Where the Nation’s Largest School Districts Stand on Reopening

Fifty of the nation’s 120 largest school districts remain fully closed as of mid-October 2020, according to the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity’s latest review. This is an improvement from August, when 71 of these districts were closed. Altogether, currently closed school districts serve 5.2 million children, including an estimated 1.15 million children living in poverty.

Many of the closed school districts have no current timeline for reopening in-person learning. Several of these large school districts — such as Albuquerue, N.M., Howard County, Md., Long Beach Unified, Calif., and Cumberland County, N.C. — have announced that schools will be closed through December. At least eight of these school districts have no announced or proposed timeline for returning to in-person learning. Table 1 provides an overview of the current operating status and school enrollment of the top 120 school districts.

Methodology and findings

The U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics published enrollment and socioeconomic data for the nation’s 120 largest school districts. Our methodology involved reviewing the school district’s website and also analyzing local news coverage of the school districts’ current operating status. I categorized schools’ operating status as remote, majority remote, or in-person. To qualify as remote or majority remote, the school district’s operating status would require virtual learning for the vast majority of students.

Some school districts that are closed to the majority of students are providing services to a smaller group of children, such as students with special needs or students focusing on career and technical education. These school districts are labeled as majority remote.

To be labeled in-person, a school district would be providing in-person learning to at least a large cohort of students. Many of the school districts that have restarted in-person instruction have used a phased-in approach, including by beginning with elementary school students and adding older cohorts of children over time. In addition, school districts that have reopened are providing virtual learning options for children who cannot attend in-person.

Based on our review (conducted from October 10 through 14), 50 out of 120 of the nation’s largest school districts remain closed to in-person learning. As a result, an estimated 5.26 million students in these school districts will begin the school year at home. Based on federal estimates of the percentage of students living in poverty in those districts as of 2016, more than 1.1 million low-income children are currently assigned to remote learning.

This is a conservative estimate of the number of children who do not have the option of in-person schooling as of mid-October in these large school districts. Many of the school districts that have restated in-person learning have not yet provided that option to all students, particularly for those in high-school.

School closures are exacerbating education inequality

Prolonged school closures are causing significant educational setbacks for affected children, particularly for children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Stanford University researchers recently estimated the learning losses of students affected by spring school closures. “Across the 19 states,” the researchers found, “the average estimates of how much students lost in the Spring of 2020 ranged from 57 to 183 days of learning in Reading and from 136 to 232 days of learning in Math.” Brown University researchers estimated that spring closures would cause students to lose a third of a year’s learning in reading and half a year’s learning in math by fall. They warned that these losses would not be universal and, therefore, would grow the achievement gap between high- and low-performing students. McKinsey modeled the effects of school closures on specific student populations and warned that low-income students will fall one year behind if schools remain closed through December.

Conclusion

Students who remain out of school as of mid-October have likely not attended school in-person for seven months. National and state policymakers should recognize the significant learning losses that these children are experiencing and develop short- and long-term strategies to prevent COVID-19 related school closures from permanently damaging the lives of a generation of American children.