Schools, skills, and learning: The impact of COVID-19 on education

Schools, skills, and learning: The impact of COVID-19 on education

The global lockdown of education institutions is going to cause major (and likely unequal) interruption in students’ learning; disruptions in internal assessments; and the cancellation of public assessments for qualifications or their replacement by an inferior alternative. This column discusses what can be done to mitigate these negative impacts.

The COVID-19 pandemic is first and foremost a health crisis. Many countries have (rightly) decided to close schools, colleges and universities. The crisis crystallises the dilemma policymakers are facing between closing schools (reducing contact and saving lives) and keeping them open (allowing workers to work and maintaining the economy). The severe short-term disruption is felt by many families around the world: home schooling is not only a massive shock to parents’ productivity, but also to children’s social life and learning. Teaching is moving online, on an untested and unprecedented scale. Student assessments are also moving online, with a lot of trial and error and uncertainty for everyone. Many assessments have simply been cancelled. Importantly, these interruptions will not just be a short-term issue, but can also have long-term consequences for the affected cohorts and are likely to increase inequality.  

Impacts on education: Schools 

Going to school is the best public policy tool available to raise skills. While school time can be fun and can raise social skills and social awareness, from an economic point of view the primary point of being in school is that it increases a child’s ability. Even a relatively short time in school does this; even a relatively short period of missed school will have consequences for skill growth. But can we estimate how much the COVID-19 interruption will affect learning? Not very precisely, as we are in a new world; but we can use other studies to get an order of magnitude.

Two pieces of evidence are useful. Carlsson et al. (2015) consider a situation in which young men in Sweden have differing number of days to prepare for important tests. These differences are conditionally random allowing the authors to estimate a causal effect of schooling on skills. The authors show that even just ten days of extra schooling significantly raises scores on tests of the use of knowledge (‘crystallized intelligence’) by 1% of a standard deviation. As an extremely rough measure of the impact of the current school closures, if we were to simply extrapolate those numbers, twelve weeks less schooling (i.e. 60 school days) implies a loss of 6% of a standard deviation, which is non-trivial. They do not find a significant impact on problem-solving skills (an example of ‘fluid intelligence’). 

A different way into this question comes from Lavy (2015), who estimates the impact on learning of differences in instructional time across countries. Perhaps surprisingly, there are very substantial differences between countries in hours of teaching. For example, Lavy shows that total weekly hours of instruction in mathematics, language and science is 55% higher in Denmark than in Austria. These differences matter, causing significant differences in test score outcomes: one more hour per week over the school year in the main subjects increases test scores by around 6% of a standard deviation. In our case, the loss of perhaps 3-4 hours per week teaching in maths for 12 weeks may be similar in magnitude to the loss of an hour per week for 30 weeks. So, rather bizarrely and surely coincidentally, we end up with an estimated loss of around 6% of a standard deviation again. Leaving the close similarity aside, these studies possibly suggest a likely effect no greater than 10% of a standard deviation but definitely above zero. 

Impacts on education: Families 

Perhaps to the disappointment of some, children have not generally been sent home to play. The idea is that they continue their education at home, in the hope of not missing out too much. 

Families are central to education and are widely agreed to provide major inputs into a child’s learning, as described by Bjorklund and Salvanes (2011). The current global-scale expansion in home schooling might at first thought be seen quite positively, as likely to be effective. But typically, this role is seen as a complement to the input from school. Parents supplement a child’s maths learning by practising counting or highlighting simple maths problems in everyday life; or they illuminate history lessons with trips to important monuments or museums. Being the prime driver of learning, even in conjunction with online materials, is a different question; and while many parents round the world do successfully school their children at home, this seems unlikely to generalise over the whole population. 

So while global home schooling will surely produce some inspirational moments, some angry moments, some fun moments and some frustrated moments, it seems very unlikely that it will on average replace the learning lost from school. But the bigger point is this: there will likely be substantial disparities between families in the extent to which they can help their children learn. Key differences include (Oreopoulos et al. 2006) the amount of time available to devote to teaching, the non-cognitive skills of the parents, resources (for example, not everyone will have the kit to access the best online material), and also the amount of knowledge – it’s hard to help your child learn something that you may not understand yourself. Consequently, this episode will lead to an increase in the inequality of human capital growth for the affected cohorts.

