A lot has been written about how coronavirus school closures have likely led to widening achievement gaps between low- and high-income students. One source of concern is obvious. Low-income students often didn’t have internet access or computers to do their school work during the pandemic.  

But preliminary results from a new survey suggest another possible inequity: school districts dominated by low-income students decided to teach their students differently than school districts with very few low-income students.  

American Institutes of Research (AIR), a nonprofit research organization, presented these early results from its “National Survey of Public Education’s Response to COVID-19”  at a virtual session of the Education Writers Association’s national seminar on July 22, 2020. Almost 500 school districts across the nation responded to the survey.

• Hours spent on instructional activities diverged wildly during spring school closures. Some kindergarteners got more than three hours of remote school a day, others received only one hour. 

• Low-income schools spent considerably more time reviewing old content. Wealthier schools were more likely to teach new material. 

• Learning materials -- paper versus screens -- were another chasm. Nearly half of low-income districts distributed paper packets of worksheets to families while more than three-fourths of wealthier school districts distributed everything digitally.  

• Low-poverty districts offered far more live virtual classes, live one-on-one sessions with teachers and pre-recorded classes for students to watch at their convenience. High-poverty districts were far less likely to offer any of these three things.

• Low-income school districts tended to teach less grade level content during the spring school closures. 

1. Mike Garet, Jordan Rickles, Jill Bowdon and Jessica Heppen, “First Look Brief: National Survey on Public Education’s Coronavirus Pandemic Response,” July 2020, American Institutes for Research.  
2. Emma Dorn, Bryan Hancock, Jimmy Sarakatsannis, and Ellen Viruleg, “COVID-19 and student learning in the United States: The hurt could last a lifetime,” McKinsey & Company, June 1, 2020.