By Laurel White
Remote learning during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic was more likely to negatively affect the high school graduation rates of students from lower-income households than their higher-income peers, according to a new UW–Madison study.
The study, published in Educational Researcher, found a longer time in virtual or hybrid learning environments during the 2020–21 school year decreased overall high school completion rates and increased the gap in completion rates between economically disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students.
Ran Liu, an assistant professor in the UW–Madison School of Education’s Department of Educational Policy Studies, authored the report. She says the study illustrates the need to provide robust support to disadvantaged students during public health crises.
“The findings provide further evidence of the unequal impact of the pandemic and virtual learning modes, calling for timely initiatives to support disadvantaged students during public crises that lead to disruptions to in-person learning,” Liu wrote.
The study found schools with a longer period of in-person learning disruption in fact experienced increases in the completion rates of economically non-disadvantaged students while seeing decreases in the completion rates of disadvantaged students. A full school year from September 2020 to May 2021 in virtual or hybrid learning mode increased the within-school socioeconomic gap in high school completion rates by approximately 4.68 percentage points, Liu found.
“The seemingly positive impact on non-disadvantaged students may reflect advantages in family resources and effects of loosened grading policies and graduation requirements, which schools with longer periods of disruptions may have been more likely to adopt,” she wrote.
The study used data on remote learning collected and presented by the COVID-19 School Data Hub, an online resource for researchers led by a professor at Brown University, and data on high school completion rates provided by the Wisconsin Information System for Education (WISE), a government database. The study compared completion rates across three years before and during the pandemic from 429 Wisconsin high schools.
The full report is available here.