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Unscheduled School Closings and Student Performance
Abstract
Do students perform better on statewide assessments in years in which they have more school days to prepare? We explore this question using data on math and reading assessments taken by students in the 3rd, 5th and 8th grades since 1994 in Maryland. Our identification strategy is rooted in the fact that tests are administered on the same day(s) statewide in late winter or early spring, and any unscheduled closings due to snow reduce instruction time, and are not made up until after the exams are over. We estimate that in academic years with an average number of unscheduled closures (5), the number of 3rd graders performing satisfactorily on state reading and math assessments within a school is nearly 3 percent lower than in years with no school closings. The impacts of closure are smaller for students in 5th and 8th grade. Combining our estimates with actual patterns of unscheduled closings in the last 3 years, we find that more than half of schools failing to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) in 3rd grade math or reading, required under No Child Left Behind, would have met AYP if schools had been open on all scheduled days.
... In Argentina, Jaume and Willén (2019) find that teacher strikes in primary school have persistent long-run effects on earnings. Furthermore, a growing body of studies has documented the effects of instruction time on academic achievement (see Aucejo and Romano, 2016;Barrios-Fernández and Bovini, 2021;Cattaneo et al., 2017;Goodman, 2015;Huebener et al., 2017;Marcotte, 2007;Marcotte and Hemelt, 2008;Rivkin and Schiman, 2015;Thompson, 2021) with potential deleterious effects of an increase in instruction time on student mental health (see Marcus et al., 2020). ...
... Given its topical coverage, this paper expands the work of Marcotte (2007); Marcotte and Hemelt (2008) and Goodman (2014) who studied the effect of snowfall on student' performance in the United States. In Maryland and Colorado, Marcotte (2007) and Marcotte and Hemelt (2008) find that students who took exams in years with snowfall performed significantly worse on the academic assessments than their peers in the same school who took the exams in other years. ...
... Given its topical coverage, this paper expands the work of Marcotte (2007); Marcotte and Hemelt (2008) and Goodman (2014) who studied the effect of snowfall on student' performance in the United States. In Maryland and Colorado, Marcotte (2007) and Marcotte and Hemelt (2008) find that students who took exams in years with snowfall performed significantly worse on the academic assessments than their peers in the same school who took the exams in other years. In Massachusetts, Goodman (2015) finds that school closings caused by extreme snowfall have little impact on student achievement whereas absences due to moderate snowfall cause a sharp reduction in math achievement. ...
We combined information on daily rainfall at school locations and standardized test scores to study how learning outcomes at primary schools are affected by precipitation during school days in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our results suggest that student test scores are lower in schools that are exposed to more rainy days during the academic year. Students in locations that had more rainy school days are also more likely to experience grade repetition. We tested the mechanisms through which rainfall affects learning outcomes in our study area and found that teachers are more likely to be absent in locations with more rainy school days. We discuss the implications of these results and draw attention to policy options to mitigate learning loss during rainy school days.
... The academic setbacks experienced by students from families with low socio-economic status, such as migrant families, students with disabilities, and those in rural areas, are particularly noteworthy. These groups traditionally achieve lower educational outcomes even in conventional settings, as compared to their counterparts from higher socio-economic backgrounds (Kuhfeld & Tarasawa, 2020;Marcotte & Hemelt, 2007). The magnitude of these academic losses varies by subject, with mathematics suffering the greatest impact, equating to approximately 1.5 months of the academic year (Kuhfeld & Tarasawa, 2020;Marcotte & Hemelt, 2007). ...
... These groups traditionally achieve lower educational outcomes even in conventional settings, as compared to their counterparts from higher socio-economic backgrounds (Kuhfeld & Tarasawa, 2020;Marcotte & Hemelt, 2007). The magnitude of these academic losses varies by subject, with mathematics suffering the greatest impact, equating to approximately 1.5 months of the academic year (Kuhfeld & Tarasawa, 2020;Marcotte & Hemelt, 2007). The pandemic's effect on learning is likened to the educational losses typically observed during summer breaks (Cooper et al., 1996;Kuhfeld, 2019), with primary school students being particularly vulnerable, potentially equating to a year's worth of missed education (Kuhfeld & Tarasawa, 2020;Zhdanov et al., 2022;Zvyagintsev et al., 2020). ...
This mixed methods study investigates the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on outcomes and perceptions related to the high-stakes unified state exam (USE) mathematics assessment in Russia. Quantitative descriptive analyses of USE scores from 2018-2021 revealed statistically significant distributional differences over time, with progressive increases in higher performance tiers. However, while a positive trend was discernible, strength of association tests indicated it was marginally moderate across years. Stratified pass rate analyses illuminated between-group variances, with specialized schools strongly rebounding after initial 2020 declines observed universally. To gain stakeholder insights, surveys were administered to students and teachers from urban versus rural regions. Attitudes regarding the mandatory USE removal diverged between groups; optimism permeated small rural schools despite hardships, while skepticism was pronounced among urban teachers citing accountability concerns. Stress perceptions revealed dissonances signaling wellbeing impacts. Overall, while achievement markers show positive trajectories, attitudinal variations based on school-types underline social dimensions shaping high-stakes test experiences. Results implicate targeted support policies and context-sensitive analytical approaches for optimal crisis mitigation. Granular investigations of less-understood equity gaps, expanding methodologies and detailed demographic profiling would enrich these findings. By quantifying exam trends alongside experiential nuances, the study develops a contextualized understanding of mathematical assessment transformations, informing localized continuity planning for uncertain futures.
... hr/wk for ≥8 wk. As such, children would miss significant instruction and opportunities to learn, which are the leading causes of poor educational outcomes(Marcotte & Hemelt, 2008). THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY MAY/JUNE 2025, VOLUME 79, NUMBER 3 1 Letter to the Editor Downloaded from http://research.aota.org/ajot/article-pdf/79/3/7903050010/92730/7903050010.pdf by Angela Benfield on 31 March 2025 ...
... (2021) find that children displaced by the 2005 Pakistan earthquake performed worse on tests years later: factors other than just schooling could be at work, but important relief programs were put in place to mitigate such factors. Marcotte and Hemelt (2008) find that students perform worse in standardized tests due to weather-related school closures. Deming and Dynarski (2008) find that students who enroll in school later for one reason or another spend fewer years in school than their peers of equal age. ...
