Survey: Even as schools reopen, many students learn remotely
Large numbers of students are not returning to the classroom even as more schools reopen for full-time, in-person learning, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Biden administration.
The findings reflect the nation that has been locked in debate over the safety of reopening schools during the coronavirus pandemic. Even as national COVID-19 rates continued to ebb in February, key measures around reopening schools barely budged.
Nearly 46% of public schools offered five days a week of in-person learning to all students in February, according to the survey, but just 34% of students were learning full time in the classroom. The gap was most pronounced among older K-12 students, with 29% of eighth graders getting five-days-a-week of learning at school.
With the new findings, President Joe Biden came no closer to meeting his goal of having most elementary schools open five days a week in his first 100 days. School offerings were nearly identical to what was reported a month before. But among eighth-grade students, there was a slight shift from fully remote to hybrid learning.
‘Encouraging’
Speaking at a coronavirus briefing on Wednesday,
White House COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt described the findings as a step forward.
“This is encouraging early data covering the month of February that shows progress toward the president’s goal to have K-8 schools open five days a week,” Slavitt said.
The findings are based on a survey of 3,500 public schools that serve fourthgraders and 3,500 schools that serve eighth-graders. It is based on data from schools in 37 states that agreed to participate. This is the second round of data released from the survey started by the Biden administration to evaluate progress in reopening schools.
The data capture the month that saw building momentum in the push to reopen schools. In February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared that schools could safely reopen with masks, social distancing and other precautions. Days later, Biden reframed his goal around reopening schools after critics said his previous pledge lacked ambition.
Since then, schools have continued to reopen, as more teachers get vaccines and as some states loosen social-distancing requirements. More recent estimates from the data service Burbio found that, as of Sunday, more than 55% of K-12 students were back in the classroom full time.
As in January, the new federal data showed dramatic disparities based on region and race. In the South, slightly more than half of all fourth-graders were learning entirely at school in February, an uptick from the month before. In the same period, by contrast, the Northeast saw a decrease in the rate of students learning in the classroom five days a week, from 23% to 19%.
Overall, more than a third of students in the
South and Midwest were learning entirely at school, compared with less than a quarter in the West and Northeast, according to the survey.
More whites in class
White students continued to be far more likely to be back in the classroom, with 52% of white fourthgraders receiving full-time, in-person instruction. By contrast, less than a third of Black and Latino fourthgraders were back at school full time, along with just 15% of Asian students.
The results do not indicate whether students are learning remotely by choice or because their schools do not offer an in-person option. The mismatch between what schools are offering and what students are getting is at least partly explained by big urban districts that have been slow to offer in-person options. But it is clear that at least some students are opting to stay remote even after their schools reopen classrooms.
In New Mexico, where all school districts were expected to be open for inperson learning this week, some students stayed back. Among them was 14-yearold Jonathan Chilton, a