Bridget Bolder sent her daughter, Mia, to kindergarten at a neighborhood public school. After all, it seemed the 鈥渘ormal, regular thing to do.鈥�

But Bolder started to worry that some of her daughter鈥檚 classmates were exposing her to inappropriate topics. Early in the school year, Mia had to tell a teacher about a boy groping some of the other girls.

鈥淚鈥檓 like, she鈥檚 a baby,鈥� Bolder said. 鈥淏ring her home a little while longer before I throw her to the wolves.鈥�

Brian Wilson and his wife homeschooled three of their children last year. They struggled to juggle home life, both parents鈥� jobs and teaching the kids.

The family briefly switched to in-person school, but Wilson said it only validated the parents鈥� theory that the individual attention the kids got at home had been working.

鈥淭hey seemed like head and shoulders above all the other kids when it comes to learning,鈥� he said. 鈥淢y son, Aaron 鈥� he鈥檚 the youngest 鈥� he was actually helping kids in his class.鈥�

Both families have turned to the new Brookside Virtual Academy so they could keep their kids at home and still rely on professional teachers to lead their schooling.

The academy is attached to Brookside Charter School and bills itself as Kansas City鈥檚 only virtual program where teaching happens on live, interactive video calls.

Online school isn鈥檛 widely popular. It鈥檚 been blamed for some of the learning loss that set kids back during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kansas City Public Schools closed its virtual academy for kindergarten through fifth grade this year because of shrinking enrollment, district spokesperson Shain Bergan said in an email.

But for a girl with severe social anxiety? A boy with leukemia? A young athlete with a rigorous training and travel schedule?

Leslie Correa, who helped design the KCPS program, said certain students and families need the option. So she found a home for the program at Brookside, where she鈥檚 now the virtual academy principal.

鈥淭he students that virtual works for, it works really well for,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e cannot close the door to them for having a great education.鈥�

Who succeeds in virtual education?

For some students, the computer screen provides a layer of distance that makes them braver, Correa said. Learning from home can also reduce distracting for some kids with autism.

For example, loud or persistent background noise, visually busy environments or other students bumping into them could overwhelm some children.

Other students might need virtual school for logistical reasons.

That could include students who are barred from in-person school for disciplinary issues, traveling athletes, kids going through intensive medical treatment like dialysis or chemotherapy, or parents who struggle with transportation.

Some families identify as homeschoolers but want professional help teaching reading and math, Correa said. Since virtual school is more concise, it leaves more flexibility in the day.

Parents鈥� fears can also push them toward keeping kids at home.

鈥淎nytime that there has been a violent occurrence in one of our schools in Kansas City, I get a big uptick in enrollment,鈥� Correa said. 鈥淭hey feel scared and they鈥檙e looking for an alternative.鈥�

When virtual learning doesn鈥檛 work

To figure out if it鈥檚 a good fit, Correa starts by asking parents why they鈥檙e interested in virtual school.

鈥淚f it鈥檚, you know, 鈥業 don鈥檛 have day care and I need my 12-year-old to be home to watch my kid,鈥� it鈥檚 kind of an alarm,鈥� she said. 鈥淚鈥檓 not the one to judge what their decision is, but I am the one to help arm them with information.鈥�

The virtual academy serves students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Because Kansas City-area charter schools can only operate within the boundaries of KCPS, its students have to be from that area.

The virtual academy doesn鈥檛 turn students away based on their reason to enroll, Correa said, but it monitors their progress. If a student isn鈥檛 thriving, she meets with a parent to make a plan, like tutoring or switching the child to in-person school.

Schools can deny virtual education if they document that it鈥檚 not in the student鈥檚 best interest.

鈥淢y goal before getting to that point is always to have the parent make that decision for themselves through very hard conversation,鈥� Correa said. 鈥淏ut it does happen.鈥�

Problems can arise when the virtual school doesn鈥檛 think it can fulfill an individualized education program, or IEP, often used to support students with disabilities.

鈥淭he parent has the option to return to in-person learning or waive the IEP, and then their student does not get that support,鈥� Correa said. 鈥淭hey almost never waive the IEP.鈥�

Students can also get removed from virtual school, and referred for truancy, if they stop signing in or engaging at all for too many days.

Correa said she鈥檚 also attentive to offering ways for virtual students to get more comfortable with in-person interaction.

Virtual school students can attend optional in-person events and participate in Brookside clubs and sports.

鈥淚f they want to kind of test the water, the opportunity is there,鈥� she said. 鈥淚f a student is saying to me, 鈥業 am ready to go in a building,鈥� then OK. But then also, if a student is saying to me, 鈥業 need out of the building,鈥� OK, I鈥檓 here. I just don鈥檛 want to disrupt their education.鈥�

How virtual learning works 

Right before the school year started, Brookside Charter School鈥檚 STEAM lab was set up for virtual academy orientation.

Teachers and school leaders passed out laptops, hot spots for internet access and school supplies.

The supply bags include books, basics like pencils and glue, whiteboards and dry erase markers (extra for younger kids, who tend to leave the caps off), and individually packaged science kits for lessons on the solar system, geology or density.

But first, families settled in for a presentation to learn the basics.

Brookside Virtual Academy starts at 9 a.m. with a lesson on leadership.

Most days, students then launch into reading class, followed by math. Wednesdays are for science.

Students spend about two and a half hours in live virtual lessons each day, and another 90 minutes online working through a task list that includes social studies and science.

Live classes use video calls and technology that lets teachers monitor what students are looking at and control their screens.

Parents aren鈥檛 responsible for teaching their kids, but they鈥檙e expected to keep in touch and generally make sure the students are online and on task.

Connecting with families

For some parents, being extra involved in part of the draw.

Wilson, the parent of three kids in the program, said he appreciates that it cuts the school day down to essentials, allowing parents to be more strategic about where they put time into their kids鈥� education.

Bolder, the parent of a first grader, said she鈥檚 looking forward to more easily monitoring what her daughter is learning so she can help supplement that.

Virtual education makes it easier to connect with families, said Tina Duvall, a reading and math interventionist for kindergarten through fourth grade.

鈥淚 get to be in their home with them. It takes away a whole lot of anxiety for kids,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 thought in my years past teaching that I knew 鈥� really, really knew 鈥� my students鈥� families, but not like this.鈥�

Duvall will be working with breakout groups of students, grouped by grade or ability level.

With about 100 students as of Aug. 20, two or three grades are combined under each of four virtual academy teachers. But staggered schedules and help from interventionists like Duvall will allow each grade to learn separately.

The biggest challenge, Duvall said, is not being able to sit by a student to point things out or hand them what they need.

