What American Families Experienced When COVID-19 Closed Their Schools

The 2020 Education Next Survey reveals a paradox related to what American parents think about the quality of the instruction their children received after schools closed their doors in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The parents of a substantial majority of school-aged children--71%--think their kids learned less than they would have in school. At the same time, parents of 72% of children say they are satisfied with the instruction and activities provided by schools during the closure. What experiences account for these seemingly contradictory opinions? And how did those experiences vary across social groups and the nation's district, charter, and private school sectors? Since schools closed, commentators have used a variety of methods to understand the likely implications of this episode for student learning and what it bodes for the future, from analyzing school districts' remote-learning plans to tracking reports of homeschooling on social media. Yet there is a lack of a thorough and systematic picture of what American families experienced during the pandemic. New data from the 14th annual Education Next public-opinion survey can help to close this gap. The survey was administered to a nationally representative sample of 1,249 parents with children in kindergarten through 12th grade whose schools closed during the pandemic, including oversamples of parents who identify as Hispanic and parents who identify as Black. These parents answered questions about each of their children whose school closed, including 2,147 children in total. Data was also gathered from a nationally representative sample of 490 K-12 teachers whose schools closed because of the pandemic, enabling the authors to compare what parents reported receiving to what teachers said they delivered.