Assessments 

The closure of schools, colleges and universities not only interrupts the teaching for students around the world; the closure also coincides with a key assessment period and many exams have been postponed or cancelled.  

Internal assessments are perhaps thought to be less important and many have been simply cancelled. But their point is to give information about the child’s progress for families and teachers. The loss of this information delays the recognition of both high potential and learning difficulties and can have harmful long-term consequences for the child. Andersen and Nielsen (2019) look at the consequence of a major IT crash in the testing system in Denmark. As a result of this, some children could not take the test. The authors find that participating in the test increased the score in a reading test two years later by 9% of a standard deviation , with similar effects in mathematics. These effects are largest for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. 

Importantly, the lockdown of institutions not only affects internal assessments. In the UK, for example, all exams for the main public qualifications – GCSEs and A levels – have been cancelled for the entire cohort. Depending on the duration of the lockdown, we will likely observe similar actions around the world. One potential alternative for the cancelled assessments is to use ‘predicted grades’, but Murphy and Wyness (2020) show that these are often inaccurate, and that among high achieving students, the predicted grades for those from disadvantaged backgrounds are lower than those from more advantaged backgrounds. Another solution is to replace blind exams with teacher assessments. Evidence from various settings show systematic deviations between unblind and blind examinations, where the direction of the bias typically depends on whether the child belongs to a group that usually performs well (Burgess and Greaves 2013, Rangvid 2015). For example, if girls usually perform better in a subject, an unblind evaluation of a boy’s performance is likely to be downward biased. Because such assessments are used as a key qualification to enter higher education, the move to unblind subjective assessments can have potential long-term consequences for the equality of opportunity. 

It is also possible that some students’ careers might benefit from the interruptions. For example, in Norway it has been decided that all 10th grade students will be awarded a high-school degree. And Maurin and McNally (2008) show that the 1968 abandoning of the normal examination procedures in France (following the student riots) led to positive long-term labour market consequences for the affected cohort. 

In higher education many universities and colleges are replacing traditional exams with online assessment tools. This is a new area for both teachers and students, and assessments will likely have larger measurement error than usual. Research shows that employers use educational credentials such as degree classifications and grade point averages to sort applicants (Piopiunik et al. 2020). The increase in the noise of the applicants’ signals will therefore potentially reduce the matching efficiency for new graduates on the labour market, who might experience slower earnings growth and higher job separation rates. This is costly both to the individual and also to society as a whole (Fredriksson et al. 2018).

Graduates

The careers of this year’s university graduates may be severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. They have experienced major teaching interruptions in the final part of their studies, they are experiencing major interruptions in their assessments, and finally they are likely to graduate at the beginning of a major global recession. Evidence suggests that poor market conditions at labour market entry cause workers to accept lower paid jobs, and that this has permanent effects for the careers of some. Oreopoulos et al. (2012) show that graduates from programmes with high predicted earnings can compensate for their poor starting point through both within- and across-firm earnings gains, but graduates from other programmes have been found to experience permanent earnings losses from graduating in a recession. 

Solutions?

The global lockdown of education institutions is going to cause major (and likely unequal) interruption in students’ learning; disruptions in internal assessments; and the cancellation of public assessments for qualifications or their replacement by an inferior alternative. 

What can be done to mitigate these negative impacts? Schools need resources to rebuild the loss in learning, once they open again. How these resources are used, and how to target the children who were especially hard hit, is an open question. Given the evidence of the importance of assessments for learning, schools should also consider postponing rather than skipping internal assessments. For new graduates, policies should support their entry to the labour market to avoid longer unemployment periods.

The next education secretary must know about much more than education

The next education secretary must know about much more than education

In the days after President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, you didn’t have to be inside the beltway to hear whispers of names being floated for cabinet positions—rumors that were later confirmed as fact: Janet Yellen, former chair of the Federal Reserve Board (Department of the Treasury); Vivek Murthy, former surgeon general under President Barak Obama (named to serve in the same role); Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Politics (Office of Management and Budget); and Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who served as the top diplomat in Africa during the Obama administration (ambassador to the United Nations).

