To What Extent Does In‐person Schooling Contribute to the Spread of Covid‐19? Evidence From Michigan and Washington

Goldhaber, Dan; Imberman, Scott A.; Strunk, Katharine O.; Hopkins, B.; Brown, Nate; Harbatkin, Erica; Kilbride, Tara

doi:10.1002/pam.22354

Cited by 23 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…As discussed in SI Appendix, our regression specification is motivated by a SIRD model, and the dependent variable in our analysis is case growth rates instead of new cases or hospitalizations. Consistent with Goldhaber et al (2021) and Harris, Ziedan, and Hassig (2021), our finding of a constant increase in growth rates implies a greater increase in cases in counties with more pre-existing cases.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 91%

“…Two closely related papers also examine the relationship between schools and countylevel COVID-19 outcomes in the US. Goldhaber et al (2021) examine the relationship between schooling and cases in counties in Washington and Michigan. They find that inperson schooling is only associated with increased cases in areas with high pre-existing COVID-19 cases.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Association of Opening K-12 Schools with the Spread of COVID-19 in the United States: County-Level Panel Data Analysis

Chernozhukov¹,

Kasahara²,

Schrimpf³

2021

Preprint

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This paper empirically examines how the opening of K-12 schools and colleges is associated with the spread of COVID-19 using county-level panel data in the United States. Using data on foot traffic and K-12 school opening plans, we analyze how an increase in visits to schools and opening schools with different teaching methods (in-person, hybrid, and remote) is related to the 2-weeks forward growth rate of confirmed COVID-19 cases. Our debiased panel data regression analysis with a set of county dummies, interactions of state and week dummies, and other controls shows that an increase in visits to both K-12 schools and colleges is associated with a subsequent increase in case growth rates. The estimates indicate that fully opening K-12 schools with in-person learning is associated with a 5 (SE = 2) percentage points increase in the growth rate of cases. We also find that the positive association of K-12 school visits or in-person school openings with case growth is stronger for counties that do not require staff to wear masks at schools. These results have a causal interpretation in a structural model with unobserved county and time confounders. Sensitivity analysis shows that the baseline results are robust to timing assumptions and alternative specifications. Date: February 23, 2021. Key words and phrases. K-12 school openings | in-person, hybrid, and remote | mask-wearing requirements for staff | foot traffic data | debiased estimator.We are very grateful to Emily Oster for her helpful comments. All mistakes are our own.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Association of Opening K-12 Schools with the Spread of COVID-19 in the United States: County-Level Panel Data Analysis

Chernozhukov¹,

Kasahara²,

Schrimpf³

2021

Preprint

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“…Harris, Ziedan, and Hassig, 2021:26) concluded that their “results suggest that school reopenings have not increased COVID‐19 hospitalizations, especially for the 75 percent of counties that had the lowest baseline hospitalizations.” For the counties with the highest COVID‐19 hospitalizations at baseline, Harris, Ziedan, and Hassig, 2021:1) found that the “estimates are inconsistent across methods and are therefore inconclusive.” Goldhaber et al. (2020) examined data from Michigan and Washington state and found that in‐person schooling does not contribute to community transmission of the virus in locations with low levels of pre‐existing COVID‐19 cases.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the counties with the highest COVID-19 hospitalizations at baseline, Harris, Ziedan, and Hassig, 2021:1) found that the "estimates are inconsistent across methods and are therefore inconclusive." Goldhaber et al (2020) examined data from Michigan and Washington state and found that in-person schooling does not contribute to community transmission of the virus in locations with low levels of pre-existing COVID-19 cases.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are School Reopening Decisions Related to Union Influence?

DeAngelis

Makridis

2021

Social Science Quarterly

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Objective. The COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread school closures affecting millions of K-12 students in the United States in the spring of 2020. Groups representing teachers have pushed to reopen public schools virtually in the fall because of concerns about the health risks associated with reopening in person. In theory, stronger teachers' unions may more successfully influence public school districts to reopen without in-person instruction. Methods. We examine the relationship between teachers' union strength and the reopening decisions of 835 public school districts in the United States using regression analyses. Results. We find that school districts in locations with stronger teachers' unions are less likely to reopen in person even after we control semiparametrically for differences in local demographic characteristics. These results are robust to four measures of union strength, various potential confounding characteristics, a further disaggregation to the county level, and various analytic techniques and datasets. We do not find evidence that measures of COVID-19 risk are correlated with school reopening decisions. Conclusion. Our findings that school closures are uncorrelated with the actual incidence of the virus, but are rather strongly associated with unionization, implies that the decision to close schools has been a political-not scientific-decision.School reopening-when and how to do it-has become one of the largest and most politicized policy deliberations amid the coronavirus pandemic. At least 55 million students from over 120,000 public and private schools have been affected by closures since March 2020. 1 While only time will tell the ramifications that the absence of in-person learning will have on students' human capital development, a large body of literature suggests that higher academic achievement is associated with improved life outcomes (e.g., Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff, 2014;Hanushek, 2011). However, Gross and Opalka (2020) found that only about one-third of the 477 public school districts operating remotely in their analysis required teachers to deliver remote instruction, as opposed to no instruction, in the spring of 2020. They also found that less than half of the districts expected teachers to take attendance or check in with students regularly.School closures have had an even more immediate effect on the U.S. labor market. Because roughly 32 percent of households have children under the age of 14 living with them, coupled with the collapse in the childcare market (Ali, Herbst, and Makridis, 2021), the inability to reopen schools will necessarily affect the ability for the United States to fully reopen its labor market and attain traditional levels of full-time employment since many parents will be unable to return to work.

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“…Transmission in schools is strongly influenced by disease incidence in the community, though clusters and outbreaks do occur in schools, camps, and sports settings - particularly when mitigation measures are not fully or consistently implemented. 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 …”

Section: Epidemiologymentioning

confidence: 99%