Pandemic shocks disrupt human capital accumulation through schooling and work experience. This study quantifies the range of the long-term economic impact of these disruptions in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on countries at different levels of development and using returns to education and experience by college status that are globally estimated using 1084 household surveys across 145 countries. We find that: (1) Both lost schooling and experience can contribute to significant losses in global learning and output; and (2) Developed countries incur greater losses than developing countries, because they have more schooling to start with and higher returns to experience. In addition, the returns to education and experience are separately estimated for men and women, to explore the differential effects by gender of the COVID-19 pandemic. While we uncover gender differences in returns to education and experience, gender differences in the impact of COVID-19 through human capital accumulation are small. The methodology employed in this study is easily implementable for future pandemics.
... Second, my findings contribute to research on the consequences of situations that force students to temporarily interrupt schooling due to inclement weather conditions (e.g., Marcotte and Hemelt, 2008;Goodman, 2014), natural disasters (e.g., Sacerdote, 2012), teacher strikes (e.g., Belot and Webbink, 2010;Baker, 2013;Jaume and Willén, 2019), or extended summer breaks (e.g., Kuhfeld et al., 2020). Most papers find negative effects of such relatively short but mostly high-frequency interruptions on academic achievement. ...
... Studies of high-income countries have found that emergency school closures and other educational disruptions are associated with inr s f : t h e r u s s e l l s a g e f o u n d a t i o n j o u r n a l o f t h e s o c i a l s c i e n c e s F l o o d s a n d c h i l d r e n ' s e d u c a t i o n i n r u r a l i n d i a 2 3 3 creased dropout (Azevedo et al. 2021). Further, interrupted learning due to unscheduled school closures has been found to have negative impacts on test performance (Marcotte and Hemelt 2008). ...
... Consequently, students who receive fewer hours of instruction during the school year are disadvantaged in their learning, receive lower grades, perform worse in exams, and are more likely to drop out of school [9]. This argument aligns well with empirical evidence demonstrating a link between classroom instruction time and academic achievement [32,33]. In addition, students frequently absent from school may feel less connected to their classmates and struggle to participate in classroom activities and interactions with teachers and peers, which is detrimental to their academic development [34]. ...
Prior research has identified that school absences harm children’s academic achievement. However, this literature is focused on brief periods or single school years and does not consistently account for the dynamic nature of absences across multiple school years. This study examined dynamic trajectories of children’s authorised and unauthorised absences throughout their compulsory school career in England. It investigated the consequences of these absence trajectories for children’s achievement at the end of compulsory schooling. We analyse linked administrative data on children’s absences and achievement from the National Pupil Database and survey data from the Millennium Cohort Study for a representative sample of children born in 2000/2001 in England (N = 7218). We used k-means clustering for longitudinal data to identify joint authorised-unauthorised absence trajectories throughout compulsory schooling and a regression-with-residuals approach to examine the link between absence trajectories and achievement. We identified five distinct absence trajectories: (1) ‘Consistently Low Absences’, (2) ‘Consistently Moderate Authorised Absences’, (3) ‘Moderately Increasing Unauthorised Absences’, (4) ‘Strongly Increasing Unauthorised Absences’, and (5) ‘Strongly Increasing Authorised Absences’. We found substantial differences between trajectory groups in GCSE achievement, even when accounting for significant risk factors of school absences. Compared to ‘Consistently Low Absences’, ‘Strongly Increasing Unauthorised Absences’ reduced achievement by -1.23 to -1.48 standard deviations, while ‘Strongly Increasing Authorised Absences’ reduced achievement by -0.72 to -1.00 SD for our continuous outcomes. ‘Moderately Increasing Unauthorised Absences’ (-0.61 to -0.70 SD) and ‘Consistently Moderate Authorised Absences’ (-0.13 to -0.21 SD) also negatively affected achievement compared to ‘Consistently Low Absences’. Our research underscores the critical importance of examining entire trajectories of absenteeism and differentiating between types of absences to fully grasp their associations with academic outcomes and design targeted interventions accordingly.
... In the United States, Marcotte and Hemelt (2008) discovered that for each day schools were closed due to snow, the performance of students in Reading and Mathematics decreased by 0.5%; in a year with five consecutive days of snowfall, it lessened by approximately 3%. Similarly, Andrabi et al. (2020) state that the school closure of nearly 3.5 months in Pakistan after an earthquake caused a learning loss that is equivalent to 1.5 school grades. ...
A good tertiary education is linked to broad socio-economic advantages after students with disabilities enroll in higher education. Their overall academic performance, retention rates, and graduation rates are more similar than ever to those of their non-disabled classmates. A student can be considered as having special education needs if he or she is suffering from learning difficulties or a disability and cannot work equally as peers. The broad problem of the study was what are existing barriers that hinder educational inclusion for students with disabilities in higher education sector in Sri Lanka. Hence the key objective of the research was to identify the barriers that hinder educational inclusion for students with disabilities through the perceptions of undergraduates in relation to peers with disabilities. The study is a non-experimental, descriptive, and association design between variables using multivariate statistical techniques using 184 sample units from Humanities and Social Science Faculty, University of Ruhuna. It was found by exploratory factor analysis that the elements had the most impact on the situation were to accessibility and resources that universities must facilitate inclusion, academic staff’ willingness to meet the needs of students with disabilities, real implementation of the curricular adjustments and relationships and participation of students with disabilities and peers. The findings of the study suggest that universities should execute targeted programs to address the knowledge gap about the students with disabilities and the operation of care and support services for them.
Keywords: factor analysis, higher education; inclusive education; perceptions, students with disabilities
... 186 Closures due to climate-related winter storms, flooding, and other climate hazards affect students' learning and physical and mental health. 187,188 Moreover, school buildings and campuses often provide key community functions, including serving as emergency shelters and emergency response headquarters. In extreme weather events, schools can act as shelters for displaced or vulnerable residents. ...
New York State Climate Impact Assessment chapter 4 on Buildings. This comprehensive report encompasses the entire state of New York and current, and projected impacts of climate on the building stock of the state including recommendations for future climate, projections, and adaptation.
