U.S. Children “Learning Online” during COVID-19 without the Internet or a Computer: Visualizing the Gradient by Race/Ethnicity and Parental Educational Attainment

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has caused unprecedented disruptions to education in the United States, with a large proportion of schooling moving to online formats, which has the potential to exacerbate existing racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in learning. The authors visualize access to online learning technologies using data from the Household Pulse Survey from the early fall 2020 school period (August 19 to October 26). The authors find that 10.1 percent of children participating in online learning nationally did not have adequate access to the Internet and a computer. Rates of inadequate access varied nearly 20-fold across the gradient of parental race/ethnicity and education, from 1.9 percent for children of Asian parents with graduate degrees to 35.5 percent among children of Black parents with less than a high school education. These findings indicate alarming gaps in potential learning among U.S. children. Renewed investments in equitable access to distance-learning resources will be necessary to prevent widening racial/ethnic and class learning disparities.

“Wearing a Mask Won't Protect Us from Our History”: The Impact of COVID‐19 on Black Children and Families

“…With students expected to lose one-third of prepandemic reading gains and half of math gains during the pandemic, the pandemic will further exacerbate existing disparities in achievement caused by institutional racism in the education domain. (Friedman et al, 2021). In the early months of the pandemic, one in five Black parents received little to no information from their school about remote learning resources (Education Trust, 2020), and 25% of Black youth connected with teachers less than once per week (Wronski, 2020).…”

“…Friedman et al ( 2021 ) documented that Black children were more likely to have inadequate access to the technology needed for online learning than their peers, with issues of accessibility being especially challenging across socioeconomic divides. In fall 2020, about 6% of Black children whose parents had a graduate degree lacked adequate access to technology, compared with 4% of all children whose parents had a graduate degree (Friedman et al, 2021 ). In contrast, almost 36% of Black children whose parents had less than a high school education had insufficient technology access, compared with 20% of all children with the same level of parent education (Friedman et al, 2021 ).…”

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“…Emerging evidence also indicates that the transition from in-person learning (whether due to lack of available in-person options or lack of comfort with these options) exacerbated educational inequalities (Rogers & Ishimoto, 2020; Shapiro et al, 2021; Smith & Reeves, 2020). In particular, low-income students of color experienced substantial formal “learning loss” due to changes in instruction—depending on the duration and quality of remote learning and their access to adequate internet or electronic devices (Dorn et al, 2020a, 2020b; Friedman et al, 2021).…”

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“…First, a lack of reliable Internet and privacy may prevent some students from participating in this activity. Successful online instruction is predicated on having resources and necessary equipment to dependently connect to the Internet, which in turn, are tied to social class, race, (dis) ability, and geographic location (Friedman et al 2021). Furthermore, even with good Internet connectivity, some students may have to share space with roommates or family members and may not feel comfortable discussing issues related to sexuality in a presence of other people.…”