+ Angela Hawken, Sarah Henao Gallego, Camilo Londoño López, Jonathan Kulick, Sara Arango-Franco

October 2020

The first confirmed case of COVID-19 announced in the United States was in Washington State on January 21. By February 27, the first school closure was announced in that state, followed shortly by the first school closure in New York State on March 3. By March 9, Illinois had declared a state of emergency. A rapid succession of statewide school closures ensued.

The school closures affected nearly 56 million K–12 students in the United States, with teachers facing the daunting challenge of transitioning their students to distance learning, with very little notice.

The COVID-19 school closures raise many questions, including: How did teachers respond to the transition to distance learning? And are preexisting education gaps magnified?

In a series of reports, we will provide early insights into how teachers adapted their practices as they transitioned to distance learning and the uneven impact of COVID-19 on students, by studying utilization data from ReadWorks, one of the largest online providers of education resources.

Why Our Focus on ReadWorks?

NYU is a research partner of ReadWorks, a nonprofit that provides all instructional resources and materials at no cost. ReadWorks is a widely used online reading and comprehension resource for teachers and students across the United States, with over 1.2 million active educators and over 17 million students. 88 percent of K–8 public and charter schools across the United States had educators using ReadWorks in 2019–2020.

Anonymized data from ReadWorks’ vast database is an especially useful resource for studying reading and comprehension patterns, given its deep penetration nationwide (includes over 256 million student assignments created since January 2018). As 91 percent of the highest-poverty (defined as having more than 75 percent of their students qualify for the National School Lunch Program) K–8 schools have educators using ReadWorks, we have rich data to explore the impact of school closures on children who are, statistically, at the highest risk of poor educational outcomes.

Digital Gains during COVID-19 from Surge in Utilization

In the 2020 American Instructional Resources Survey, 78 percent of the K–12 teachers and principals surveyed report that their schools made digital devices available for students who did not have one, 45 percent that their schools provided hot spots for internet access, and 73 percent that their schools provided information on how to access free or discounted internet (Doan et al., 2020). As the pandemic forced school closures and a transition to distance learning, the use of online instructional resources increased dramatically. Free resources such as ReadWorks and Khan Academy were an especially important lifeline for many teachers and students, as they could be adopted without cost considerations; there was a surge in new signups and utilization.

Pre-COVID, 35 percent of educators actively using ReadWorks were “digital” users (assigning materials to their students digitally, rather than in print or projecting); this rose to 62 percent post-COVID. Figure 1 shows the large uptick in new educator signups coinciding with school closures. We found a 261 percent increase in new educator signups and a 157 percent increase in new assignments, compared with the same period in 2019.

Figure 1: New Educator Signups with ReadWorks

(Click image to enlarge)

Education Losses from School Closures Due to COVID-19

Figure 2 is a state-level map that illustrates the extent of education losses by profiling changes in students opening assignments made by their teachers. To assess COVID-related changes in usage, we studied teachers and students who were active digital users prior to school shutdowns. Nationally, we find a 19 percentage-point reduction in the number of students who opened an assignment made by their teacher, after COVID-related school closures. The second map tab (Figure 3) quantifies education losses in high-poverty schools, which are greater than in other schools. These data reflect the extent of these education losses but do not indicate the causes. Multiple factors are likely at play, including access to internet-enabled devices and adult supervision. Data from the most recent American Instructional Resources Survey, collected in May and June 2020, reveal the extent to which teachers report barriers to using digital technology: “30 percent of teachers in high-poverty schools reported that all or nearly all of their students had access to the internet at home, compared with 83 percent of teachers in low-poverty schools” (Stelitano et al., 2020). And a recent report from the Brookings Institution notes that low-income workers are six times less likely to be able to work from home, which has implications for income vulnerability as well as adult supervision of student learners (Kinder & Ross, 2020). While our findings from ReadWorks data point to digital gains from increased utilization, they also point to a disturbing growth in education gaps for students in poverty.

 

Figure 2: All Schools Figure 3: High-Poverty Schools

There was an uneven impact of school closures across states. The states with the most substantial losses, with at least a 30 percentage-point reduction in the number of students who opened an assignment made by their teacher, were Hawaii, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Virginia. Mississippi had the largest loss, with a 36 percentage-point reduction. The states with the smallest losses, with at most a 10 percentage-point reduction, were Florida, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wyoming.

Losses fell disproportionately on students in high-poverty schools. If we consider high-poverty schools (using as a proxy for poverty, schools where at least 75 percent of students qualify for the National School Lunch Program), a picture of widespread losses emerges. Fifteen states had at least a 30 percentage-point reduction in students in high-poverty schools opening their assignments: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia. High-poverty schools in Hawaii had the largest reductions: pre-COVID, more than two-thirds of students opened an assignment made by their teacher, which fell to about 1 in 8 students, post-COVID. High-poverty schools in Florida, New York, and Wyoming had the smallest reductions (less than 10 percentage-points).

State-level data obscure the uneven impact of COVID on student learners within states. Our subsequent reports identify learning losses at the school-district level, providing insights into (1) the uneven impact of COVID-19 on student learners and the locations of “education deserts,” defined as localities with large reductions in students opening assignments made by their teacher, (2) changes in how students are performing on formative assessments, and (3) the innovative strategies that educators and ed-tech providers like ReadWorks are using to mitigate these losses among students in high-poverty schools.

These results can be used by education leaders and philanthropists to identify neighborhoods to prioritize for the distribution of digital resources and to support an equitable allocation of remedial-instruction resources to support communities most impacted by education losses.