... 186 Closures due to climate-related winter storms, flooding, and other climate hazards affect students' learning and physical and mental health. 187,188 Moreover, school buildings and campuses often provide key community functions, including serving as emergency shelters and emergency response headquarters. In extreme weather events, schools can act as shelters for displaced or vulnerable residents. ...
Buildings support the social infrastructure in which New Yorkers live, learn, and work, and they host essential
services like health care and education. This chapter reviews the best available information sources to quantify
what is known about impacts of climate change on New York State’s buildings sector observed to date,
impacts projected in the decades ahead, and opportunities to adapt and build resilience. It cites and assesses
evidence from technical literature; analyzes data from state and federal agencies and other sources; and
integrates perspectives from practitioners who design, build, and operate buildings in New York.
The background material in this section characterizes the scope and context of the state’s buildings sector;
summarizes key climate hazards and non-climate stressors that interact with these hazards; introduces
considerations related to equity, climate justice, and Indigenous communities in New York State; and touches
upon some key opportunities for positive change. Subsequent sections assess the state of knowledge on
climate impacts and adaptation.
... Los centros educativos se cerraron durante meses para asegurar el distanciamiento social y evitar contagios. Goodman (2014) y Marcotte et al. (2008) han realizado investigaciones sobre el cierre de centros y el parón drástico de la educación presencial por diferentes causas climáticas: terremotos, ciclones, huracanes…; llegando a la conclusión que los alumnos con mayores dificultades (económicas, familiares, educativas…) tenían un retraso en la adquisición de contenidos y competencias. Los padres y madres con más formación y recursos tienen más capacidades de ayudar y apoyar a sus hijos que aquellos con menos estudios y recursos. ...
En el estudio se presenta un análisis y reflexión sobre algunas de las consecuencias del confinamiento obligatorio del alumnado de Educación Primaria y Educación Secundaria Obligatoria en Cataluña por la pandemia del Covid-19. Para la investigación se ha utilizado bibliografía relevante y datos cuantitativos del Consell Superior d'Avaluació del Sistema Educatiu de Catalunya; además, se muestra información del Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) de España sobre la salud mental de los menores españoles, incluyen al alumnado matriculado en centros catalanes.
El artículo muestra los resultados de los estudiantes catalanes en las diferentes competencias educativas, comparándose diversos cursos. A partir de los resultados de 2021 se analizan distintos datos: evolución de resultados respecto a cursos previos, consecuencias del confinamiento, restricciones en relación a la vida social y el comportamiento de su salud mental.
... For example, some parents have expressed concerns about arranging childcare during prolonged school closures, which could result in job losses. Academic performance (e.g., standardized test scores) in districts affected by prolonged school closures may be lower, potentially affecting future student placement [31]. For students enrolled in school meal programs, school closures may cause additional financial burden for their families as some affected students may miss meals that they would get at school, even as the vast majority of parents interviewed (> 96%) support the decision to close schools [11]. ...
Background
Nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) may be considered as part of national pandemic preparedness as a first line defense against influenza pandemics. Preemptive school closures (PSCs) are an NPI reserved for severe pandemics and are highly effective in slowing influenza spread but have unintended consequences.
Methods
We used results of simulated PSC impacts for a 1957-like pandemic (i.e., an influenza pandemic with a high case fatality rate) to estimate population health impacts and quantify PSC costs at the national level using three geographical scales, four closure durations, and three dismissal decision criteria (i.e., the number of cases detected to trigger closures). At the Chicago regional level, we also used results from simulated 1957-like, 1968-like, and 2009-like pandemics. Our net estimated economic impacts resulted from educational productivity costs plus loss of income associated with providing childcare during closures after netting out productivity gains from averted influenza illness based on the number of cases and deaths for each mitigation strategy.
Results
For the 1957-like, national-level model, estimated net PSC costs and averted cases ranged from 97 billion averting 47 million cases for 12-week, county-level closures. We found that 2-week school-by-school PSCs had the lowest cost per discounted life-year gained compared to county-wide or school district–wide closures for both the national and Chicago regional-level analyses of all pandemics. The feasibility of spatiotemporally precise triggering is questionable for most locales. Theoretically, this would be an attractive early option to allow more time to assess transmissibility and severity of a novel influenza virus. However, we also found that county-wide PSCs of longer durations (8 to 12 weeks) could avert the most cases (31–47 million) and deaths (105,000–156,000); however, the net cost would be considerably greater (103 billion net of averted illness costs) for the national-level, 1957-like analysis.
Conclusions
We found that the net costs per death averted (4.2 million) for the national-level, 1957-like scenarios were generally less than the range of values recommended for regulatory impact analyses ($4.6 to 15.0 million). This suggests that the economic benefits of national-level PSC strategies could exceed the costs of these interventions during future pandemics with highly transmissible strains with high case fatality rates. In contrast, the PSC outcomes for regional models of the 1968-like and 2009-like pandemics were less likely to be cost effective; more targeted and shorter duration closures would be recommended for these pandemics.
... Directly, the disruptive force of natural disasters exerts adverse effects on local communities, in uencing education and disrupting the continuity of the learning process in affected areas (Kousky, 2014). Examples of this include damage to physical capital, the loss of educational resources such as teachers and schools, a rise in disabilities, and the loss of human lives (Marcotte and Hemelt, 2008; de la Fuente and Fuentes-Nieva, 2010). Conversely, indirect effects may occur when negative income shocks lead individuals to leave schooling for economic activities to secure additional income (Gitter and Barham, 2007;Opper, Park, and Husted, 2023). ...
Natural disasters pose substantial risks to human capital and economic development, a threat further exacerbated by the escalating impacts of climate change. To deepen our understanding of how natural disasters can impact education, I conducted an analysis of the effect of the 2006 Yogyakarta Earthquake on total years of education and the likelihood of completing various educational levels. This was achieved through a difference-in-difference strategy, leveraging variations in earthquake damage across birth cohorts and geographic locations at the subdistrict level while accounting for individual migration history. Among boys, the results reveal a reduction of 1.2–2.6 years in education, translating to a 10–20% decrease in the sample average. The probability of an individual completing senior high school decreases by 6 to 10 percentage points, accounting for a 6.5–10% reduction in the sample average. No significant effect is observed among girls. Examination of employment and occupational changes before and after the earthquake suggests that boys may have left school for work and actively participated in reconstruction efforts following the earthquake due to higher-paid work opportunities. This dynamic potentially explains the observed reduction in their educational attainments. An analysis of economic activities in affected communities revealed a short-term growth spurt, as indicated by changes in nighttime light patterns before and after the earthquake at the community level. This growth, however, appeared to be temporary. While short-lived opportunities for employment in reconstruction efforts may generate immediate economic benefits, they also carry the potential risk of causing lasting human capital loss.