鈥淵ou just want to reach through the screen and help,鈥� she said.

Bolder and Wilson said they have their kids in in-person activities so they can socialize. But they鈥檙e not sure if they鈥檒l ever go to in-person school.

鈥淭here shouldn鈥檛 be such a thing as a bad school,鈥� Wilson said. 鈥淏ut because there is, until we鈥檙e able to put our kids in a good school 鈥� then we feel like we鈥檙e more suited to teach our kids at home.鈥�

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Kristy Maxwell realized something had to change the day she picked her son Levi up from school and found out his teacher had left the autistic kindergartener alone crying and throwing pencils from under his desk.

The Michigan mom switched her son to a school that had a good reputation serving students with disabilities, but things didn鈥檛 improve. Because Levi was a 鈥渕ath whiz,鈥� staff ignored his trouble socializing and his difficulty handling the cafeteria鈥檚 loud noises, Maxwell said. Meanwhile, she was unsuccessful in lobbying the school to screen her child for autism, a way to secure the extra services required by law for students with disabilities. The mother worried her son might never get the learning support he needed.

Then, in March 2020, the pandemic shifted all classes at his school online and forced the family into an accidental experiment in a new model of education. 

During remote school, Levi could get one-on-one attention sitting next to his mother, who had to temporarily stop her work as a massage therapist due to COVID. His younger sister, who struggles with anxiety, could take breaks to pet the family鈥檚 dogs.

鈥淲hen everything shut down and we were forced to go virtual 鈥� my two younger kids did really well,鈥� Maxwell said. 

鈥淲e decided after doing that, since the younger two kids did so well outside of a brick-and-mortar [school], keeping them virtual would be the best way to help them academically.鈥�

The Maxwells, whose three kids are now 9, 11 and 15, are among the thousands of families across the U.S. that tried virtual learning for the first time during the pandemic and are now staying with it.

New data indicate that online schools have had a staying power beyond the pandemic that few observers suspected. While some virtual academies have operated for decades, they saw a well-documented in 2020-21, the first full school year after COVID, as many virus-wary parents looked to protect their children from infections and anti-mask families sought a way out of face-covering requirements. But in the following year, even as brick-and-mortar schools fully reopened and mask mandates fell, remote schools mostly maintained their pandemic enrollment gains 鈥� and in many cases added new seats.

On average across 10 states, virtual school enrollment rose to 170% of its pre-pandemic level in 2020-21, then nudged up further to 176% in 2021-22, according to data obtained by 社区黑料. 

The new figures contribute to a more far-reaching understanding because, while have documented the uptick in new fully virtual schools and standalone remote academies offered by districts, scant analyses have provided a national picture of student enrollment in those schools.

鈥楲ooks like it鈥檒l stick鈥�

The trend reveals that for many families virtual learning has become more than a temporary model to get through the pandemic 鈥� but rather a long-term option preferred in increasing numbers.

鈥淚t looks like it鈥檒l stick,鈥� said Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education. 鈥淚n some states, the numbers went up temporarily and came back down a bit. But overall, if [families] are staying for a couple of years, I would expect that they would keep it going.鈥�

Six states in the dataset 鈥� Arkansas, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota and North Carolina 鈥� saw consecutive year-over-year virtual enrollment increases, while four 鈥� Florida, Oregon, Wisconsin and Wyoming 鈥� saw dramatic upticks in 2020-21, then a slight dip in 2021-22.

鈥淲e didn鈥檛 know what to expect after the [mask] mandates were lifted, but we maintained our enrollment and we continue to grow,鈥� said Jodell Glagnow, attendance administrator at Wisconsin Virtual Academy.

In Iowa, an extreme case, virtual school enrollment swelled to 373% of pre-pandemic levels in 2020-21 and notched up even further to 388% in 2021-22. The growth corresponded with an increase in the number of approved online schools in the state from three to nearly two dozen over that span, a state Department of Education spokesperson explained.

The data represents K-12 students enrolled in standalone online academies and excludes students taking remote classes offered by their home brick-and-mortar school. The scope, however, varies slightly state by state. For example, the Florida numbers reflect enrollment in the statewide Florida Virtual School, while the Arkansas figures come from its two approved virtual charters and the Michigan tally encompasses students at all 88 providers approved for online instruction.

Oregon was the lone state to provide , revealing white students were overrepresented in the state鈥檚 virtual schools in 2020-21, while students with disabilities, those navigating poverty and English learners were underrepresented. Overall, enrollment rose to 172% of pre-pandemic levels that year and reduced slightly the next year. 

GeRita Connor runs Lowcountry Connections Academy, a virtual school in South Carolina. Her school opened last year to accommodate the overwhelming demand for online schooling once capacity was reached at its partner academy, South Carolina Connections, which contracts with the same for-profit provider, Connections LLC, an offshoot of publishing and testing giant Pearson. 

The families who were newcomers to online academies like hers in the fall of 2021, she said, often hadn鈥檛 even considered remote schooling before COVID.

鈥淚 think that what happened during the pandemic is that families became more aware of the option of virtual learning,鈥� Connor said. 鈥淸It] really opened the doors for those opportunities to exist.鈥�

For the Maxwells in Michigan, Levi stayed in the online option his school maintained through the 2020-21 year, then in the fall of 2021 switched to the statewide Michigan Great Lakes Virtual Academy. His younger sister, Aria, briefly returned to school in person, but switched back to a district-run online option in January 2022. In September, she was able to join her brother at Great Lakes.

Rotten apples?

Experts caution the emerging trend could translate to poor academic outcomes. Virtual academies far predated COVID in some states, often with lackluster track records. And during the pandemic, students who spent the most time away from in-person classes suffered the largest learning setbacks.

Research from the using pre-pandemic data shows students at online schools score far worse on academic tests than their peers learning in-person, even when controlling for factors like race, poverty level and disability status.

To now see more and more families enrolling in online learning worries Heather Schwartz, a researcher at the Rand Corporation who has during the pandemic.

鈥淯ntil we have proof the virtual schools can perform just as well 鈥� for at least some students 鈥� as traditional public schools, yeah, I鈥檓 concerned,鈥� she said.

Participating families and administrators, however, attest to a positive impact on student learning at many virtual schools. Levi Maxwell, for example, has seen his grades improve dramatically while learning online, his mother reports. Last year, he wrote his first story by himself, after struggling for years in English.

But Gary Miron, an education professor at Western Michigan University and outspoken critic of virtual academies, believes the negative experiences outweigh the positive ones and is frustrated to see student enrollment continue to rise.

