Survey: Even as schools reopen, many students learn remotely

Large numbers of students are not returning to the classroom even as more schools reopen for full-time, in-person learning, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Biden administration.

The findings reflect a nation that has been locked in debate over the safety of reopening schools during the coronavirus pandemic. Even as national COVID-19 rates continued to ebb in February, key measures around reopening schools barely budged.

Nearly 46 percent of public schools offered five days a week of in-person to all students in February, according to the survey, but just 34 percent of students were learning full-time in the classroom. The gap was most pronounced among older K-12 students, with just 29 percent of eighth-graders getting five days a week of learning at school.

There were early signs of a shift, however, with more eighth-grade students moving from fully remote to hybrid learning.

With the new findings, President Joe Biden came no closer to meeting his goal of having most elementary schools open five days a week in his first 100 days. Just shy of half the nation's schools offered full-time learning in February, roughly the same share as the previous month.

Despite the slow progress, federal education officials see it as a step forward. “There was a decrease in enrollment in remote-only learning and an increase in hybrid instruction at grade eight, providing evidence that more students are walking through school doors again,” Mark Schneider, director of the Education Department's Institute of Education Sciences, said in a statement.

The findings are based on a survey of 3,500 public schools that serve fourth-graders and 3,500 schools that serve eighth graders. It's based on data from schools in 37 states that agreed to participate. This is the second round of data released from a new survey started by the Biden administration to evaluate progress in reopening schools.

The data capture a month that saw building momentum in the push to reopen schools. In February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared that schools could safely reopen with masks, social distancing and other precautions. Days later, Biden reframed his goal around reopening schools after critics said his previous pledge lacked ambition.

As in January, the new results showed dramatic disparities based on region and race. In the South, slightly more than half of all fourth-graders were learning entirely at school in February, an uptick from the month before. In the same period, by contrast, the Northeast saw a decrease in the rate of students learning in the classroom five days a week, from 23 percent to 19 percent.

Overall, more than a third of students in the South and Midwest were learning entirely at school, compared with less than a quarter in the West and Northeast, according to the survey.

White students continued to be far more likely to be back in the classroom, with 52 percent of white fourth-graders receiving full-time, in-person instruction. By contrast, less than a third of Black and Hispanic fourth-graders were back at school full time, along with just 15 percent of Asian students.

The survey does not ask whether students are learning remotely by choice or because their schools do not offer an in-person option. But the wide gulf between school offerings and student learning data suggests that at least some students are opting to stay remote even after their schools reopen classrooms.

It matches previous findings from some of the nation's largest school districts, where Black students have returned at far lower rates than their white classmates — a disparity that's believed to come down at least partly to trust. Advocates say more must be done to convince parents that their children will be safe in school, especially Black families who have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus.

Although wide racial disparities persisted in the new round of data, the Education Department saw a glimmer of hope in a slight increase among Black students learning fully in-person. From January to February, the rate ticked up from 28 percent to 30 percent.

“Although white students continue to enroll in full-time in-person instruction at higher rates, we are beginning to see shifts toward full-time in-person learning for other groups,” said Peggy Carr, an associate commissioner at the agency's National Center for Education Statistics.

Parents across the US have been conflicted about a return to the classroom, expressing concerns about the virus but also about learning setbacks as their children learn remotely, according to a poll from The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Worries about learning setbacks were slightly more prevalent than fears of spreading the virus at school, the poll found.

The department also reported progress in bringing more students with disabilities back to school. Among Black and white students with disabilities in the fourth grade, fewer were learning remotely in February than in January, according to the survey.

The survey for the first time collected data on how many teachers have received COVID-19 vaccines, but the findings revealed little. More than half of schools said they did not know how many teachers got at least one shot. Of those with data, just 6 percent said that between 81 percent and 100 percent of their teachers had received a vaccination.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)