JEL: Q54, I25, J24, N35, H84
... For example, a study of the unforeseen closure of schools in Maryland due to snowstorms showed that each day of school closure led to a significant decline in children's math exam scores (Marcotte and Hemelt, 2008). Other types of more traumatic natural experiments include social catastrophes and terrorist attacks. ...
... Several past studies have attempted to use variation in school schedules to identify the effect of school calendars and closures on students' academic performance (Thompson and Ward, 2022, Miller and Hui, 2022, Marcotte and Hemelt, 2008, Hansen, 2013, Goodman, 2014, Anderson and Walker, 2015, Morton et al., 2024 youth criminal activity (Jones and Karger, 2022), suicide (Hansen and Lang, 2011), and parental time use (Cowan et al., 2024). This literature has generally used variation in the total number of closures across academic years (linking annual outcomes to annual school calendar data) or uses variation in timing around the start and end of summer breaks. ...
I use four years of school calendar and closure data from 62 large U.S. school districts across the most recent four pre-Covid academic years, matched to individual Current Population Survey panel data on labor supply, to estimate the impact of temporary school closures (vacations, staff development days, and emergency closures) on parents’ short-term hours worked and medium-term earnings. I find that elementary parents reduce hours worked in the week of a school closure by an additional 0.35 hours per closure relative to childless workers. I do not find differential effects for mothers vs. fathers. In the medium term, I find that ten additional school closures during the academic year reduce elementary parents’ average weekly earnings by ). The results demonstrate that disruptions to regular school operations have economically significant impacts on parental work.
JEL Codes: J13, J16, J22, J24
... They have occurred in many countries as a result of adverse weather events and teacher strikes, among others, and a substantial education and economics literature indicates that school closures generally lead to large attainment deficits. For instance, Marcotte and Hemelt (2008) found that 5 days of school closures caused by snow in the U.S. state of Maryland led to a 3% lower reading and math achievement than in years with no school closures. Likewise, teacher strikes in the Canadian province of Ontario led to a reduction of 29% of a standard deviation in Grades 3 to 6 mathematics test scores (Baker, 2013). ...
To curb the spread of the coronavirus, almost all countries implemented nationwide school closures. Suddenly, students experienced a serious disruption to their school and social lives. In this article, we argue that psychological research offers crucial insights for guiding policy about school closures during crises. To this end, we review the existing literature on the impact of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic on children's learning and mental health. We find that the unprecedented scale and length of school closures resulted in a substantial deficit in children's learning and a deterioration in children's mental health. We then provide policy recommendations on how to ensure children's learning and psychosocial development in the future. Specifically, we recommend that more attention should be paid to students from marginalized groups who are most in need of intervention, evidence-informed and personality-tailored mental-health and social- and emotional-learning programs should be implemented in schools, and generational labels should be avoided.
... Distance learning as well is, in the main, less effective. The report in question, describing the long-term effects, showed a decline in the quality of education by an average of 1.5 grades in a given subject (see also Andrabi et al., 2021;Marcotte & Hemelt, 2008) and a 0.19 standard deviation of math score (compared to the same exam administered during non-pandemic times, Maldonado & De Witte, 2021). Experiments in Brazil have shown outright that a group receiving online -as opposed to classroom -instruction covered as much as 75% less material (Lichand et al., 2021). ...
... Moreover, extreme weather was attributed to 79% of the total 21,000 unplanned school closures across the United States over that two-year period. There is very little research to demonstrate the impact on academic performance from unplanned school closures, yet research reports have shown that state-based assessment scores have been lower in areas where schools have been forced to close their campuses due to extreme snowfall, in comparison to other periods when the schools have not had to close (Marcotte & Hemelt, 2008). ...
The influences of extreme cold, rainfall, snowfall and wind on schools has received much less research than heat influences, yet there are findings starting to emerge on some of the impacts internationally. The impact of snow in some jurisdictions such as the USA, Canada and Finland can cause school closures and force students to miss regular days of school and set them behind in work requirements. For example, in the USA school closures are 20 times more likely to occur in Winter, compared to Summer due to snow fall. Natural wind and rain disasters (such as flooding) from hurricanes and other major storms can also cause a surge in school closures and reduced attendance for students across the world.
Research also shows that wet weather can cause issues in schools with reduced enjoyment, physical activity participation, indoor spaces to occupy students and wetter weather can be stressful for teachers to manage activity ‘backup-plans’. This chapter will outline the range cold, rainfall and windy weather extremes that can impact on schools internationally and will raise consideration of new strategies to ensure learning and physical activities from extreme weather interruptions can be prepared for, optimised and rebooted.
... One such body of research that is pertinent to this topic examines how colder weather affects the academic achievement of students in the United States. Several studies make use of variations in the amount of snowfall and temperature to determine the effect that the length of classroom instruction has on students' performance on standardized achievement assessments (Hansen and Salemi 2011;Marcotte and Hemelt 2008). Both unplanned school closures and teacher absences due to inclement weather have been shown to have a detrimental impact on the performance of students on standardized tests, particularly in the subject of mathematics. ...
This study’s primary objective is to investigate the impact of stressful living environments and extreme weather conditions on youth’s education. For the fulfillment of this objective, the unique and latest methodology, such as second-generation unit root, cross-sectional ARDL, and the Westerlund approach are used on panel data taken from India and Pakistan. The cross-sectional dependency test is also employed to determine the internal correlations between cross-sections. The results indicate that there are long- as well as short-run relationships between variables. This study helps to develop policies to manage natural disasters, as well as provide the theoretical background to reduce the stressful living environment.
... This could be a bigger problem in rural areas or towns where a relatively large number of low-income students live [45]. In addition, school closures may negatively affect academic performance, particularly if they are prolonged due to pandemics such as the COVID-19 pandemic [47,48], which might exacerbate ruralurban disparities in student achievement [49]. Therefore, additional efforts may be needed to reduce rural-urban disparities in ILI-related school closures and their associated cost burden by understanding factors contributing to the potential disparities in influenza incidence and childhood vaccination coverage in rural areas, as well as by developing strategies to reduce the financial burden of school closures. ...
