Covid's unequal impact on engagement with online learning and enrolment in state schools

By April 2020, nationwide search intensity for both school- and parent-centered online learning resources had roughly doubled relative to pre-Covid levels, with higher income areas seeing substantially larger increases than lower income areas. Student-level administrative data from Michigan and nationally representative data from the Census also show that enrolment in state schools declined noticeably in fall 2020, with about 3% of Michigan students and 10% of kindergartners using other options.

Most of this was driven by homeschooling rates jumping substantially among families with children in elementary school. Kindergarten declines were highest among low income and Black families while declines in other grades were highest among higher income and White families, highlighting important heterogeneity by students’ existing attachment to public schools. 

All of these results suggest that Covid is likely to widen existing inequalities in educational outcomes given households' differential capacities to adapt to the pandemic's shock to educational systems.

This event will be particularly useful for those interested in education policy, online learning, and education inequality.

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• Department of Learning and Leadership