Journal of School Choice Runs Special Section on COVID-19 and School Reopening

Robert Maranto

The Journal of School Choice has published a special issue online about schools reopening in the U.S. and around the world amid COVID-19.

The journal is edited by Robert Maranto in the College of Education and Health Professions' Department of Education Reform with help from doctoral candidate Martha Bradley-Dorsey.

In the introduction to the section, professor Maranto, assisted by Rodrigo Queiroz e Melo at Portuguese Catholic University and Charles Glenn at Boston University, summarize the global response to COVID-19 and schooling. Compared to prior pandemics, COVID disproportionately affects the elderly, with roughly two-thirds of fatalities aged 70 or older and just 1.5% under 35. Recognizing this, after initial shutdowns in March, particularly for younger grades, most European school systems quickly reopened physical schools with certain precautions. The authors argue that the European approaches balanced tradeoffs between physical health, mental health, and academic learning.

In the lead article for the special section, "Reopening America's Schools: A Descriptive Look at How States and Large School Districts are Navigating Fall 2020," David T. Marshall of Auburn University and Bradley-Dorsey share findings from a survey they conducted about school reopening policies in the 120 largest U.S. school districts and in all 50 states.

The study found that school reopening policies are fluid, but school districts with higher percentages of minorities and low-income families have been less likely to reopen physical schools. Officials in some states, including Arkansas, Massachusetts, Florida, and Illinois, encouraged local school districts to keep physical schools open, citing the need to close achievement gaps, which widen when instruction is wholly online. Generally, partisan politics did not affect school reopening, with one possible exception:  states won by Donald Trump in 2016 were more likely to have continued fall football season as scheduled.

In "We're All Teachers Now: Perspectives and future plans of parents teaching at home during COVID," Dick M. Carpenter and Joshua M. Dunn at the University of Colorado summarize their August national survey of 1,700 parents. More than 80% of parents reported their schools provided some type of remote learning after physical closing because of the pandemic. Parents generally rated the programs as effective and the resources as helpful. Private schools were rated the most responsive, engaged, and innovative, followed by charters and then traditional public schools. In August, relatively few parents planned to home school for the fall, but more than a third planned to send their child to a virtual school, primarily due to health concerns.

"This suggests if there was going to be a significant shift in the education sector for the 2020-21 school year, it would have been to virtual schools rather than homeschooling," said Carpenter, the study's lead author, "and the shift will likely be temporary, assuming COVID-19 is mitigated." 

Finally, U of A alumna Angela R. Watson, now at Johns Hopkins University, wrote an essay summarizing research on parent-created schools, often called "pod schools." These small schools, often located in physical schools, workplaces, or houses of worship, offer in-person instruction and socialization but among very small numbers of students and typically staff, limiting the threat of contagion. This innovation has grown rapidly during the COVID pandemic.

"This is a very difficult time for schools everywhere, but the good news is that some potentially useful innovations are coming out of it," Maranto said. "These are the kinds of things the Department of Education Reform exists to study."