Introduction
Schools close in reaction to seasonal influenza outbreaks and, on occasion, pandemic influenza. The unintended costs of reactive school closures associated with influenza or influenza-like illness (ILI) has not been studied previously. We estimated the costs of ILI-related reactive school closures in the United States over eight academic years.
Methods
We used prospectively collected data on ILI-related reactive school closures from August 1, 2011 to June 30, 2019 to estimate the costs of the closures, which included productivity costs for parents, teachers, and non-teaching school staff. Productivity cost estimates were evaluated by multiplying the number of days for each closure by the state- and year-specific average hourly or daily wage rates for parents, teachers, and school staff. We subdivided total cost and cost per student estimates by school year, state, and urbanicity of school location.
Results
The estimated productivity cost of the closures was 33) and Kentucky (2.4 in the third highest state) or the national average (2.9) or towns (0.6) or suburbs ($0.5). Locations with higher costs tended to have both more closures and closures with longer durations.
Conclusions
In recent years, we found significant heterogeneity in year-to-year costs of ILI-associated reactive school closures. These costs have been greatest in Tennessee and Kentucky and been elevated in rural or town areas relative to cities or suburbs. Our findings might provide evidence to support efforts to reduce the burden of seasonal influenza in these disproportionately impacted states or communities.
... Generalized school closures and interruptions due to the pandemic have been shown to have had a negative impact on the global stock of schooling and learning measures since the beginning of the health crisis (García, 2020;Azevedo et al., 2021;Halloran et al, 2021). Disruptions to schooling are expected to affect student attendance, performance, and overall educational attainment in both the short and long runs (Marcotte and Hemelt, 2008;Alexander et al., 2016;Meyers and Thomasson, 2017). However, while losses are expected generally, there remains much to learn about the differential effects of the pandemic on educational outcomes. ...
This paper studies the effects of differential exposure to COVID-19 on educational outcomes in Guatemala. The government adopted a warning index (ranging from 0 to 10) to classify municipalities by infection rates in 2020, which was then used by the Ministry of Education in 2021 to establish a "stoplight" system for in-person instruction. Using administrative panel data for all students in Guatemala, the study employs a difference-indifferences strategy that leverages municipal differences over time in the warning index to estimate the effects of the pandemic on dropout, promotion, and school switching. The results show that municipalities with a higher warning index had significantly larger dropout, lower promotion rates, and a greater share of students switching from private to public schools. These effects were more pronounced during the first year of the pandemic. The findings show differential effects by the level of instruction, with greater losses for younger children in initial and primary education. The results are robust to specification choice, multiple hypothesis adjustments, and placebo experiments, suggesting that the pandemic has had heterogeneous consequences.
... Moreover, extreme weather was attributed to 79% of the total 21,000 unplanned school closures across the United States over that two-year period. There is very little research to demonstrate the impact on academic performance from unplanned school closures, yet research reports have shown that state-based assessment scores have been lower in areas where schools have been forced to close their campuses due to extreme snowfall, in comparison to other periods when the schools have not had to close (Marcotte & Hemelt, 2008). ...
This book introduces an emerging area of research exploring the influence of extreme weather events on school systems.
Chapters explore a range of extreme weather events such as snowstorms, bushfires, extreme winds, heavy rainfall and prolonged heat waves, and their potentially widespread impacts. It also covers key challenges faced by schools, including how to protect students, levels of teacher preparation to counter extreme weather conditions and how students learning is impacted by extreme weather patterns.
Drawing on a broad range of research in this field, this book will appeal to environmental and educational researchers, as well as those currently studying or practising in education.
How will climate change impact education since near-universal primary education has been achieved in many developing countries? We begin to answer this by studying a recent severe drought in Southern Africa. Using data from a large cluster-randomized control trial involving girls and satellite data measuring drought intensity, we find that drought exposure increased attendance, especially for the poorest girls. Girls experiencing food insecurity see declines in learning assessment scores while others see no gains in assessment scores, on average, compared to the counterfactual. The analysis highlights the importance of considering both attendance and performance in analyses. It also suggests the potential importance of ensuring schools have the resources to deal with higher attendance and providing food assistance to students during droughts.
Resumen: El estudio aborda el impacto del confinamiento por COVID-19 en adolescentes de educación media superior en zonas rurales de México, centrándose en la violencia familiar, salud mental y acceso a tecnología. La muestra consistió en 650 estudiantes de dos centros de bachillerato, con edades entre 15 y 17 años, quienes completaron cuestionarios sobre victimización, bienestar emocional y psicológico, y síntomas de depresión, ansiedad y estrés. Los resultados revelan que el 9.1% de los encuestados sufrió burlas durante el confinamiento, y un porcentaje significativo experimentó acoso verbal y psicológico, como ser llamado por nombres ofensivos (9.4%) o sentirse excluidos (7.8%). Además, el 29.5% de los estudiantes reportaron sentir que no tenían nada que esperar en la vida, y el 49.1% manifestó sentirse deprimido. La falta de acceso al internet en el 21.4% de los estudiantes y la carencia de dispositivos en el 78.6% que tenía acceso a internet, afecto el desarrollo de habilidades sociales y la percepción de soledad. Esta condición hacia más probable
One of the main issues teachers deal with at school is absenteeism. One of the study's challenges is figuring out the underlying factors of students' absences. Identifying the techniques and interventions that can be used in the classroom to reduce the number of students that missed classes. The study recommended using the Connect and Conquer Activity intervention in response to the common reasons that were shown to be impacting students' absence. The study set out to look into the underlying factors causing absences, including family problem, financial, bullying, weather, frequent use of online games, peer influence, health and boredom. A checklist was utilized to obtain the necessary data for this investigation. Twenty (20) students in Grade 10 participated. There are eight (8) components on the instrument that influence a student. Based on the study, researchers determined that factors of students' absenteeism were health, peer pressure, financial difficulties, bullying, bad weather, frequent use of online games, and family issues. Furthermore, three common reasons among the eight identified ones-frequent use of online games, bullying, and boredom-were also shown by the students' responses. ABSENTEEISM UNVEILED: UNDERSTANDING FACTORS LEADING TO STUDENT ABSENTEEISM-ADDRESSING THROUGH CONNECT AND CONQUER ACTIVITY 3 CLASSROOM-BASED ACTION RESEARCH (CBAR)
How did the unscheduled school closures caused by COVID-19 affect children’s academic performance? The loss of skills that would have been acquired by schooling due to unscheduled school closures is called “learning loss.” In this paper, the effect of unscheduled school closures on academic achievement was analyzed using data from Japan’s “National Assessment of Academic Ability” collected in 2021.
