Research Note: School Reopenings During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Implications for Gender and Racial Equity

Abstract

In the fall of 2020, school districts across the country reopened under a variety of instructional modes. Some districts returned to in-person instruction and some operated remotely. Others reopened under hybrid models, wherein students alternated times, days, or weeks of in-person instruction. To capture this variation, we developed the Elementary School Operating Status (ESOS) database. ESOS provides data on elementary school districts' primary operating status in the first grading period of the 2020–2021 school year, covering 24 million students in more than 9,000 school districts in all states. In this research note, we introduce these data and offer two analytical examples. We show that school districts with greater representation of Black and Hispanic students were less likely to offer in-person instruction than were districts with greater representation of White students. These racial disparities remained after accounting for geographic locale and COVID-19 prevalence. We also show that the number of in-person elementary school instruction days was associated with mothers' labor force participation relative to fathers and to women without children—that is, the fewer days of instruction, the less likely that mothers were employed. ESOS is a critical data source for evaluating the mid- and long-term implications for students who experienced reduced in-person learning and for mothers who exited employment in the absence of in-person instruction and care.

Looking back and moving forward: Addressing health inequities after COVID-19

“… 40 This reflects the existing power dynamic of policy influence, which in many cases favours commercial and other economic interests over considerations of community and equity-related implications of policy decisions (in this case specific to the virus and related social controls). 41 , 42 , 43 …”

Countries embracing maternal employment opened schools sooner after Covid-19 lockdowns

“…Moreover, this scholarship has underscored the relevance of formulating specific, measurable ideas for analyzing ideational influences on policymaking in the realm of gender ideology and beyond. Maternal employment is among the social outcomes most heavily affected by Covid-19 school closures (Carson, Ruppanner, and Ratcliff 2020;Collins et al 2021;Heggeness 2020;Landivar et al 2021;Del Boca et al 2020). We have therefore chosen attitudes regarding maternal employment as the relevant measure of gender ideology for our study, and hypothesize that attitudes toward maternal employment likely played a central role in social policy decision-making regarding pandemic-related school measures.…”

“…2021; Del Boca et al 2020;Meraviglia and Dudka 2021;Yildirim and Eslen-Ziya 2021;Farre et al 2020;Sevilla and Smith 2020;Xue and McMunn 2021). Furthermore, compared to fathers, mothers have shouldered more of the additional "emotional work" in families, have been more affected by job losses and reductions in employment hours, and have been more likely to experience mental health declines and perceived work-life conflicts (Collins et al 2021;Del Boca et al 2020;Dias, Chance, and Buchanan 2020;Landivar et al 2021;Ma, Sun, and Xue 2020;Qian and Fuller 2020;Hjálmsdóttir and Bjarnadóttir 2021;Hiekel and Kühn 2021;Ruppanner, Tan, et al 2021;Yamamura and Tsustsui 2021;Zamarro and Prados 2021;Frank et al 2021;Yerkes et al 2020). Thus, as well as harming children, school closures have been associated with significant increases in gender inequalities in the domestic sphere, the labor market, and mental health.…”

“…Similarly, further waves throughout 2020, 2021, and early 2022 have triggered school closures in some, but not in other countries and regions. Thus, there has been broad variation in types and the usage of pandemic response measures across societies, in particular regarding schools (Blum and Dobrotić 2020;Landivar et al 2021;McGowan 2020). Two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, the scientific evidence on the role of schools in and the effects of school closures on the spread of SARS-CoV-2 remains mixed and inconclusive (Stage et al 2021;Walsh et al 2021;Wu et al 2022).…”

Contested Justice: Rethinking Educational Equity through New York City’s COVID-19 School Reopening Debates

“…Given deep race and class disparities in death, illness, and financial hardship that have been exacerbated under COVID-19, as well as gender disparities in caregiving roles and responsibilities, schooling during the pandemic has raised multiple equity issues (Turner, 2020a). The stakes of a return to school have been deeply unequal (American Public Media Research Lab, 2021;Artiga, Hill & Ndugga, 2021;Calarco et al, 2021;Centers for Disease Control, 2022;Landivar et al, 2022). These decisions have taken on even greater urgency amidst the substantial social upheaval of an on-going global pandemic, economic crisis, and racial reckoning in the US.…”