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Summary and key findings from “Considerations for Reopening Pennsylvania Schools”

In May 2020, the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) approached the Mid-Atlantic Regional Educational Laboratory (REL), led by Mathematica, for analytic support of its effort to produce guidance for the re-opening of school buildings in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The REL partnered with PDE on a three-part project, which included examining emerging evidence on COVID-19’s public-health and educational implications for schools; interviewing a wide range of Pennsylvania stakeholders to assess concerns and challenges related to reopening school buildings; and creating an agent-based computational model to assess likely disease spread among students and school staff under various approaches to reopening school buildings. The findings are summarized in this memo.

The results of this evidence scan should be considered preliminary because of the rapidly emerging and changing evidence available on the public health and educational questions relevant to this review. The findings point toward potentially promising practices that stakeholders can continue to assess as future, more rigorous research becomes available. Key findings are below.

Health risks and COVID-19 transmission

Although the evidence is not conclusive, multiple studies suggest that children, particularly children under age 10, may be less likely to be infected with the virus - which would also make them less likely to spread the disease either symptomatically or asymptomatically.^1,2,3 When children do contract the virus, they often have mild symptoms that are similar to other viral respiratory infections.⁴ Although evidence suggests that the risks to children from COVID-19 are low, recent concern has arisen about the risks from a Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) that is associated with COVID-19. This can be a serious condition, but cases are rare and there are very few deaths in reported patients.⁵

However, staff members and family members of students are likely at greater risk from COVID-19 than children. There is no evidence to suggest that children cannot transmit the disease and the percentage of infected adults who become symptomatic rises with age, as do hospitalizations and fatalities.^1,6 While reopening schools may not pose significantly high risk for children, reopening may have riskier consequences for the adults with whom the children interact and the community at large.

Contribution of school closures and reopening to COVID-19 spread

The extent to which school closures have helped to reduce infection spread during the COVID-19 pandemic is not clear and has been subject to considerable debate. Several studies document cases where COVID-19 spread significantly in schools, but the number of school-based spreads represent a small proportion of super spreader events (events that result in multiple infections from a single person).^{7, 8} However, other studies suggest the school closures have been effective measures to prevent COVID-19 spread and related deaths.^9,10

Although the role of schools in COVID-19 transmission is ambiguous, when developing plans for school reopening in the absence of a vaccine, there are various strategies schools should employ to mitigate COVID-19 spread. Schools should consider practices such as physical distancing¹¹, masking^11,12, ventilation¹³, and meeting outdoors¹⁴ to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission, along with other CDC recommendations.¹⁵

Learning loss and remote learning

The closure of schools in spring 2020 is likely to lead to substantial learning loss and may exacerbate existing inequities. Research suggest that students will experience greater learning loss than the typical “summer slide” and that minority students may have greater learning losses than their white classmates.¹⁶ Studies also show that this past spring school districts with higher percentages of poverty offered less rigorous remote learning programs and there are concerns about equitable access to devices and reliable broadband to support remote learning for all students.^17,18 Although schools had to offer remote-only learning in spring 2020 due to shutdown orders, available research shows that online classes are typically not as effective as in-person classes for most students.^19,20 Previous research on remote learning also has not been designed to provide evidence on best practices that could be implemented to help schools and teachers provide effective remote instruction in the current environment.²¹

Despite the absence of rigorous evidence on best practices in blended and remote learning, research suggests the likely importance of maintaining engagement when students are learning at home and some practices that show promise. If they are learning entirely at home, students are likely to benefit from some synchronous interaction with teachers, which can take place through electronic devices or by phone.²¹ Effective blended learning programs, such as the hybrid approaches that many districts are considering for fall 2020, also typically include individualized content for students and seamless integration of online and classroom work.²² Educators also may want to consider using frequent formative assessments and focusing on active learning that includes robust discussion, collaborative work, video and audio clips and hands-on exercises when possible.²³

Evidence review conclusions

References