鈥淚t defies market theory,鈥� he said. 鈥淵ou鈥檇 think consumers would wake up and say, 鈥業’m not going to buy these apples. They’re rotten. I’m going to get another producer.鈥� But they’re not.鈥�

He also warns that many virtual schools 鈥� including Connections Academies 鈥� have nonprofit 鈥渟hells鈥� that contract with for-profit management organizations. Those contracts often include costly management fees and six- or seven-figure salaries for top executives, he said. 

鈥淭hose so-called nonprofits are just incredibly profitable,鈥� Miron said.

Connections Academy spokesperson Chantal Kowalski countered that schools in her organization are public and, like traditional brick-and-mortar schools, are governed by boards that 鈥渕ake all material or budget decisions and publicly post board meeting minutes online.鈥� She added that they 鈥渃ontract with Pearson for online education products and services like curriculum and technology.”

Still, GAO education director Jacqueline Nowicki remains concerned about oversight.

鈥淭o the extent that the sector grows and becomes larger, I do think the risk to the federal government grows in terms of accountability,鈥� she said.

Virtual schools, real relationships

The primary concern for Lake, of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, is whether students enrolling in online schools lose out on facetime with teachers. Many remote academies rely heavily on asynchronous lessons and offer fewer hours of live instruction than traditional schools.

鈥淰irtual learning can be a great option, but it isn’t a substitute for connections with adults,鈥� she said. 鈥淵ou have to make sure that the virtual program is providing a lot of student-teacher interaction.鈥�

At their Michigan virtual academy, the Maxwells feel like their needs are being well met. The school has provided more specialists to accommodate her children鈥檚 special needs than their brick-and-mortar schools ever did, Kristy Maxwell said. But she admits the energy required to keep her children on task through the school day can be considerable.

鈥淚t is a lot of work on my part,鈥� the mom acknowledged.

In a nearby Great Lakes state, seventh grader Helena Warren has also felt satisfied with a recent pivot to the Wisconsin Virtual Academy. She transferred in January 2022 and appreciates how much one-on-one time she gets with her teachers through Zoom breakout rooms or phone calls when she needs extra help.

The middle schooler made the switch because the work at her old school was too 鈥渂asic and easy,鈥� she said, causing her to tune out and get bad grades, including some C鈥檚 and D鈥檚. Now her grades are better and the assignments are more challenging. When she demonstrates mastery of a concept, her teacher asks her to help explain it to her peers, which she enjoys.

鈥淪he’s doing higher-grade stuff than she would be doing at a regular brick-and-mortar school,鈥� said her proud mother, Melody Warren, who plans for Helena to stay online indefinitely.

鈥淚 think she’s gonna go through high school,鈥� Warren said.

Kamenetz had spent years covering the heaviest stories on the education beat as an award-winning reporter at NPR, from the destruction wreaked by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans classrooms to the potential risks of excessive screen time. And according to her sources, the coming pandemic wasn鈥檛 just going to drive down math scores or disrupt the teaching profession: Prolonged school closures would leave a mark on child safety, mental health and social development. 

The months that followed, shaped by academic stagnation and political division, frame Kamenetz鈥檚 new book, The Stolen Year. Released Tuesday by PublicAffairs, the volume reads like a reckoning with the predictions made by the experts she consulted more than two years ago. Each chapter examines a facet of social policy in America that was fundamentally challenged by the emergence of COVID-19, from the courts system to K-12 schools, and the effects that were felt by tens of millions of children.

And how much of her sources鈥� collective warning was validated?

鈥淎ll of it,鈥� she told 社区黑料.

Much of the social toll, measured in deaths or distance or deterioration of services, was unavoidable. But Kamenetz argues that the failure of online learning, and of in-person schools to reopen faster in thousands of districts, was also highly contingent 鈥� on leaders鈥� failure to adjust during the fateful summer of 2020, but also on experts and members of the media, whose message to the public was too often muddled. Though every Western country had to scramble to come to grips with a once-in-a-lifetime public health emergency, few kept children out of school longer than the United States. And virtually none were as divided in their political and policy responses.

Kamenetz observed those responses as a veteran journalist, but also as a mother of young children and a parent in New York City, where the official response to COVID was often scattershot. That experience 鈥渃omplicated鈥� her view of public schooling in this country, she confided.

鈥淚 very much understand the perspective of people who feel betrayed by public schools, wherever they’re coming from politically,鈥� she said. 鈥淭here’s been such a fraying of the consensus around what is really our major piece of social infrastructure for families.鈥�

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

社区黑料: What’s it been like reporting on the pandemic for over two years, including writing this book, as both a veteran education reporter and a mother of young kids?

Anya Kamenetz: Over that weekend after March 13, the day that schools started to close, I was trying to confirm a coronavirus case in my child’s school, which I was then going to report to WNYC [New York City鈥檚 public radio station] and NPR. It’s not regular for reporters to report on their own kids’ schools, but this was obviously of import.

For a couple of weeks, I’d been covering the college shutdowns in Asia and then in the U.S., which were a precursor to the K-12 shutdowns here. But when de Blasio made the call to shut down schools 鈥� which he did, with his characteristic leadership, very late on a Sunday night after saying he wouldn’t do it 鈥� that was really the beginning of it for me. And I knew it was going to be a very big deal because I had not only been at NPR for six years at that point, but I’d covered [Hurricane] Katrina, which I believed would be a decent parallel: You have this society-wide catastrophe, and within that, kids are pulled out of school amid all this instability and trauma. The impacts of that were devastating, and the empirically measured effects on young people in New Orleans were still there 10 years later. 

So my job was to document what was happening, and it was a very special position to be in with my skills and prior research. I also had an interest in refugee education and what is called “education in emergencies.” So my contacts in international development circles were some of the first people I called up to ask, “How’s this gonna go? What should I be looking out for?” And everything they told me panned out.

You’re originally from New Orleans, right?

Yes.

Your instinctive Katrina comparisons have unfortunately proven accurate 鈥� test score data from NWEA shows that learning loss during the pandemic is pretty comparable to the damage suffered by students in New Orleans after the hurricane.

From what I can tell, it’s actually worse. The latest NWEA data indicates that the average elementary student is on track to recover in three years; for Katrina, it was two years. And after Katrina, those kids went back to 鈥渂etter schools鈥� 鈥� better funded schools, certainly, and schools that achieve higher test scores.

That’s not what we’re seeing here. In the July 2022 NWEA study, it found that middle schoolers weren’t making any gains. We don’t even have a trajectory for them. 

The predictions in the research pointed me to the conclusion that high school students were the ones to worry about because they were on a course to separate from school. It’s not a question of catching up, it’s a question of whether they were going to stay in school. That is something we should worry about, especially with college-going .