But alas, we’re still waiting on the name of Biden’s education secretary, the person who will help lead our schools out of one of the biggest crises in the history of American education.

Because of President Donald Trump’s clownish denial of the election results, Biden got a later start than his predecessors at naming his nominees for the top spots in his nascent administration, and there are many more departmental roles Biden must begin to fill. However, if there is anything that the entire country can agree on, it is that our schools are in the middle of an epic disaster. Uneven access to broadband, resource disparities between upper- and lower-income districts, and differences in family resources across racial lines foreshadow widening achievement gaps. Also, parents are tired of playing the roles of substitute teacher, cafeteria worker, and security guard (all at the same time). They desperately need to hear when and how all students might return to schools safely.

We need leadership on this issue—yesterday.

Perhaps Biden is struggling to find a person who can fill a role that will require a lot more than just expertise in education. The country needs an education secretary who understands the systemic nature of our current problems across multiple sectors. The coronavirus pandemic forces us to see that education isn’t the “great civil rights issue of our time”—as several past presidents would have it—any more than health, climate, the economy, or housing. Over the last six months, we’ve seen the ripple effects of our schools’ collapse: from workers who are unable to go work and families forced into food insecurity, to increasing demands on health and human services, and a drastic impact on state budgets.

Biden’s education secretary needs to step outside the schoolhouse and make deliberate political connections with other Cabinet chiefs to improve overall conditions in neighborhoods, cities, and states for families more broadly. We need an effective politician who can engage in multiple conversations to develop policy with leadership in the departments of Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Transportation, Commerce and Agriculture (not to mention with Republicans in Congress and at the state level).

I know that Joe Biden committed himself to appointing a former teacher to the education role, but a prime candidate will know just as much about the economics of the districts in which classrooms are situated as what occurs in the classrooms themselves. The secretary of education, like every other Cabinet member, must deal with a national racial wealth divide that in 2016 saw white families with median family wealth of $171,000, while Black and Hispanic families had median wealth of $17,600 and $20,700, respectively, according to the Federal Reserve’s calculations.

Wealth is a function of individuals’ total assets minus their debts, and the line between the student debt crisis and the wealth gap is clear. A 2016 Brookings Institution study found that, upon graduation, Black college graduates owe, on average, $7,400 more in student loans than their white peers ($23,400 versus $16,000). Importantly, that difference increases with time. An examination of the finances of Black and white college graduates four years after graduation showed that the loan gap more than tripled during that period, to $52,700 versus $28,000—a difference of nearly $25,000.

One of the reasons for the wealth gap is that we haven’t had leaders with the skill and desire to make the connection between education, wealth, health, transportation, and other critical areas. That’s why Biden must seriously consider a person with significant experience in higher education financing, someone who can tackle the student debt crisis and the wealth gap it has exacerbated.

At the same time, Biden must also walk a fine line and make sure the new secretary isn’t too friendly with corporate players. Let’s not make the same mistake of selecting a well-heeled education secretary who embraces greed. The next secretary must not ignore the disproportionate harm the current system causes those who have historically been denied wealth, as current Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has done. (Most recently, at an online conference hosted by her department, she called the idea of free college “a socialist takeover of higher education.”)

Teaching experience is certainly an important qualification for running the department that oversees the nation’s schools, but America needs a systems leader who can see that kids don’t live in schools; they live in communities. Biden can’t give education short shrift. We should hear the name of his nominee this week. I hope that nominee will be someone who promises to step out of the schoolhouse and work across sectors to make our communities function better for kids.

In meeting with private school delegation, govt agrees to give relief package

In meeting with private school delegation, govt agrees to give relief package

Private schools with a low fee structure would be granted interest-free loans, say sources.

Students wear protective masks maintaining safe distance as they attend a class. 

The federal government on Friday approved a relief package for the pandemic-hit private educational institutions, Geo News reported citing sources, as it decided to allow students to visit schools once a week.

The development came after a delegation of the association of private educational institutions met Secretary Education Farah Hamid, sources from the education ministry said.

The private schools with a low fee structure would be granted interest-free loans, sources said, adding that the registration of private schools has been extended for a year.