Previous studies in Japan have pointed out the relationship among school socio-economic status（SES）, length of unscheduled school closure, and academic achievement, in which schools with a lower school SES tend to have lower aca- demic achievement. However, the findings are limited to school-based analyses.
The findings obtained by analyzing three-level hierarchical data on students, schools, and prefectures are as follows. First, the effect of temporary school vacations on academic achievement was observed for 6th grade students, but not for 9th grade students. Second, an analysis of the cross-level interaction effect be- tween the duration of unscheduled school closures（school-level factor）and student SES（student-level factor）for 6th grade students and generally observed an interaction effect between high and low SES for children with temporary absences of 60 days or more.
The fact that learning loss was more pronounced for students in lower grades and with a lower SES was consistent with previous overseas studies.
This study aims to measure the learning losses of Bangladeshi
students in Grades 5–10 who faced prolonged school closures
amid the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Learning losses
regarding students’ background characteristics were also
compared. Three national assessment data sets were utilised. The
sample sizes were 1,613 in 2002, 1,634 in 2016, and 4,600 in
2021. An exponential growth model was applied with the first
two datasets to project students’ learning achievement in 2021.
The projected achievement was compared to the achievement of
2021 observed in another assessment before reopening the
schools. Multivariate regression analysis was carried out to
explore the changes in learning achievement, controlling the
effects of their background characteristics. The losses accounted
for 13.9%, equivalent to the achievement that took nearly 14
years to gain. The losses were more among rural than urban
students and boys than girls. Although learning achievement was
positively correlated with student Grades of study and parental
education, the losses had a reverse relationship with both.
Students’ writing skills deteriorated more than reading, numeracy,
or application. This study presents an alternative methodology for
calculating learning losses in emergencies. Finally, some recovery
strategies were suggested considering the overall state of the
school education system.
New York State has nearly 5.3 million buildings, and all of them are vulnerable in some way to the impacts of climate change. Understanding these impacts is critical, because risks to buildings not only threaten individual lives but also pose threats to community‐level resilience. This chapter examines the impacts of climate change on buildings and, by extension, the people and communities they shelter and support. It also highlights building types and populations that are at particular risk and presents adaptation strategies to protect the state's existing and future building stock from climate impacts.
In 2010, the government of Ghana shortened the duration of senior high school by one year. As a result of this policy, the 2009 and 2010 high-school entry cohorts experienced exogenously different years of education but took the same exit exam in 2013. Using nationwide administrative data on the two cohorts, we find that the one-year reduction in schooling substantially worsened performance in all subjects. The most economically significant declines occurred in two core subjects with the lowest historical pass rates—core mathematics and integrated science. Analysis by gender shows larger detrimental effects for female students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics subjects. We also find suggestive evidence that the policy negatively impacted students in the long term.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, children worldwide experienced school closures. Several studies have detected a negative impact on reading-related skills in children who experienced these closures during the early stages of reading instruction, but the impact on the reading network in the brain has not been investigated. In the current longitudinal study in a sample of 162 Dutch-speaking children, we found a short-term effect in the growth of phonological awareness in children with COVID-19 school closures compared to children without school closures, but no long-term effects one year later. Similarly, we did not find a long-term effect on the longitudinal development of white matter connectivity in tracts implicated during early reading development. Together, these findings indicate that one year after school closures no effects on the development of phonological awareness and white matter are found, yet it t remains an open question whether short-term effects on the reading network could have been present and/or whether other networks (e.g. psychosocial related networks) are potentially more affected.
Snowfall in the Ohio River Valley, USA, presents a relatively unique challenge due to the large gradient of event frequency and magnitude, and subsequent levels of preparation within local communities. Even relatively small magnitude events can cause widespread impacts due to available infrastructure. Here we present a climatology of snowfall conditions and events over a 74-year period using a network of daily observational stations across the region. Snowfall totals and event frequencies both exhibit a southwest to northeast gradient of increasing snowfall, where the majority of snowfall (> 80%) occurs during the core winter months of December through February. There is a clear influence of Lake Erie on snowfall conditions in the northeast corner of the domain, where snowfall frequency, totals, and trends are substantially higher within the lake belt relative to areas further inland. Over time, snowfall significantly increased downwind of Lake Erie by as much as 42%, while significant decreases of over 55% occurred in central Tennessee and eastern Ohio. Intra-seasonally, snowfall totals trended significantly less during November and March for much of the domain, suggesting a compression of the snowfall season to more core winter months. Trends in snowfall frequency were apparent for many sub-regions, however evidence here suggests the trends in snowfall totals were primarily driven by trends in snowfall magnitude per event.
We examine the fundamental and complex role that time plays in the learning process. We begin by developing a conceptual framework to elucidate the multiple obstacles schools face in converting total time in school into active learning time. We then synthesize the causal research and document a clear positive effect of additional time on student achievement typically of small to medium magnitude depending on dosage, use, and context. Further descriptive analyses reveal how large differences in the length of the school day and year across public schools are an underappreciated dimension of educational inequality in the United States. Finally, our case study of time loss in one urban district demonstrates the potential to substantially increase instructional time within existing constraints.