Getting back to the early guidance offered by your international sources: How many of their predictions panned out?

All of it panned out.

The idea that young people would go into paid work and that young girls would become caregivers; that the impact of school closures would match underlying inequalities in society, and that children who were privileged enough would see no difference; that continuity efforts to keep learning on-track 鈥� this stuff goes back to World War II, for instance, when the BBC had its own children’s service that carried school broadcasts 鈥� don’t reach everyone, and in fact multiply inequality because the kids who can benefit from those efforts are already advantaged. All of that was exactly what we saw.

Those insights were remarkably prescient. In my own reporting, there were also some dogs that didn’t bark, most notably some early coverage on the possibility of a Great Recession-type crunch on school finances. 

That’s right. There was a short-term spike in child hunger 鈥� it could have been two or three months 鈥� and we have to remember that even one month of increased hunger is very bad. But kids actually finished the end of the year with money in their pockets, so the economic picture is a little complicated. And there wasn’t the kind of housing crisis that left huge percentages of kids homeless, which is something that can happen after natural disasters. 

In fact, if you get into , you can see that between unemployment and CARES Act money, families spent more time at home with their kids. There’s obviously a segment of society that doesn’t have paid leave. Patricia [one of several parents profiled in The Stolen Year], who’s a mom in D.C. with two kids, worked in D.C. Public Schools; she had her child prematurely in July and then went back to work in August. So during the pandemic, it was the only time she was able to be home with her children. As hard as it was, she saw the advantage in it.

What comes through in the book is that there was a lot of contingency, particularly in those first pandemic months. Do you think there was a way that the initial COVID wave could have been handled better by education authorities, either at the local, state, or federal levels. Could things have gone significantly better than they did?

School closures were sort of handled in the spirit of President Trump when he said, “We’ve got to shut this whole thing down until we figure out what the hell’s going on.” They were not controversial in that early wave because it was happening all over the world, and people really needed a handle on what was happening. The first big mistake was not making a plan, as soon as we shut them down, of how we were going to open them back up. 

We had this false idea about a two-week turnaround, and people really froze and didn’t plan for the future. If you’re on this beat, you know that schools start planning for staffing and scheduling in the next academic year by April. And that was when schools in parts of Europe started reopening, in April and May. They were like, “This is truly an emergency measure, and we’re going to treat it as such. We’re not going to let it continue through inertia because if districts don’t have clear leadership and messaging, they’re not going to respond.” And that’s what we saw here.

It’s unclear to me what the academic effects were of not reopening schools to finish out the 2019-2020 school year, as opposed to the extended virtual learning that took place the following year. I suspect the bigger impact was the precedent of closing through the end of the year, which seemed to set us on a course toward virtual learning being the accepted way to deal with this.

I agree completely. The effect of reopening in May 2020 would have been to put the training wheels on and get everyone onboard with the fact that this was going to happen. It was described to me by a teacher in Florida who went back into the classroom in 2020. She was like, “I know colleagues who stayed home with medical exemptions, and when they came back, they were terrified. So I said, ‘Listen, it’s not that big a deal, we’re doing this.” 

What was absent was the comfort of everyday routine, and the sense of control that teachers can have when they have protocols. By not opening in the spring of 2020, we made it that much harder. And there was a slice of schools in blue states that didn’t open up until February, March, April 2021, and it got harder and harder the longer they waited.

It seems like what set the U.S. apart was the diversity of local responses we saw in the summer and fall of 2020. Of course, there wasn’t a ton of clear federal guidance, and God knows if blue states and districts would have taken that from the Trump administration, but it yielded this fractured approach to reopening and public health measures that carries on to this day.

Writing the book, I felt compelled to do this deep dive into the history of our public school system. Because it’s very different from our peer countries, which have a national system and a national curriculum and a minister of education who actually runs the schools. Instead of that, we have all these different districts.

All of which is to say that there was an absence of guidance from the top, but also an absence of data collection. I covered a study from Spain in September 2020, which tracked case rates by region. Every region had all the same protocols. After schools reopened, cases went up in one region, down in another region, and stayed flat in some others. So they released this paper and said, “We don’t think what you’re doing in schools is making a big difference, please carry on.” The CDC didn’t release an equivalent paper until, like, January [2021]!

Where was the information? 鈥� this mom-and-pop data company that was started for totally different reasons 鈥� became the nation’s go-to source for what schools are doing because the federal government just wasn’t tracking and releasing enough information. 

You mentioned Bill de Blasio’s sort of tortured initial move to close schools in New York City, which attracted a lot of criticism. But from the distance of two-plus years, I suspect that many observers wish that districts had been more deliberate in shuttering schools and keeping them shuttered, even if that’s clearly a case of Monday morning quarterbacking.

That’s right. More forward-thinking, more innovative leadership could have gone a long way. And as frustrating as it often was to live in de Blasio’s city, it’s worth remembering that of the big blue cities, they opened schools up first. Though they had really bad uptake of hybrid [learning] because it was untenable from a child care perspective, and also because they delayed reopening twice. 

People don’t understand that there’s a dynamic between parent trust and how you communicate the decisions you’re making. The more you hem and haw and quibble over things, the harder it is for parents to actually trust that you’re going to do the things you say you’re going to do. One lesson from this period is that being a bad communicator is a problem in and of itself.

The consequences of that miscommunication and opacity in decision-making are already being felt politically, with school board members enduring a wave of recall attempts and Democrats losing ground on the issue of K-12 education. I’m wondering if your own levels of trust in political leaders and education authorities have diminished.

The process of reporting this book has complicated my view of public schooling. 

That’s a pretty broad thing to say, but basically: I thought of public schooling as a public good and something that needed to be freely available to all people, and I still think that. But I also very much understand the perspective of people who feel betrayed by public schools, wherever they’re coming from politically 鈥� whether they think public schools are racist, or that they’re not representing their family’s point of view, or whatever. There’s been such a fraying of the consensus around what is really our major piece of social infrastructure for families. In terms of the , a lot of parents feel like they were forced to exit. 

Of course, time will tell. There’s a powerful pull back to normal, and some families are changing what they’re doing. You see a lot of expressions of relief about coming back [to school]. But from what I understand of , both politically red districts and districts that reopened sooner 鈥� those are often one and the same 鈥� are reporting a rebound in enrollment. Politically blue districts, and those that opened up later or kept mask mandates in place, are continuing to lose students, which is what we’re seeing in New York City. That’s more important than what people say in polls, I think.