The federal board has also decided to extend the deadline for sending admission forms, sources said.

Meanwhile, the delegation urged the secretary of education to reopen the schools at any cost on January 11 — the official date announced by the government.

On November 23, Federal Minister for Education Shafqat Mahmood had announced that all schools across the country would remain closed until January 10, 2021, in the wake of the rising coronavirus cases.

"All ministers have mutually decided that to keep all educational institutions, including schools, colleges, universities, and tuition centres closed. However, online classes will continue from November 26 to December 24 after which winter break will start. Schools will reopen on January 11, 2021," Shafqat Mahmood said.

The decision was made during the Inter-Provincial Education Ministers Conference (IPEMC) convened to discuss school closures.

Covid: Genes hold clues to why some people get severely ill

Covid: Genes hold clues to why some people get severely ill

By Rebecca Morelle Science correspondent

11 December 2020 Health 

The coronavirus which causes Covid-19 makes some people seriously ill while others have no symptoms at all.

Why some people with coronavirus have no symptoms and others get extremely ill is one of the pandemic's biggest puzzles.

A study in Nature of more than 2,200 intensive care patients has identified specific genes that may hold the answer.

They make some people more susceptible to severe Covid-19 symptoms.

The findings shed light on where the immune system goes wrong, which could help identify new treatments.

These will continue to be needed even though vaccines are being developed, says Dr Kenneth Baillie, a consultant in medicine at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, who led the Genomicc project .

"Vaccines should drastically decrease the  of covid cases, but it's likely doctors will still be treating the disease in intensive care for a number of years around the world, so there is an urgent need to find new treatments."

'Angry' cells 

'Scientists looked at the DNA of patients in more than 200 intensive care units in UK hospitals.

They scanned each person’s genes, which contain the instructions for every biological process - including how to fight a virus.

Their genomes were then compared with the DNA of healthy people to pinpoint any genetic differences, and a number were found - the first in a gene called TYK2.

“It is part of the system that makes your immune cells more angry, and more inflammatory,” explained Dr Baillie.

But if the gene is faulty, this immune response can go into overdrive, putting patients at risk of damaging lung inflammation.

A class of anti-inflammatory drugs already used for conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis targets this biological mechanism, including a drug called Baricitinib.

“It makes it a very plausible candidate for a new treatment,” Dr Baillie said. “But of course, we need to do large-scale clinical trials in order to find out if that's true or not.”

Too little interferon

Genetic differences were also found in a gene called DPP9, which plays a role in inflammation, and in a gene called OAS, which helps to stop the virus from making copies of itself.

Variations in a gene called IFNAR2 were also identified in the intensive care patients.

IFNAR2 is linked to a potent anti-viral molecule called interferon, which helps to kick-start the immune system as soon as an infection is detected.

It’s thought that producing too little interferon can give the virus an early advantage, allowing it to quickly replicate, leading to more severe disease.

Two other recent studies published in the journal Science have also implicated interferon in Covid cases, through both genetic mutations and an autoimmune disorder that affects its production.

Prof Jean-Laurent Casanova, who carried out the research, from The Rockefeller University in New York, said: “[Interferon] accounted for nearly 15% of the critical Covid-19 cases internationally enrolled in our cohort."

Interferon can be given as a treatment, but a World Health Organization clinical trial concluded that it did not help very sick patients. However, Prof Casanova said the timing was important.

He explained: “I hope that if given in the first two, three, four days of infection, the interferon would work, because it essentially would provide the molecule that the [patient] does not produce by himself or by herself.”

'When things go wrong'

Dr Vanessa Sancho-Shimizu, a geneticist from Imperial College London, said that the genetic discoveries were providing an unprecedented insight into the biology of the disease.

“It really is an example of precision medicine, where we can actually identify the moment at which things have gone awry in that individual."

“The findings from these genetic studies will help us identify particular molecular pathways that could be targets for therapeutic intervention," she said.

But the genome still holds some mysteries.

The Genomicc study - and several others - has revealed a cluster of genes on chromosome 3 strongly linked to severe symptoms. However, the biology underpinning this is not yet understood.

More patients will now be asked to take part in this research.