This study explored the reading performance scores of elementary school students in a single Florida school district before and after school closures in spring 2020 due to COVID-19. The nonexperimental study of archival data was designed to explore three subgroups of third-grade students’ i-Ready reading diagnostic scale scores from five different assessment periods: before school closures in January 2020 and four subsequent assessment periods after face-to-face instruction resumed in fall 2020. The three subgroups included: the initial cohort (N = 2,006), which did not include students in Exceptional Student Education (N = 580), and students who were designated as English Language Learners (N = 169). The subgroups did not include students who had been retained at any point in the past. Descriptive statistics were computed for each of the subgroups and reported. The mean scale scores of each
subgroup were compared to the 2018-2019 i-Ready national norms for each of the five assessment periods. The results of the comparisons revealed that each subgroup’s mean reading scale scores were significantly different from the national norm groups’ mean reading scale scores. The mean reading scores of each subgroup were significantly lower (p < 0.01) than the mean
scores of the 2018-2019 national norm groups. Although the students in each of the three subgroups demonstrated small increments of reading progress over time, the rate of progress was not commensurate with the 2018-2019 national norm group’s rate of progress. This study adds to the body of literature on the influence of COVID-19, school closures, and remote instruction among elementary learners.
This instrumental case study is focused on understanding more about literacy instruction in K‐3 classrooms during the pandemic‐impacted 2020–2021 school year. The study aims to examine (a) how teachers described their literacy instruction before and during the COVID‐19 pandemic; (b) the types of literacy instructional practices teachers implemented across in‐person, virtual, and hybrid modalities; and (c) how teachers' implementation of these practices aligns with research on early grades literacy instruction. Data included classroom video of 25 teachers' literacy instruction, 162 classroom artifacts (e.g., student work samples), and statewide survey responses from 7110 teachers in spring 2020 and 5811 teachers in spring 2021. Teachers reported spending an average of 1 h less per week on literacy instruction in 2020–2021 as compared to a typical pre‐pandemic school year. Despite these reported declines in instructional time, teachers in all modalities were observed implementing literacy instructional practices at comparable rates as they reported prior to the pandemic. However, teachers' implementations of these practices varied widely, with some teachers providing research‐aligned literacy instruction while others did not. This range in quality was evident across modalities, including within the group of teachers providing in‐person instruction. Results from this study challenge existing theories about instructional time and modality that have been posed to explain the pandemic's negative impacts on elementary students' literacy outcomes.
Studies consistently show the detrimental effect of school absences on pupils’ achievement. However, due to an accumulation of multiple risks, school absenteeism may be more harmful to achievement among pupils from lower socioeconomic status (SES). Using a sample of upper-secondary students from the Scottish Longitudinal Study (n = 3,135), we investigated whether the association between absences (overall, sickness, and truancy) and achievement in high-stakes exams varied by family SES dimensions (parental education, class, free school meal registration, and housing). The findings for overall absences and truancy show no statistically significant differences across SES groups. However, sickness absences were more harmful to the achievement of lower SES students than higher SES students. Differences between the most and least disadvantaged groups were found on all SES dimensions except for parental education.
This paper investigates the effect on academic performance of an exogenous educational reform that reduced the school calendar of non‐fee‐paying schools in the Madrid region (Spain) by approximately two weeks, leaving the basic curriculum unchanged. To identify the consequences of such a measure, we exploit the fact that it did not affect private schools (control group) and the existence of an external cognitive test that measures academic performance before and after its application in the region. We find that the reform worsened students' educational outcomes by around 0.13 of a standard deviation. This effect was especially strong in the subjects of Spanish and Mathematics. We further explored quantile effects across the distribution of exam scores, finding that the disruption had a more negative effect on students in the upper quartile than those in the lower quartile. Overall, the analysis shows a reduction in the gap across non‐fee‐paying schools and an increase in the gap between non‐fee‐ and fee‐paying schools.
This paper proposes a framework for analyzing the short and long-run effects of temporary educational disruptions on children’s learning progression. The framework explicitly models continuous parental investments, filling a gap in the literature on explicit models of learning progression and acquisition. The model also considers economic resources as part of the resources employed by parents to mitigate the effects of a temporary shock in instruction, expanding previous work by Neidhöffer, Lustig, and Tommasi (2021). With this model, I estimate the potential effects of the instructional disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico. The estimates suggest that the potential persistent loss in learning with respect to the counterfactual represents 47% of the learning acquired during a usual school year.
We are closing this book by presenting a wider perspective, which is crucial in fighting pandemics. For us psychologists, professionals interested in protecting well-being, as well as for our colleagues, medical professionals oriented toward safeguarding one’s life, it is unbelievably hard to see that some people are proposing not managing COVID-19 and future pandemics. Simply and terribly put, these people are proposing letting vulnerable people die without putting much effort into prevention (like vaccines and massive vaccination) and developing effective cures.
In this chapter we will present less obvious impacts on us and future generations. From this perspective we try to show that the social psychology perspective of biased perception of the social world may prevent these terrible longitudinal consequences from appearing.
En este artículo, presentamos los resultados de una investigación alrededor del cambio en el desempeño de los estudiantes de la Universidad EAFIT durante los dos semestres de 2020, comparado con cohortes estadísticamente similares, en 2019. Utilizando el método de Diferencias en Diferencias, encontramos que el desempeño durante la educación virtual de emergencia fue alrededor de 0,2 décimas mejor al presentado en períodos anteriores, medidas con base en la nota obtenida. Estos resultados son consistentes aun si distinguimos por ubicación geográfica, grupo económico y disciplina a la cual pertenece el estudiante. Discutimos estos resultados con entrevistas semiestructuradas realizadas a docentes, y análisis de encuestas de percepción dirigidas por la institución, para intentar entender el mecanismo que generó este cambio. Los resultados sugieren que este cambio se sustenta en capacidades de los estudiantes, medidas exitosas de la institución y aumento de metodologías colaborativas de evaluación.
During the 1918–19 influenza pandemic, many local authorities made the controversial decision to close schools. We use newly digitized data from newspaper archives on the length of school closures for 165 large U.S. cities during the 1918–19 flu pandemic to assess the long-run consequences of closing schools on children. We find that the closures had no detectable impact on children's school attendance in 1920, nor on their educational attainment and adult labor market outcomes in 1940. We highlight important differences between the 1918–19 and Covid-19 pandemics and caution against extrapolating from our null effects to modern-day settings.
This paper estimates the effects of school quality--measured by the pupil/teacher ratio, average term length, and relative teacher pay--on the rate of return to education for men born between 1920 and 1949. Using earnings data from the 1980 census, the authors find that men who were educated in states with higher-quality schools have a higher return to additional years of schooling. Rates of return are also higher for individuals from states with better-educated teachers and with a higher fraction of female teachers. Holding constant school quality measures, however, the authors find no evidence that parental income or education affects average state-level rates of return. Copyright 1992 by University of Chicago Press.