I take your point that school closures were mostly uncontroversial when they were first enacted. From my recollection, the point where some of this dissatisfaction began to set in was in fall 2020. According to Burbio data you cite in the book, 42 percent of students returned to all-remote schools that September. 

I actually think it’s more. The federal government released a report in February 2021 breaking things down schools by what they offered: in-person, fully remote, or hybrid. But we know that within the in-person and hybrid categories, there were also families that chose remote instruction. In that study, around half of all students were still fully remote that February, so it’s pretty safe to say that a majority of kids were in remote-only schools in fall of 2020; probably only about one-third had an in-person option.

In New York City, to my knowledge, about one-third of kids were actually showing up to school at that time. And that was an 鈥渙pen district.鈥�

Okay, that’s an important caveat. Whatever the exact figure was, massive numbers of kids didn’t have the option of attending school in-person, even months after some comparable countries had fully switched back. Why?

They had not planned to come back in-person. There was a statement by Gov. Gavin Newsom in summer of 2020 about potentially opening up for summer schools; as we know, California schools didn’t reopen until spring 2021. So they just didn’t do the planning necessary. We might also say that states didn’t have the necessary resources in terms of public health tracking and contact tracing. I spoke to a woman employed as a contract tracer in New Jersey, and her experience in that job was why she didn’t send her kid to school. She was like, “This isn’t working.”

The testing also wasn’t in place in 2020, and obviously, there was opposition from people who didn’t believe their workplace was going to be safe. Some of the opposition came in the form of bringing cardboard coffins to marches and saying that children were going to die. That was not supported by the evidence, but it was scary.

The messaging was very heated on both sides of the reopening debate. What I don’t really remember was a more dispassionate accounting that weighed the legitimate public health concerns of both families and school employees against the legitimate educational and social needs of kids. 

Absolutely. That was not done. And we can see that from the fact that there was no real attempt to triage the situation. 

San Francisco tried to do this. They said, “We have lists of kids who are in foster care, kids who are in substandard housing, kids who are recent immigrants, and kids who are disabled, and we’re going to prioritize them for inclusion in learning hubs.” Okay, great. But they only created half of the hub spaces they said they would. The failure is in not balancing what you’ve articulated as important needs, and instead allowing chaos in the market to take place instead of those things.

You mentioned child care, which was a troubled industry even before the pandemic. In the book, you memorably refer to a “laser maze” of obstacles to access care. What did the pandemic teach us about how the United States provides services in this area?

The pandemic made it really obvious that we have no infrastructure for care in this country, and in fact, it would be exaggerating to call it a system. There’s been research showing that a certain percentage of child care providers use their own food stamps to feed kids in their care because our subsidy system doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. 

We also learned that it’s essential infrastructure, and people can’t go to work without child care. What we rely on for young kids is a gradient of unpaid and underpaid care. COVID made a certain amount of people recognize that, and I was very happy to see some of these ideas [for child care and pre-K subsidies] in Congress. But seeing them yanked away in this version of is really disheartening and makes you ask what it’s going to take for politicians to change this. 

Among the big priorities the Biden administration wanted to address in January 2021 鈥� and even including some that weren’t big priorities then, like inflation 鈥� most have been acted upon. Not child care or pre-K.

Yeah. Political theorists would probably say that the climate movement pushed their issue to the top of the agenda. Health care for seniors has always been a win for politicians, and there’s a clear constituency of people who vote a lot on that issue. But when do moms have time to march? When can they crowd into Nancy Pelosi’s office and make it unavoidable for this to change? I’d love dads to do this too, but my point is that it takes organizing.

We both cover education research. How do you grade the performance of education experts and policy specialists, many of whom gained big microphones over the last few years? You brought up Burbio, which I definitely hadn’t heard of before 2020, but I was thinking of figures like Brown University economist Emily Oster: people who were not affiliated with government but took it upon themselves to gather what information was available and communicate it to the public.

That question is going to be the subject of a lot of research and reflection going forward: How does this ability to speak directly to the public affect how research is conducted, how it’s publicized and how it shapes public opinion?

We talked about the vacuum of guidance from the federal government in the early stages of COVID, which kind of distorted the whole information ecosystem. And then the virus kept changing in really uncertain ways such that Omicron acted differently than Delta, which acted differently from the first wave. People really wanted certainty, and there wasn’t certainty to be found, so it was a foregone conclusion that people peddling reassurance were going to get a lot of attention. 

Do you have anyone specific in mind?

My previous book was about screen time, which is a hotly contested area without as much data as you’d like. It’s also a situation that’s always changing because new forms of media emerge. Something I found very useful during the pandemic was just being able to fairly convey that truth to parents that just want information to navigate their day. You have to be very clear about what you don’t know and how to make a decision depending on what your specific concerns are.

I think that was why someone like Emily Oster got so popular. Her wasn’t telling people what to do, it was a framework for making decisions.

For me, the urgent need for information made the pandemic a unique period of connection between reporters and readers. I imagine you were getting a ton of feedback, both positive and negative, from parents on Twitter as the various COVID debates raged on.

The uncertainty was so excruciating that it led people to retreat to their corners and take refuge in what their tribe was doing. That’s why there was this subset of people who were like, “I’m a liberal mom who thinks my toddler shouldn’t have to wear a mask anymore. But people hate me for that and think that I’m a Trump supporter.” 

Because it was so polarized, it was very hard to deal with these gaps. Or sometimes there weren’t even gaps! It was more like, “You have a child with a speech impediment, but we have a grandparent at home, so our concerns are different.” There was a need to give people a little more grace.

I’d add that we’re education reporters, not science reporters, and when we had to call up epidemiologists to get your story, there was a lot of caution around that. It was hard for a lot of reporters, and that led to gaps in coverage: We were comfortable talking about what was happening academically but not as comfortable talking about public health. For that, we really listened to the health experts, and the priority of the health experts was preventing even one case of COVID. With a little more confidence, we could have taken a broader view and said, “We might be reducing COVID spread by x amount, but what’s happening to these kids at home?”

This wasn’t even a phenomenon restricted to the education press. In spring 2020, you could get the feeling that the only relevant expertise was in health. It almost would have been strange if reporters didn’t become deferential around experts in that field. 

“Deferential” is the exact right word. And the solution for it was for education reporters to stay in our lane and report on what was happening to kids. I realized early on that NPR didn’t have a child care beat; we didn’t have a child welfare reporter, so we didn’t really know what was happening as far as kids getting abused and not being flagged by a mandatory reporter. 

We just had a schools desk with three reporters for the whole country, and one was doing higher ed. That wasn’t enough to cover what was happening to kids, particularly when schools were closed.