Dr Baillie said: “We need everyone, but we're particularly keen to recruit people from minority ethnic groups who are over-represented in the critically ill population."

He added: “There's still a very urgent need to find new treatments for this disease and we have to make the right choices about which treatments to try next, because we don't have time to make mistakes."

Karachi University to conduct entry tests on December 12, 13

Karachi University to conduct entry tests on December 12, 13

Karachi University says it received 10,210 admission forms for Bachelor’s and Master’s entry test.

-Candidates asked to report to exam centres at 10am

-The 100-minute long exam will begin at 11am

-Candidates to provide answers on answer sheets

-As many as 10,210 candidates expected to appear

The University of Karachi will conduct the entry test for the Master’s programme on Saturday, while the entry test for the Bachelor’s program is scheduled for Sunday, December 13, 2020, a statement issued Friday said.

According to the in-charge KU Directorate of Admissions Dr Saima Akhtar, the varsity has received 10,210 admission forms for Bachelor’s and Master’s programme entry tests, combined.

She said that the candidates could download their admit cards from the official web portal. The name of the examination centre and room number is mentioned on the admit cards of the candidates.

Dr Akhtar further said that all the candidates are instructed to report to their examination centers at 10am. The entry test would start at 11am and candidates would have 100-minutes to solve their paper.

She said that candidates are also directed to bring their original CNIC and admit card. They have to strictly follow the standard operating procedures to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

According to Dr Akhtar, 550 application forms of the entry-test-based online admissions for 2021 were received for the Master’s programme. She also said that candidates would appear in the entry test for the departments of Business Administration, Criminology, Commerce, Mass Communication, Public Administration, and Pakistan Studies Centre

The candidates of the Master’s programme entry test would appear in the examination rooms established in the department of economics whereas 30 examination centres have been established for the Bachelor’s programme entry test.

Meanwhile, KU has received 9,660 online application forms for the entry test of the Bachelor’s programme.

On Sunday, candidates would appear in the entry test for the departments of Applied Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Chemical Engineering, Commerce, Computer Science, Criminology, Applied Physics, Biotechnology, Business Administration, Education, Environmental Studies, Food Science and Technology, International Relations, Mass Communication, Public Administration, Petroleum Technology, Special Education and Teacher Education.

The candidates, who contracted COVID-19 or bear any symptoms of the disease, are bound to produce test reports before appearing in the entry test, she said.

She added that those students who may suffer from the coronavirus during the phase of admission tests would be able to sit in the special test once they produce a coronavirus negative report.

Is the govt considering allowing students to visit schools once a week?

Is the govt considering allowing students to visit schools once a week?

Students wear protective face masks as they have their temperature checked before entering a class, after the government allowed the reopening of schools from grade six to eight.

The federal government on Friday decided to allow students to visit schools once a week, sources said Friday, as it approved a relief package for the pandemic-hit private educational institutions.

The development came after a delegation of the association of private educational institutions met Secretary Education Farah Hamid, sources within the education ministry said.

Private schools with a low fee structure would be granted interest-free loans, sources said, adding that the registration of private schools has been extended for a year.

The federal board has also decided to extend the deadline for sending admission forms, sources said.

Meanwhile, the delegation urged the secretary of education to reopen the schools at any cost on January 11 — the official date announced by the government.

On November 23, Federal Minister for Education Shafqat Mahmood had announced that all schools across the country would remain closed until January 10, 2021, in the wake of the rising coronavirus cases.

"All ministers have mutually decided that to keep all educational institutions, including schools, colleges, universities, and tuition centres closed. However, online classes will continue from November 26 to December 24 after which winter break will start. Schools will reopen on January 11, 2021," Shafqat Mahmood said.

The decision was made during the Inter-Provincial Education Ministers Conference (IPEMC) convened to discuss school closures.

School Wasn’t So Great Before COVID, Either

School Wasn’t So Great Before COVID, Either

Yes, remote schooling has been a misery—but it’s offering a rare chance to rethink early education entirely.

The litany of tragedies and inconveniences visited upon Americans by COVID-19 is long, but one of the more pronounced sources of misery for parents has been pandemic schooling. The logistical gymnastics necessary to balance work and school when all the crucial resources—time, physical space, internet bandwidth, emotional reserves—are limited have pushed many to the point of despair.