This paper reviews and interprets the literature on the effect of school resources on students' eventual earnings and educational attainment. In addition, new evidence is presented on the impact of the great disparity in school resources between black and white students in North and South Carolina that existed in the first half of the 20th century, and the subsequent narrowing of these resource disparities. Following birth cohorts over time, gaps in earnings and educational attainment for blacks and whites in the Carolinas tend to mirror the gaps in school resources.
Historically, most attention in public programs has been given to the resources devoted to the activity, and resources have been used to index both commitment and quality. Education differs from other areas of public expenditure because direct measures of outcomes are available, making it is possible to consider results and, by implication, to consider the efficiency of provision. Early interpretations of the evidence, emanating from popular interpretations of the Coleman Report that “schools do not make a difference”, are incorrect, but the basic evidence behind the statement suggests serious performance problems of government supply, because purchased inputs to schools are not closely related to outcomes. This paper reviews that evidence along with providing an evaluation of the various controversial aspects including issues of causality, consumer behavior, and estimation approaches. Two detailed policy areas are discussed in terms of the evidence on performance: public versus private provision and the financing of schools.
In the economics of education, no task has been more important or more difficult than identifying the relationship between school inputs and student performance. The literature on this topic has reached little resolution, largely owing to the endogeneity of school resources. In this paper I examine the effect of a vital but little studied component of the education production function: instructional time. To identify the impact of schooling on test scores I make use of the fact that variation in winter weather made non-trivial differences in the number of school days students received prior to taking the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) exams. I find evidence that students who took exams in years with heavy snowfall performed significantly worse than their peers in the same school who took MSPAP exams in other years. I also find that performance in a subject with relatively inflexible curricula (mathematics) and students in earlier grades were most affected by snow. Both of these findings are consistent with the interpretation that education inputs in the form of instructional days improve students’ test scores.
Around 1980, the trend toward racial wage convergence essentially stopped. The author asks whether this break in the convergence trend can be explained by school quality. Department of Education surveys provide earnings data for the high school class of 1972 in 1979 and the class of 1980 in 1986, both linked to data from the respondents' high schools. By several measures, differences between schools attended by blacks and whites were already rather small in the 1970s. Furthermore, the author finds that measurable school inputs generally have little effect on wages. Thus school quality explains little of the recent black/white wage trend. Copyright 1996 by University of Chicago Press.
Utilizing parametric and nonparametric techniques, we asses the impact of a heretofore relatively unexplored ‘input’ in the educational process, time allocation, on the distribution of academic achievement. Our results indicate that school year length and the number and average duration of classes affect student achievement. However, the effects are not homogeneous – in terms of both direction and magnitude – across the distribution. We find that test scores in the upper tail of the distribution benefit from a shorter school year, while a longer school year increases test scores in the lower tail. Furthermore, test scores in the lower quantiles increase when students have at least eight classes lasting 46–50 min on average, while test scores in the upper quantiles increase when students have seven classes lasting 45 min or less or 51 min or more.
This paper investigates how changing the length of the school year, leaving the basic curriculum unchanged, affects learning and subsequent earnings. I use variation introduced by the West-German short school years in 1966-67, which exposed some students to a total of about two thirds of a year less of schooling while enrolled. I show that the short school years led indeed to shorter schooling for affected students. Using comparisons across cohorts, states, and secondary school tracks, I find that the short school years increased grade repetition in primary school, but had no adverse effect on the number of students attending the highest secondary school track or earnings later in life.
This paper investigates the impact of international migration on technical efficiency, resource allocation and income from agricultural production of family farming in Albania. The results suggest that migration is used by rural households as a pathway out of agriculture: migration is negatively associated with both labour and non-labour input allocation in agriculture, while no significant differences can be detected in terms of farm technical efficiency or agricultural income. Whether the rapid demographic changes in rural areas triggered by massive migration, possibly combined with propitious land and rural development policies, will ultimately produce the conditions for a more viable, high-return agriculture attracting larger investments remains to be seen.
Using the result that under the null hypothesis of no misspecification an asymptotically efficient estimator must have zero asymptotic covariance with its difference from a consistent but asymptotically inefficient estimator, specification tests are devised for a number of model specifications in econometrics. Local power is calculated for small departures from the null hypothesis. An instrumental variable test as well as tests for a time series cross section model and the simultaneous equation model are presented. An empirical model provides evidence that unobserved individual factors are present which are not orthogonal to the included right-hand-side variable in a common econometric specification of an individual wage equation.
Department of Education The Condition of Education
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (2005). The Condition of
Education 2005. NCES 2005-094. (Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office).
Closing Days -5.473 (1.234)*** -3.605 (1.388)** >12 Unsch. Closing Days -5.766 (1.533)*** -4.410 (0.731)*** Unscheduled Closings (Days) at Schools with: -15% or less FARM students 0.131 (0.121) -0.289 (0.16)* -15% to 35% FARM students
- Unsch
Unsch. Closing Days
1.031 (0.872)
-1.492 (0.957)
11-12 Unsch. Closing Days
-5.473 (1.234)***
-3.605 (1.388)**
>12 Unsch. Closing Days
-5.766 (1.533)***
-4.410 (0.731)***
Unscheduled Closings (Days) at Schools with:
-15% or less FARM students
0.131 (0.121)
-0.289 (0.16)*
-15% to 35% FARM students
-0.073 (0.093)
-0.213 (0.075)***
-35% to 67% FARM students
-0.590 (0.097)***
-0.373 (0.067)***
-67% or more FARM students
-0.503 (0.081)***
-0.069 (0.201)
Teacher absences: Importance, incidence, and consequences. Working Paper
- Charles Clotfelter
- Helen Ladd
- Jacob Vigdor
Clotfelter, Charles, Helen Ladd, and Jacob Vigdor. 2006. " Teacher absences: Importance,
incidence, and consequences. Working Paper. Duke University.
The Impact of Teacher Absences on Student Achievement
- Raegen Miller
- T Richard
- J Murnane
- John T Willett
Miller, Raegen, T., Richard J. Murnane, and John T. Willett. 2006. " The Impact of Teacher
Absences on Student Achievement, " Working Paper. Harvard University, Graduate
School of Education.