It takes so long to pitch, write, and edit a book like this. I’m curious how much changed after you submitted your first draft to the publisher, and if you had to rewrite a lot of this as conditions on the ground evolved.

I would say that trend lines basically continued, but the closures of the Omicron winter really impacted learning in 2021-22 鈥� so much so that I don’t think it’s really fair to call it a recovery year. The amount of closures and quarantining and chronic absenteeism were too grave to say there was a huge amount of recovery, as opposed to just creeping back to normal. 

The school leaders I know are just beginning to contemplate what a full, normal year might look like, and is being framed accordingly. They’re very clear now 鈥� now 鈥� in saying that kids should be in school at all costs. In that way, Ifeel like public opinion and people’s experiences have evolved to the point that they’re ready to have this conversation. And I hope we do have it; I hope we don’t rush to saying, “Why aren’t you over that yet?” or, “There’s a huge achievement gap, why haven’t these kids caught up yet?” Like, let’s not forget what happened here.

So is it possible for 2022-23 to be the first post-COVID year? And what’s it going to take to make that happen?

I do think it’s possible. But in order for that to happen, we need to be clear-eyed about what has already happened. It’s a little frustrating to see schools lurching from crisis to crisis, and there’s a crisis rhetoric around schools that doesn’t always match reality. We’re hearing about a teacher shortage, for instance, but there were teacher shortages before the pandemic. And also, schools are listing a lot more vacancies; it’s not so much a shortage as schools trying to hire more people.

So there is a chance for recovery. In order for there to be recovery, schools need to do what they say they’re going to do in their [American Rescue Plan] plans and not lose sight of their responsibility to help the most vulnerable and the kids who lost out the most in this pandemic.

The premise of your book was that a year of learning was stolen; what needs to be done to restore what was lost?

You have to hear, without interrupting, what harm was suffered. You hear what kids went through. And then you try to give them back what they lost. That’s going to take time, but it can be done. A wonderful thing about children is that they have time, and the investment you make today will pay off many times in the future. We just need to give them that chance.

See previous 74 Interviews: Harvard economist Thomas Kane on reversing COVID learning loss, Seattle superintendent Susan Enfield on 700 days of learning disruptions, and Arizona assistant principal Beth Lehr on the pandemic鈥檚 effect on teachers. The full archive is here. 

When New York Mayor Bill de Blasio last month said he鈥檚 requiring all city students, teachers, and staff to show up to school this fall in-person, no exceptions, he stunned longtime observers of the nation鈥檚 largest public school system.

鈥淵ou would think that online learning was some new frontier for the New York City Department of Education that had never been tried before,鈥� said Tom Liam Lynch, a former teacher who is editor-in-chief of the parent-focused city website .

The reality, he and others say, is that the city has spent millions of dollars and much of the last decade leading the way on innovations in the realm of remote, blended, and personalized learning. For de Blasio to push for 100 percent in-person schooling, Lynch and others say, is a significant turnaround.

At the moment, more than six in 10 New York City students are still learning from home, but de Blasio on May 23 said that will soon come to an end, telling MSNBC鈥檚 , 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 have a full recovery without full-strength schools, everyone back, sitting in those classrooms, kids learning again.鈥�

The change will affect about 1 million students.

For Lynch, who also directs education policy for the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School, the announcement seemed to ignore educators鈥� efforts to strengthen the city鈥檚 distance learning capabilities 鈥� work that could have given students a leg up during the worst of the pandemic.

In 2010, under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and schools Chancellor Joel Klein, the city鈥檚 Innovation Zone, or iZone, debuted with a ton of fanfare. At its heart was an experimental effort called iLearn, a blended learning system that sought to personalize instruction by allowing students in selected schools to learn remotely in many cases 鈥� schools used the system for everything from 鈥渙ccasional online credit recovery to full-blown blended learning and flipped-classroom models,鈥� .

It debuted with 81 schools, a number that soon doubled.

iZone also gave 50 middle- and high-school leaders an opportunity to redesign their schools. And it incubated a middle-school math program, known as School of One (now called Teach to One), that allowed students to work independently online from within their school. A digital display, reminiscent of an airport 鈥渁rriving flights鈥� screen, directed students to individualized lessons from dozens of providers.

Among School of One鈥檚 most significant innovations was a back-end data system that gave teachers real-time reports for each student, guiding upcoming assignments and directing them to small groups for help. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a model that seems certain to make us question assumptions about how we organize classrooms and schools,鈥� the journal noted in 2011.

iZone鈥檚 high-tech appeal was 鈥渢he easiest to grasp 鈥� and 鈥榠Zone鈥� had 鈥榠鈥� in front of the name,鈥� said Steven Hodas, who led the program until 2014. 鈥淏ut that was really just part of a theory of action that was about fundamentally rethinking time, space, and place.鈥�

Sea change under de Blasio

iZone was expected to grow to 400 schools, but the program underwent what can only be described as a meltdown in 2014, after federal innovation grants dried up and de Blasio, a Democrat, became mayor. New Chancellor Carmen Fari帽a disbanded the office that oversaw the program, and soon several directors and staffers, including Hodas, resigned.

Simultaneously, Fari帽a worked with the city鈥檚 teachers union, United Federation of Teachers, to bring in its own 鈥渋nnovation program,鈥� dubbed Progressive Redesign Opportunity Schools for Excellence, or PROSE.

The result: iZone鈥檚 budget shrank from $47 million in 2013 to $3.2 million in 2017, reported. It went from a staff of 65 to just 14.

Today, clicking on iZone鈥檚 URL delivers a saying it doesn鈥檛 exist.

Research on remote schooling is mixed. A 2019 by researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder鈥檚 National Education Policy Center found that graduation rates at virtual and blended-learning schools were far lower than the national 85 percent average for public schools.

While have said iZone and similar ideas are promising for big-city systems, no large-scale evaluations of iZone have emerged since 2014. One small 2017 study by a graduate student at New York鈥檚 St. John鈥檚 University found that students in iLearn 鈥渂lended learning鈥� programs statistically significant greater mean scores in Algebra I Regents exams than their peers in traditional schools.

A few of the efforts, such as the personalized system under School of One, are still operating in a handful of schools, but observers say the effort has diminished in importance in the face of de Blasio鈥檚 new priorities, such as community schools and universal pre-K.

As for PROSE, a by the advocacy group StudentsFirstNY found that schools in the program displayed 鈥渓imited innovation,鈥� as well as 鈥渓ackluster improvement,鈥� producing lower reading and math scores than others in the city. It also said the program suffered from poor transparency, noting that the city took 14 months to respond 鈥� incompletely, as it turns out 鈥� to a public records request.