Pandemic school is clearly not working well, especially for younger children—and it’s all but impossible for the 20 percent of American students who lack access to the technology needed for remote learning. But what parents are coming to understand about their kids’ education—glimpsed through Zoom windows and “asynchronous” classwork—is that school was not always working so great before COVID-19 either. Like a tsunami that pulls away from the coast, leaving an exposed stretch of land, the pandemic has revealed long-standing inattention to children’s developmental needs—needs as basic as exercise, outdoor time, conversation, play, even sleep. All of the challenges of educating young children that we have minimized for years have suddenly appeared like flotsam on a beach at low tide, reeking and impossible to ignore. Parents are not only seeing how flawed and glitch-riddled remote teaching is—they’re discovering that many of the problems of remote schooling are merely exacerbations of problems with in-person schooling.

It’s remarkable how little schools have changed over time; most public elementary schools are stuck with a model that hasn’t evolved to reflect advances in cognitive science and our understanding of human development. When I walked into my 10-year-old son’s fourth-grade classroom a year ago, it looked almost exactly like my now-28-year-old son’s classroom in 2001, which in turn looked strikingly like my own fourth-grade classroom in 1972. They all had the same configuration of desks, cubbies, and rigidly grade-specific accoutrements. The school schedule also remains much the same: 35 hours of weekly instructional time for about 180 days. The same homework, too, despite the growing wealth of evidence suggesting that homework for elementary-school children (aside from nightly reading) offers minimal or no benefits. Elementary education also values relatively superficial learning that’s too focused on achieving mastery of shallow (but test-friendly) skills unmoored from real content knowledge or critical thinking. School hours are marked by disruptions and noise as students shift, mostly en masse and in age-stratified groups, from one strictly demarcated topic or task to another. Many educators and child-development experts believe that some of the still-standard features of pre‑K and elementary education—age and ability cohorts, short classroom periods, confinement mostly indoors—are not working for many children. And much of what has changed—less face time with teachers, assignments on iPads or computers, a narrowed curriculum—has arguably made things worse.

As distance learning has (literally) brought home these realities about how we educate young children, an opportunity to do things better presents itself—not just for the duration of the pandemic but afterward as well.

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Ever since it became clear last spring that school closures would be protracted, we’ve heard an outpouring of concern about potential learning loss and other serious costs for kids, including undetected child abuse and hunger. For a sizable fraction of children—those with disabilities whose educational needs can’t be met remotely, and the millions of kids eligible for free or reduced-price lunch who weren’t fed during the spring and summer—that concern has obvious merit. A McKinsey analysis concluded that if remote learning continues into 2021, students will suffer an average of seven months of “learning loss”—in essence, they’ll be seven months behind in mastering certain concepts and skills. Latino and Black students will fall a little further behind, McKinsey found, and low-income students will lose more than a year. A report out of the Brookings Institution in the spring projected that an extended break from in-person school could cause a “COVID Slide,” in which third-to-eighth-grade students could lose a substantial portion of the progress they would have been expected to make in math and reading.

The effect of these potential learning setbacks should not be underestimated. But the picture gets murkier when we consider that many children, from a variety of backgrounds, seem to be coping quite well without traditional school. Some are even continuing to make learning gains. For instance, the Brookings study predicted that the top quarter of students would still advance in reading. “I think a huge part of [some students’ work improving] is that we’ve dramatically ratcheted down the total workload in order to make tasks accessible rather than overwhelming,” Mark Gardner, a high-school English teacher in Washington State, told the education website Edutopia. Some students are doing “unexpectedly well,” according to The Hechinger Report, in part because it has been easier for them to remain focused on learning.

The psychologist Peter Gray says that if school were a drug, it would not receive FDA approval.

