online-learning environment for mathematics increased during the shutdown of schools in wake of the Covid-19 pandemic

“…The shutdown of schools in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic required students to be educated from home which has been linked to lower performance on national tests [3], higher stress and anxiety [7,9], lower sleep quality [8], as well as a general decrease in student's wellbeing [5,6,13]. In this study, we examined the impact of the school closures on the performance of K12 students in an online learning environment for mathematics-building on a large dataset compromising over 30,000 K-12 students and over 800,000 computed problem sets-by contrasting students' performance before the shutdown against their performance during the shutdown.…”

“…An important consequence of school shutdowns concerns a widening of the education gap, i.e. the difference in academic performance between students from different subgroups, such as low-income and high-income students [3,4]. A recent study from the UK found that children from low-income families are less likely to participate in online classes, are spending 30% less time learning at home, and have limited access to educational resources [10].…”

“…A recent study from the UK found that children from low-income families are less likely to participate in online classes, are spending 30% less time learning at home, and have limited access to educational resources [10]. These inequalities in learning styles are reported to increase the educational gap between low-performing and highperforming students [3,4,10]. Another study, based on 55 million library check-outs in Denmark, showed that families with higher socioeconomic status (SES) borrowed more books than families with lower SES, and that this difference increased during the shutdown of schools [14].…”

“…The shutdown required teachers, students and parents to rapidly adopt to a new homeschooling situation, lasting from a few weeks to several months, depending on governmental policy. While the full consequences of this outage will take years or even decades to unfold, preliminary data highlight immediate effects on student's academic performance and well-being [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. However, little is known about the pandemic's impact on the performance of K-12 students in online learning environments-educational tools that became popular complements to traditional classroom work over the past years.…”

“…Preliminary studies investigating the effects of the shutdown, paint a negative picture, suggesting a detrimental influence on academic performance and general wellbeing. For instance, a recent study showed that scores on national exams in the Netherlands decreased by three percentile points after the shutdown of schools compared to the years before [3]. Another study, involving students in Germany, reported that general screen time (time spent on television, computer games or social media) increased by more than one hour a day and study time was cut in half as a consequence of the school closures [1].…”