For Lynch, a parent of a city middle-schooler, the shift that took place around 2014 helps explain why New York, like other districts, has struggled to meet kids鈥� needs over the past year.

鈥淭his is not just a story of another big school district [that] just scrambled and tried to figure out online learning as best they could,鈥� he said. 鈥淭his was a system that had actually, infrastructurally been set up for online learning 鈥� and to scale it. …Who made the call to essentially disempower and, if not defund that work, to really just relegate it to the periphery? Because that makes what happened last March even more inexcusable. And it makes this announcement even more unacceptable.鈥�

Sarah Cohodes, an economics and education professor at Columbia University鈥檚 Teachers College, said what鈥檚 most striking about de Blasio鈥檚 announcement is that it follows the city鈥檚 鈥渉uge investment鈥� in getting devices and Internet access into students鈥� hands over the past year, even announcing a virtual end to snow days. 鈥淚n my imagination, that was happening in the context of having some sort of remote infrastructure that could be turned on or off for more or fewer kids depending on the circumstances. So I’m not sure exactly what they are expecting those days to be like,鈥� she said.

Longtime education researcher said losing remote learning will take a toll: 鈥淭he great thing about New York has been that many different things have been available 鈥� alternative schools and alternative pathways to graduation. And some of those have actually been helped along by the development of pretty good online materials.鈥�

Asked whether any schools would be allowed to operate remotely in the fall, city schools officials referred to the city鈥檚 reopening announcement. In it, United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew says the union welcomes 鈥渢he return to in-person instruction for all students in September.鈥� But even Mulgrew has pleaded for a remote option, last month that the city should create 鈥渁 small but efficient remote alternative for parents who still feel they need it.鈥�

De Blasio isn鈥檛 the only leader cutting off remote learning this fall. Across the Hudson River, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on May 17 that the state鈥檚 public schools would similarly return to in-person instruction. In Connecticut, officials have said they 鈥� the need to mandate鈥� remote learning in the fall.

鈥業 think it鈥檚 crazy鈥�

Meanwhile, at least six states have created iZones of their own, according to .

鈥淎round the country I鈥檓 hearing about more states, and more districts, that are really integrating innovation into their core strategy,鈥� said Joel Rose, who founded and led School of One in its heyday. 鈥淭hey’re saying, 鈥楲ook, remote learning didn鈥檛 work for everyone, but it did work for some kids.鈥� And the question is, 鈥榃hat can we learn from those experiences for when kids come back?鈥欌��

He noted that so-called , modeled after iZone principles, have taken root in Texas and are 鈥済rowing quite a bit in popularity.鈥�

Rose, who now runs , a nonprofit that is working to expand the School of One model nationwide, said the organization has seen 鈥渁 significant uptick in demand for what we do鈥� since the pandemic began.

Hill, who founded the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) at the University of Washington-Bothell, said many students have realized during the pandemic that school 鈥渋s a pretty tough place for them to be. And to kind of ignore all that, I think, is going to further weaken the support base of public education.鈥�

After his Morning Joe announcement, de Blasio told a news briefing, 鈥淚t鈥檚 time for everyone to come back, it鈥檚 time for us all to be together, time to do things the way they were meant to be done.鈥� But iZone鈥檚 Hodas, now a senior fellow at CRPE, took issue with the idea that online learning is somehow inferior.

鈥淚 think it鈥檚 crazy that it鈥檚 being positioned as purely a negative space,鈥� he said. In New York as elsewhere, many students aren鈥檛 thrilled with the prospect of 鈥渟chlepping back to these shitty, oppressive environments five days a week to do pretend life.鈥�

Older students, he said, could be working or helping out with family duties. 鈥淭hey could be progressing at their own pace at different subjects, and they can do something that鈥檚 much more competency-based. And it鈥檚 just nuts that de Blasio is acting as if, again, for high school kids, being back in school is like the Holy Grail. It鈥檚 not, for a lot of people.鈥�

As more Americans receive Covid-19 vaccines and schools move to reopen widely, leaders are doing their best to make sure everyone gets the memo: School is happening in-person this fall.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently , 鈥淲e must prepare now for full in-person instruction come next school year.鈥�

In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy said in March he is 鈥溾�� schools across the state to return in-person in the fall, no exceptions. 鈥淲e are expecting Monday through Friday, in-person, every school, every district,鈥� he said.

Good luck with that.

Even as vaccination rates soar and the government authorizes access for adolescents, school districts nationwide are grappling with sometimes widespread suspicion and dissatisfaction over how they handled the pandemic, especially in communities of color. That鈥檚 forcing them to offer families an option that might have been unthinkable a year ago 鈥� and one that has a terrible track record: enrolling their children online this fall and continuing learning from home.

Dawn Williams, whose daughter will start first grade in August in Maryland鈥檚 Prince George鈥檚 County, said she鈥檚 seriously considering an online program. 鈥淢ost of my friends that have children, their kids are still virtual,鈥� she said.

So far it鈥檚 happening in just a fraction of the nation鈥檚 13,500 districts. But those include a wide mix of rural and suburban districts, as well as large urban school systems like Albuquerque, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Dallas, Indianapolis, Nashville, Omaha, Richmond, and the District of Columbia, according to the University of Washington鈥檚 Center for the Reinvention of Public Education (CRPE).

In Colorado鈥檚 Jefferson County, the school district, responding to 鈥渉igh demand鈥� from families, an online option in the fall. District spokesperson Cameron Bell said more than 700 students have enrolled so far, with at least 1,000 expected by August.

In Montgomery County, the largest school district in Maryland, officials are developing a virtual academy 鈥渢o address both the students who may want to remain virtual for health reasons but also those who have thrived in virtual learning,鈥� said spokesperson Gboyinde Onijala.

What鈥檚 going on here?

Much of this can be chalked up to simple consumer demand. One recent found that nearly 30 percent of parents would rely on virtual learning 鈥渋ndefinitely鈥� going forward. That suggests a potential market of more than 15 million students.

Districts are listening. When RAND researchers surveyed about 320 public school leaders last October, they found that were either considering or actually planning to keep 鈥渙ne or more virtual schools鈥� operating after the pandemic ends, said RAND鈥檚 Heather Schwartz.

鈥淚 expect that to hold, or even to increase somewhat based on early anecdotal indications that a sizable minority of students and parents prefer remote learning,鈥� Schwartz said via email.

More recently, in early April, researchers at CRPE surveyed officials in 100 large urban school districts and found nearly identical results: 23, or just over one in five, plan to offer a remote option next fall.