Many kids are also happier and less stressed than they were while sitting in a classroom. Some students are even excelling, as the superintendent of the L.A. public-school system told the Los Angeles Times. Survey results from a demographically representative sample of American families conducted in the spring revealed that 43 percent of parents agreed with the statement “My child is less stressed now than before school closed.” (Only 29 percent disagreed.) Some children have been freed from bullying (school-based bullying has been reported by 20 percent of 12-to-18-year-olds). One teacher told Edutopia that students are thriving because high-stakes-testing pressure has been eased during the pandemic. A recently published survey suggests that the more flexible schedules afforded by pandemic schooling are allowing teenagers to get enough sleep for the first time. And as Steven Mintz, the author of Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood, has put it, the pandemic has given students “opportunities to grow and develop in ways that would have been impossible in more ‘normal’ times.”

We now the pandemic has created or exacerbated mental-health problems for many children. But what’s less appreciated is that pre-pandemic schooling was already contributing to such problems. One large study from this year found that students reported feeling less happy while at school than in any other location. Another found that emergency psychiatric visits between 2009 and 2012 more than doubled when school was in session compared with during the summer and vacations. While the adult suicide rate has historically peaked in summer, the recent increase in youth suicides has shown the opposite pattern, with suicides dropping off in the summer and climbing when kids are back in school. Researchers have found that elementary-school students’ levels of the stress hormone cortisol become elevated during the school year. Peter Gray, a psychology professor at Boston College who studies these issues, says that if school were a drug, it would not receive FDA approval.

Both long-standing instructional practices and more recent changes in curriculum may have contributed to these problems. For instance, traditionally age-stratified classrooms, which most people take for granted, represent an unnatural and potentially unhealthy way of organizing children’s lives, experts now believe. Angela Duckworth, a University of Pennsylvania psychologist and the author of Grit, hypothesizes that the age segregation of schools can contribute to competition and stress. In a mixed-age group, she told me, “the 10-year-old takes the hand of the 5-year-old and looks both ways crossing the street. The 5-year-old looks up to the 10-year-old with admiration and trust, and does as they are told. In contrast, when you throw hundreds of kids of exactly the same age together, attention goes, unhelpfully, to comparisons within the group: Who is smartest? Who is fastest? Who is prettiest?” This steers children’s values away from kindness, trust, and community and toward status competition, which can generate stress and bullying. This effect may be more potent than it used to be, because children spend more time away from their home and neighborhood than in previous generations.

Experts across the educational and ideological spectrums agree that a curriculum rich in literature, civics, history, and the arts is essential for strong reading, critical-thinking, and writing skills. But schools have—quite irrationally—abandoned this breadth in favor of stripped-down programs focused on narrow testing metrics. Five years after the shift to high-stakes testing under the No Child Left Behind Act, which was signed in 2002, a survey of a national sample of school districts found that nearly two-thirds of school districts had dramatically increased language-arts or math time while almost half had reduced time spent on social studies, science, art, music, physical education, lunch, or recess. “Special” classes, such as music—as well as periods like recess, physical education, and even lunch—provide children with important opportunities for emotional growth and independent learning. For many children, they are what make school bearable. (In one intriguing natural experiment, researchers observed that ADHD diagnoses spiked dramatically in tandem with the timing of states’ adoption of high-stakes-testing policies; another study found that being in kindergarten was a significant risk factor for receiving an ADHD diagnosis compared with same-age children who remained in preschool for an extra year.

Pandemic Zoom classes have also revealed the extent to which the teaching of young children today relies on flawed classroom approaches—teachers talking too much, kids not enough. But developmental scientists and educators have long known that academic outcomes in the later elementary-school years are built on a foundation of authentic, conversational language and on the nurturing of meaningful relationships in early childhood. Early learning is fundamentally a social process, during which the architecture of the developing brain is constructed from emotional connections with trusted caregivers and friends. One study, from 2011, found that preschool teachers’ use of sophisticated, responsive language during children’s free play predicted better fourth-grade reading-comprehension outcomes. Many studies have shown the value of face-to-face, empathic teaching styles for language development in infants and young children. In general, children experience greater academic and social gains in classrooms where teachers are emotionally attuned to them—bending down to chat spontaneously and meaningfully, and following curricula that encourage physical, collaborative, open-ended play.

One of the many ironies of contemporary education is that as we learn more about the importance of emotional connection and face-to-face communication in early brain development, we seem ever more invested in technological quick fixes—“self-monitored” math lessons on iPads and the like—that take young children away from the adults charged with teaching them. What parents are seeing on Zoom is not a radical departure from what goes on in regular pre‑K and elementary-school classrooms, but rather a virtual extension of that.

