Unequal Opportunity Spreaders: Higher COVID-19 Deaths with Later School Closure in the United States

Rauscher, Emily; Burns, Ailish

doi:10.1177/07311214211005486

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 179 publications

(165 reference statements)

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“…Five of these are based in the United States. Rauscher and Burns (2021) exploited variation across states in the timing of school closures to study the impact of modality on COVID death rates. They tracked the number of days from the first reported COVID case in spring 2020 to the time of state mandated closures using matching strategies to account for heterogeneity of observed county characteristics.…”

Section: Background On School Modality and Covid Spreadmentioning

confidence: 99%

To What Extent Does In‐person Schooling Contribute to the Spread of Covid‐19? Evidence From Michigan and Washington

Goldhaber¹,

Imberman²,

Strunk³

et al. 2022

J Policy Anal Manage

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In this paper we use data from Michigan and Washington on COVID case rates at the county level linked to information on the instructional modality offered by local public school districts during the 2020/2021 school year to assess the relationship between modality and COVID spread. We focus primarily on COVID case rates, but also provide estimates for hospitalizations (in Washington only) and deaths. District and month fixed effects models that exploit within‐district (over time) variation in instructional modality and account for time‐invariant district factors show that, in both states, in‐person/hybrid schooling relative to remote instruction can lead to increases in COVID spread in communities with moderate to high levels of preexisting COVID cases. Event study estimates show sharp increases in Michigan case rates after a district opens for in‐person or hybrid schooling, but these largely fade out over two months.

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Section: Background On School Modality and Covid Spreadmentioning

confidence: 99%

To What Extent Does In‐person Schooling Contribute to the Spread of Covid‐19? Evidence From Michigan and Washington

Goldhaber¹,

Imberman²,

Strunk³

et al. 2022

J Policy Anal Manage

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“…A substantial body of research has now established the negative academic, social, emotional, and economic consequences of school closures and remote-only learning on students (Garcia & Cowan, 2022;Goldhaber et al, 2022aGoldhaber et al, , 2022bKaufman et al, 2022;Naff et al, 2022;Zamarro et al, 2022). Some research suggests that keeping schools open during high rates of COVID-19 may have increased community spread (Courtemanche et al, 2021;Ertem et al, 2021;Goldhaber et al, 2022aGoldhaber et al, , 2022bRauscher & Burns, 2021). 2.…”

Section: Declaration Of Conflicting Interestsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Politics of School Reopening During COVID-19: A Multiple Case Study of Five Urban Districts in the 2020–21 School Year

Singer

Marsh

Menefee-Libey

et al. 2023

Educational Administration Quarterly

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Purpose: Nearly all schools in the United States closed in spring 2020, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyze traditional public and charter school reopenings for the 2020–21 school year in five urban districts. We provide a rich and theoretically grounded description of how and why educational leaders made reopening decisions in each of our case districts. Research Methods: We used data from a multiple-case study from March 2020 to July 2021. The research team conducted 56 interviews with school, district, and system-level leaders; triangulated with publicly available data; and also drew on interview data from a subsample of parents and guardians in each of our sites. We analyzed these data through qualitative coding and memo writing and conducted detailed single- and cross-case analyses. Findings: School system leaders in our case sites generally consulted public health authorities, accounted for state-level health and educational guidance, and engaged with and were responsive to the interests of different stakeholders. Districts’ adherence to and strategic uses of public health guidance, as well as a combination of union-district relations and labor market dynamics, influenced reopening. Parents, city, and state lawmakers, and local institutional conditions also played a role, helping to explain differences across cases. Implications: In contrast to the “politics or science” framing that has dominated research and public discourse on school reopening, we show that local pandemic conditions and local political dynamics both mattered and in fact were interrelated. Our findings have some implications for how educational leaders might navigate future crises.

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“…There has been much debate on this issue worldwide, with already systematic reviews and metaanalyses trying to summarize the findings of multiple empirical research, and making explicit the economic, psychological and educational downside of this kind of policy (Busa et al, 2021;Krishnaratne et al, 2020). Several scholars in this research field explicitly design, look for, model, match or reconstruct some counterfactual against which to compare the cases of interest (e. g. Auger et al, 2020;Cunha et al, 2021;Gordon et al, 2021;Rauscher and Burns, 2021). Notably, with a few exceptions, these comparisons are not performed by political scientists and, apart from some economists, not even by the more comprehensive category of social scientists.…”

Section: Conclusion: What Can We Learn?mentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 counterfactual evidence. Estimating the effects of school closures

Giuliani

2022

Policy Studies

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Scholars have started to estimate the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions to reduce the health impact of COVID-19. However, the empirical evidence is highly contested, and since it is not known exactly what would have happened without those measures, political élites are left free to give credit to the voices that they prefer the most. We argue that any sensible assessment of the effectiveness of anti-COVID policies requires methodological reflection on what is actually comparable, and how to approximate the ideal "method of difference" theorized by John Stuart Mill.By evaluating the effectiveness of school closures as anti-COVID policy, we provide two examples in which appropriate counterfactuals are inductively discovered, rather than selected a priori. In the first one we use Coarsened Exact Matching in a cross-country setting, while in the second one we implement the Synthetic Control Method in a within-country analysis. The article highlights the methodological advantages of including this type of techniques in the toolbox of policy scholars, while both examples confirm the effectiveness of school closures.

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Unequal Opportunity Spreaders: Higher COVID-19 Deaths with Later School Closure in the United States

Cited by 10 publications

References 179 publications

To What Extent Does In‐person Schooling Contribute to the Spread of Covid‐19? Evidence From Michigan and Washington

To What Extent Does In‐person Schooling Contribute to the Spread of Covid‐19? Evidence From Michigan and Washington

The Politics of School Reopening During COVID-19: A Multiple Case Study of Five Urban Districts in the 2020–21 School Year

COVID-19 counterfactual evidence. Estimating the effects of school closures

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