Pandemic School Closures Disproportionately Harmed Poor, Minority Students, Harvard Study Finds

School closures and the transition to remote learning during the pandemic disproportionately harmed the academic performance of minority and low-income students, a new study conducted by Harvard University finds.

Using student-level testing data from 2.1 million students in 10,000 schools across 49 states and Washington, D.C., researchers found that the switch to online instruction exacerbated the existing performance gap separating low-income and minority students from their white and wealthier counterparts. The study compares pre-Covid results (fall 2017- fall 2019) to pandemic academic performance (fall 2019- fall 2021) across students of various racial identities who...