Since 2014, the University of Southern California Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research has administered the Understanding America Study (UAS). The UAS is a longitudinal, national probability-based panel of approximately 9,000 U.S. residents, collecting information at multiple time points each year on economic, attitudinal, health, political, and other measures. Of the full sample, approximately 1,450 households include at least one child in grades K-12. Between April and October 2020, funded by NSF RAPID Grant No. 2037179 and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, our research team administered five rounds of questions to parents asking about COVID-19’s effects on children’s K-12 educational experiences. 

In April 2020 (Wave 1), we first quantified the digital divide at the onset of COVID-19, finding a 35-percentage point income gap in the percent of households with children who had access to a computer and internet for students to work. We also saw racial/ethnic gaps in parents’ concerns about their students’ readiness for next year. 

In Waves 2 (April-May 2020) and 3 (May-June 2020) we found while most parents reported their children were receiving school work in April-May, lower proportions were interacting with teachers online or receiving feedback, with stark income differential. While 72 percent of the highest income households reported their child received feedback from their teacher, 58 percent of the lowest income group reported the same.

By May, the proportions of parents reporting their children had received critical school services in February had dropped dramatically under school closures. Just over half (54 percent) of children receiving meals when schools were open continued to receive meal service after closures. Sixty-one percent of parents who reported their child previously received special education services continued to. 

In summer 2020 (Wave 4), we added questions probing parent attitudes toward school responses, revealing stark differences by race and income in preferences for children’s attendance mode.

In fall 2020 (Wave 5), we documented disparities in enrollment mode (i.e., in-person, hybrid, fully-remote) by subgroups (Figure 1), and explored parents’ perceptions of their children’s needs. Mode of attendance strongly drove educational experiences, with parents of in-person students reporting educational quality and student mental health had mostly rebounded back to pre-pandemic levels while parents of remote students did not. 

We learned about unmet learner needs, including that 40% of remote-learning students in the lowest income households had insufficient internet access. We also learned that parents were highly—and increasingly—supportive of mask mandates in schools, and of canceling 2021 standardized tests. These results informed policy responses, particularly by substantiating the intensity of the need for children to have the option to return to school in person, and specifying high-priority remote learner needs. 

Starting in November 2020, we began asking parents every two weeks: a) how their child was enrolled (i.e., fully in-person, fully remote, or a hybrid mix), b) how they wanted their child to be enrolled, c) proportion of the child’s school attending in person, and d) about school mitigation practices like student and teacher mask-wearing. We switched to monthly administration of these questions from mid-February through June 2021. Child enrollment mode and parents’ enrollment preferences have varied considerably by parent race and family income. 

We have disseminated results to education and mainstream audiences through publications our team has authored, including 74million, Brookings, Conversation, CRPE Evidence Project, Education Next, FutureEd, Hetchinger, USC Evidence Base, and presentations (e.g., to foundations, NSF audiences). Mainstream press articles have referred to our data and results including the Economist, LA Times, New York Times, New Yorker, as well as education trade journals including Chalkbeat, EdSource, and EdWeek. Results have directly affected school districts’ pandemic-related policies (e.g., Orange County, CA) and contribute to state and national policy-making. 

We have academic publications invited from AERA Open (submitted) and Peabody (due August 15, 2021), and presented during an AERA symposium of NSF RAPID grantees. We were also invited to give a plenary talk as part of the NSF DRK-12 Principal Investigator annual conference. 

In addition, UAS data are publicly available within a few days of administration completion, enabling any researcher worldwide to access our collected data. Several have used our data to write widely circulated manuscripts (e.g., Camp & Zamarro (2021) and Kogan (2021)).  

While the grant period is now ending, another NSF RAPID DRK-12 grant (#2120194), supplemented with additional administration funding from the Hewlett Foundation, is supporting continued data collection and analysis through 2021.

The results have and continue to inform education policy through 2021 and beyond. With a focus on mitigating differential negative effects for vulnerable subgroups and identifying potential silver linings, we are continuing to provide policymakers with insight into children’s educational experiences during and in the wake of the pandemic, their emotional health, and other information needed to develop practical and targeted support policies addressing the effects of COVID-19’s changes to the education system on children.

Last Modified: 06/17/2021
Modified by: Anna R Saavedra