Understanding Pennsylvania's Educational Inequities in the time of COVID-19

Research on school instruction during COVID-19, school year (SY) 2020–21 (Lipscomb, S., Crigler, F., and Chaplin, D. 2021) found the following:

• In-person learning expanded as the 2020–2021 school year progressed.
• Most students were in LEAs that prioritized students with disabilities for in-person instruction. These LEAs reported that the pandemic made it more difficult to provide special education services.
• Access to reliable internet connection was a larger barrier to remote and hybrid learning than access to digital devices was, especially in urban areas.
• Most students were in LEAs that adopted a wide range of health and safety measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19, although few were in LEAs with regular COVID-19 testing.

Research on student outcomes on the Pennsylvania state assessment in SY 2020–21 and SY 2021–22 (Lipscomb, S., Chaplin, D., Vigil, A., & Matthias, H. 2022 and Lipscomb, S., Chaplin, D., Vigil, A., & Matthias, H. 2023) found the following:

• Students in vulnerable groups and in fully remote learning had lower assessment participation rates than other students in 2021.
• The pandemic led to a substantial reduction in academic proficiency statewide in 2021, reducing academic achievement even more than the results for tested students indicated.
• The pandemic had consistently large negative academic effects across student groups, including for vulnerable groups that had low rates of proficiency before the pandemic.
• LEAs that were fully remote after winter break saw lower proficiency rates in 2021, compared with LEAs that offered fully in-person learning to similar students.
• By spring 2022, academic proficiency rates in grades 5 through 8 in Pennsylvania public schools had regained 6 points of their 10-point drop in English language arts and nearly 5 points of their 13-point drop in math, relative to rates predicted for 2021.

Research on staff attrition outcomes during SY 2020–21 (Lipscomb, S., Lai, I., Chaplin, D., Vigil, A., & Matthias, H. 2022) found the following:

• Five percent of staff working in Pennsylvania LEAs in fall 2020 left the statewide public-school sector by fall 2021, an increase from 4 percent attrition in preceding years.
• Pre-pandemic attrition rates for staff of color were generally higher than for non-Hispanic White staff, and these differences grew during the pandemic except for school administrators, where they narrowed.
• Gaps in attrition rates were also exacerbated during the pandemic for teachers and health and counseling staff early in their careers and in charter schools and for administrators in large LEAs.
• Remote learning was not associated with increased attrition among elementary school teachers.

Research on remote learning outcomes during SY 2020–21 (Lipscomb, S., Chaplin, D., Lai, I., Vigil, A., and Matthias, H. 2023) found the following:

• Vulnerable groups of students were more likely than students overall to attend LEAs where the predominant instructional modes included remote learning.
• Vulnerable groups of students were more likely to be in LEAs where larger shares of the student population had trouble accessing reliable internet.
• More remote learning was associated with lower assessment performance in grades 5 through 8, especially in schools with higher levels of economic disadvantage. It was also associated with lower suspension rates in grades 6 through 12 and did not appear to harm or help graduation rates.
• Remote learning in high school was associated with lower subsequent COVID-19 rates within an LEA's boundary, suggesting it had an important public health benefit.