The science is clear: Reopen schools
Well-meaning people can have legitimate differences of opinion about the best public policy responses to the ongoing COVID-19 threat. The degree to which to limit indoor festivities, for instance, is an open question, with compelling scientific and economic arguments on each side of the debate.
In contrast, science is increasingly settled that in-person schooling must safely resume. Classroom closures, which are ongoing in school districts across the country, pose an enormous risk to children, with little to no reward. There is little room for debate on this issue.
Consider a new study by Eric Hanushek, a leading education economist at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, published this month. He concludes classroom closures have reduced affected students’ lifetime incomes by about 3 percent so far, with disproportionate adverse outcomes for minorities.
These economic consequences will only grow the longer classrooms remain closed. Economists generally agree each additional year of schooling raises lifetime earnings by roughly 7.5 to 10 percent. Many students across the country have had almost no productive learning over the last six months.
A Mckinsey report published in June estimates that low-income, Black and Hispanic students would lose 12.4, 10.3 and 9.2 months of learning, respectively, if classrooms don’t reopen until January. Virtual schooling is no substitute. After schools closed earlier this year, math scores among students in poor ZIP codes fell by half, while those in middle-income neighborhoods fell by onethird.
Keeping kids out of classrooms hurts them not only academically but also socially and physiologically. Roughly half of American students receive free or reduced-price lunches from their schools. For many of these students, school is the only place to get a nutritious meal and structured physical activity. Anxiety and depression also have increased among housebound students.
Classroom closures also hurt parents. The Council of Economic Advisers estimates 5.6 million parents nationwide can’t return to work until schools reopen.
In contrast to the significant educational, economic and psychological harm caused by closed classrooms, the latest COVID-19 evidence suggests it’s safe for classroom learning to resume. Major scientific bodies, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association of Pediatrics, or AAP, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention support reopening. Even Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top doctor who is notoriously careful with his words, says classroom learning should resume.
Children’s risk of dying from COVID-19 is infinitesimal. Only around 50 kids between the ages 1 and 14 have died nationwide — fewer than the common flu over the same time frame.
Child hospitalizations are also far lower. As the AAP notes, “The preponderance of evidence indicates that children and adolescents are less likely to be symptomatic and less likely to have severe disease resulting from SARS-COV-2 infection.”
Children also seem to transmit the disease less frequently — perhaps because they produce less of an enzyme that the virus uses as an entry point into the body. There isn’t any correlation between students returning to classrooms and increased infections — either in the parts of the country where classroom learning has resumed or in Europe when schools reopened in the spring.
Despite this evidence, classrooms throughout the country remain closed. The public health director in Los Angeles, home of the nation’s secondlargest school district, says classrooms will remain closed “until after the election.”
Why is reopening tied to the political calendar? Statements like those — coupled with seemingly willful denial of the evidence — suggest that opposition to resuming classroom learning is a political, not scientific, position. Politicizing science is bad at the best of times, but it’s abhorrent when our kids are used as the pawns.