Child care, safety spur schooling decisions
Study reveals reasons behind parents’ choice of remote or in-person
A survey of more than 150 parents whose children attend school in Hartford found that child care needs and concerns about the effectiveness of schools’ COVID-19 safety measures strongly impacted whether or not families sent their children back to school buildings for in-person learning in fall 2020.
“There’s a great debate right now about how much students have learned, and what’s safe and what’s not,” said Robert Cotto Jr., a Trinity College lecturer who co-authored the research study with Sarah Woulfin, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “I think we need to do a better job of listening to families and saying: ‘What do you need right now to feel safe and for your child to learn?’ ”
The purpose of the peer-reviewed study — entitled “Choice With(out) Equity? Family Decisions of Child Return to Urban Schools in Pandemic” and published in the Journal of Family Diversity in Education in early September — was not to prove whether parents wanted in-person or remote education, but to explore why families chose either option for the fall of the 2020-2021 school year, he said.
Parents acknowledged neither option was perfect. “Equity in this case ... [means]: Are the school districts providing the supports parents are saying they need when they make a particular choice?” Cotto said. For example, were students whose families selected in-person education going to be provided with appropriate health and safety measures such as wearing masks, appropriately small class sizes and air purification systems? Did remote families have access to computers, internet and reliable child care?
In an online survey, the parents told the researchers that schools were able to provide their families with certain key elements, but neither learning option fully addressed all of their needs.
“For many families, a full set of equity considerations — deeper learning, child care, safety from
COVID-19 — were not all available in either schooling choice,” said the study. “Families understood and made choices based on the most important characteristic of partial equity available to them.”
Most parents surveyed chose remote learning for fall 2020:
The researchers conducted an online survey, available in English and Spanish, during August 2020 for families whose children attend school in Hartford. Two-thirds of the respondents lived in the city itself, while one-third lived in Hartford County, due to the high number of magnet schools that draw from surrounding towns.
About 57% of the 155 survey respondents said they would not send their children back to school buildings, while 43% said they would — closely mirroring data shared from the Hartford Public Schools district in early August 2020.
About 45% of respondents were white, 36%, were Hispanic or Latino, 11% were Black or African
American and 8% were multiracial. Nearly 70% of families identified as having to work full time, and almost 72% had elementary school-aged children. About 45% of all families had children with a “service need,” meaning the child might receive specialneeds services or may be learning English.
A need for consistent child care:
Many families who chose in-person learning pointed to a need for child care during parents’ working hours, while families who selected remote learning shared concerns about health and safety measures in schools not being sufficient, in their view, to prevent coronavirus infections — even if they did not particularly like online learning.
The researchers found a numerical correlation between parents being full-time, nonremote workers and choosing in-person school. The connection was reinforced by working parents’ emphasis on child care needs in their personal statements.
“Parents were very clear. They said: ‘I need to go back to my job.’ ... Many parents had taken a lot of their vacation time [during] the
previous spring,” said Cotto. “That was particularly true for many fulltime, in-person workers.”
Some families also said children needed in-class support from professional educators, noted the study, and some said students would benefit from relationships with other children and adults in school.
Health and safety concerns:
Families who decided to continue with remote learning spoke less about basing their decision on work situations and more about safety concerns based on direct knowledge of their school’s reopening plans and infrastructure, said Cotto.
“They knew exactly what their buildings looked like, the staffing situation, the classroom situation, and they said: ‘I do not believe that is safe,’ ” he said. “Even with the masks ... there were other features
of the building — like windows, ventilation — that they did not believe were safe for their children at that time.
“It’s true that many of these parents did have some flexibility. They said, ‘I work from home’ or ‘I’m a part-time worker.’ ... However, there were also full-time working parents who said: ‘No ... I’d prefer to stay [in] remote [learning].’ ”
Black or African American parents who completed the survey selected remote learning more often than other parents, the researchers wrote, noting: “These responses were clear that safety from COVID-19 drove their decisions to keep children home with some form of remote school even if that was not the preferred mode.”
Some families of color also said aspects of remote learning suited their children better than in-person learning, a point Cotto said
needs further study.
“I’m not advocating for more remote learning, [but] what I’m instead saying is: We need to understand more about what parents and students need in schools, and how we can better support them,” he said.
A few families who decided to continue with online-only learning also expressed a desire to help the school community keep classroom sizes smaller and give other children a chance to stay safer in an in-person environment.
“It was something I didn’t expect,” said Cotto. “You think people are going to do just what their kids need . ... It was really remarkable to see those sorts of comments . ... It was parents working to help each other in many ways.”