For all its challenges, the pandemic presents an opportunity to rethink school entirely. What should we be demanding? 

A good start would be to include a broaderand deeper curriculum with more chances for children to explore, play, and build relationships with peers and teachers. Schools should also be in the business of fostering curiosity and a love of learning in all children, or at a minimum not impeding the development of those traits. This is a low educational bar but one that is too often not cleared, as the millions of American adults who are functionally illiterate might suggest.

But the most obvious demand should be for more time outside. In a pandemic, the reasons for doing this are clear: Outdoor transmission of COVID‑19 has been shown to be far less likely than indoor spread. But outdoor learning has myriad benefits even without a public-health emergency. Years of accumulating evidence reveal concretely measurable benefits of nature-based learning and outdoor time for young children. For instance, multiple studies have shown that providing children with nature-based experiences reduces the frequency of ADHD symptoms in both the immediate and longer terms. Another study found that children who received science instruction outdoors learned more than those who received it only in a classroom. Yet despite what we know about nature’s positive impact on mental health, attention span, academic outcomes, physical fitness, and self-regulation, outdoor time is too often seen as a quirky and marginal add‑on, rather than as central to the learning process itself.

Why can’t we just have class outside?

Early in the 20th century, tuberculosis outbreaks led many American schools to successfully adopt outdoor teaching. Nowadays, a host of new obstacles stand in the way: perceptions about lack of neighborhood safety; access to outdoor spaces; teacher know‑how; adult buy‑in; and concerns about extreme climate and air quality, especially for students attending schools in western states. But the biggest obstacle is a lack of will and imagination. The limited national discourse about alternative learning venues still seems to be rooted in the presumption that indoor lessons can be transposed either to the outdoors or to the internet with a few tweaks here and there, using the same curriculum, the same learning goals, the same expectations, and—lest we forget—the same questionable outcome measures. We shouldn’t be surprised when teaching approaches that didn’t serve all children well in traditional in-person classrooms are even less successful when applied online or to outdoor classrooms.

Here’s what we should have done last spring—and a radical proposal for what we could still do for the balance of the 2020–21 school year: What if we give every kid in kindergarten through sixth grade in America the option to spend the academic year engaged primarily outdoors in a kind of “pandemic camp” instead of traditional school? The focus would be on achievement that is not narrowly academic—physical challenges; acts of service; and the development of self-regulation, independence, and friendship. Academic goals would also be part of the program; you can learn a lot of science while roaming a municipal park. But the emphasis would be on creating a new set of challenges for students to master, not on an ersatz version of school as we know it. We could suspend state-mandated testing for a year. We could replace the standard playbook with a new one that rejects the cognitive and emotional harm done to children who sit in taped-off squares in a mask all day and that values instead the broadest definition of learning. Among other benefits, spending money on universal year-round summer camp would do more to help poor kids close the achievement gap than would spending it on remedial phonics lessons.

Finally, one thing the pandemic has highlighted is the abiding tension between schools’ custodial function (warehousing children for the day, feeding them and keeping them safe, so their parents can work) and their educational function (actually teaching children). Too often, when we talk about “school” we really mean “child care”—and also nutrition, medical care, mental-health services, and social-skills support. Some teachers routinely purchase and wash clothes for their neediest students. Some even become foster parents to them. Modern family life is complex, and it’s tempting to keep asking schools to assume more and more responsibilities. But the more we ask schools to expand beyond their core mission, the harder it becomes to discern which aspects of schooling are educationally effective. Schools can and should help mitigate harm to disadvantaged kids, but they cannot be a panacea for children in dangerous or neglectful home environments. Issues like livable wages and the absence of affordable child care are distinct from questions about learning, and we can’t keep commingling them.

If the parental frustrations kindled by pandemic schooling can be converted into political energy, that could ultimately yield much-needed reforms in both schools and their surrounding communities, the health of which is essential to children’s growth. As we muddle through the COVID-19 era yearning for a return to something close to normal, we shouldn’t squander this occasion to imagine how much better “normal” could be.