District leaders told Schwartz and other researchers that their main motivation was 鈥渢o be responsive to parent and student preferences鈥� 鈥� and in no small part to improve sagging enrollments. of 33 states by The Associated Press and the education news site Chalkbeat found that public K-12 enrollment in 2020 dropped by more than half a million students, or 2 percent.

鈥淵ou keep hearing this word: 鈥榯hriving鈥欌��

As he talks these days to school leaders nationwide, education consultant John Bailey said he hears many of them say they plan to make online learning 鈥渁 more permanent part of their offering to kids going forward.鈥� A one-time U.S. Department of Education official who now advises the Walton Family Foundation, Bailey has supported the idea that reopening schools is safe. He said that while many educators acknowledge millions of students lost ground via distance learning, 鈥渇or some kids, it鈥檚 working really well. So why not offer that going forward?鈥�

Nationwide, families of color are keeping their children home at especially high rates. In Chicago, the district鈥檚 chief of school management told school board members late last month that most students are 鈥渓earning virtually.鈥� But about one in four Black high school students was absent from both in-person and remote learning in late April. Overall, only about two-thirds of high school students attended in-person classes on days they were expected in school, the Chicago Sun-Times .

At the same time, Asian fourth-graders attend school remotely at the of any group 鈥� 95 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Eighth-graders attend at an even higher rate: 96 percent. Asian families have expressed fears about their children experiencing anti-Asian discrimination or even violence in the wake of the pandemic.

While state and local restrictions can play a part in attendance statistics like these, many families are simply voting with their feet, said Bree Dusseault, a practitioner in residence at CRPE.

鈥淭here鈥檚 still a really sizable population of students who, even when given the option to be in-person, aren鈥檛 taking it,鈥� she said.

鈥淵ou keep hearing this word: 鈥榯hriving鈥� 鈥� particularly in families of color,鈥� said Annette Anderson, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Safe and Healthy Schools in Baltimore. 鈥淒istricts have never had to wrestle with 鈥楬ow do we provide education in multiple formats?鈥� They thought this was a stopgap. Now what I think they鈥檙e finding is that there are many parents that were just fine with virtual learning.鈥�

Anderson, a Black educator who is also a mother of three teens, said the past year has taught parents 鈥渢hat they have a voice at the table 鈥� and they are not being shy and retiring about letting people know what they want in terms of how they want their children to learn.鈥�

Recent survey data suggest that Black, Hispanic and Asian parents are more likely than their white peers to say they prefer online learning. For instance, the journal recently noted data from early April that showed 60 percent of white parents have a preference for in-person learning, compared to just 25 percent of Black and Hispanic parents.

At the same time, Dusseault said, many parents of color see how badly education systems have served their kids in the past, with substandard instruction and .

When Anderson surveyed her three children recently, none wanted to go back to their Baltimore school this fall. They like learning from home and have been successful.

鈥淚 think my kids sometimes miss their friends,鈥� she said. 鈥淏ut aside from that, I don鈥檛 have any of my three children saying right now, 鈥楳om, I want to go back to school today or tomorrow.鈥� They have adapted to this.鈥�

Anderson was quick to add that her kids 鈥渉ave every kind of technology possible,鈥� as well as space at home to use it. All three have their own rooms, plus their home has a backyard. But whatever their situations, she said, 鈥淭here are a lot of kids who are at home and they鈥檙e thriving. You can鈥檛 negate the success of those students and the opportunity that they have had to be separated from their peers and still do well academically.鈥�

Williams, mother of the Maryland first-grader, said her daughter is already doing advanced work 鈥� and she鈥檇 like to keep it that way. Giving her child a chance to work virtually and independently is key.

鈥淪tudents that are more advanced 鈥� and parents that have the choice 鈥� we鈥檙e going to keep our kids home,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hose kids are going to accelerate. They’re going to soar and they鈥檙e going to keep advancing.鈥�

鈥淪chool hesitancy鈥� and safety

Vladimir Kogan, an Ohio State University political scientist who studies politics and public policy, said 鈥渟chool hesitancy鈥� may in part be a function of the messages families hear 鈥� especially in places where teachers鈥� unions loudly demonstrated last year, enacting and the like to warn of the dangers of reopening schools.

鈥淚 think that messaging has definitely filtered down to the parents,鈥� he said.

But has shown that when prevention strategies are in place in schools, transmission of the virus is typically lower than, or similar to, levels of community transmission, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As a result, public opinion is shifting. A February Pew found that 61 percent of Americans said K-12 schools that weren鈥檛 open for in-person instruction 鈥渟hould give a lot of consideration to the possibility that students will fall behind academically.鈥� That鈥檚 up from 48 percent last July. And fewer Americans said schools should give a lot of consideration to the risk to teachers or students.

鈥淚 think the number of parents who are hesitant is going to go down pretty substantially,鈥� Kogan said. 鈥淏ut I don’t think it’s going to go down to zero.鈥�

Bailey, who recently summarizing research on safe school re-openings amid Covid fears, predicted that there will be a group of parents 鈥渨ho will probably never feel that it鈥檚 safe until there鈥檚 a vaccine for kids.鈥�

The prognosis on vaccines seems promising: This week, both the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved expanded use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children 12 to 15 years old. Pfizer also said it鈥檒l ask the FDA for emergency authorization in September to administer its vaccine to children as young as 2 years old.

Both Johnson & Johnson and Moderna are conducting trials in children.The U.S. vaccine developer Novavax is also on children 鈥� its vaccine has a reported 96 percent efficacy rate in adults and is awaiting emergency use authorization in the U.S.

A 鈥渞eally terrible鈥� track record for virtual schools

Kogan, the political scientist, worries that by relying on virtual schools, districts are embracing a well-studied 鈥� and failed 鈥� reform.

In a 2019 , researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder鈥檚 National Education Policy Center found that graduation rates at virtual and blended-learning schools were far lower than the national average for public schools. The review followed years of from researchers nationwide.

In 2016, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, along with other groups, issued 鈥淎 Call to Action鈥� to , saying far too many virtual schools 鈥渉ave experienced notable problems.鈥�

At the student level, most of the dilemma lies in what鈥檚 required for students to be successful in virtual settings: huge amounts of self-control, motivation and discipline, said Kogan, who last January that found worse declines in reading achievement among Ohio third-graders in districts that used fully remote instruction.

The track record of these programs 鈥渨as terrible before Covid,鈥� Kogan said. 鈥淎nd I think it鈥檚 certainly the case that there are kids who do fine. But the districts are not saying, 鈥榃e鈥檙e going to limit it only to kids who do fine.鈥欌��

To be fair, many educators get it. In its announcement of a 鈥渕odified digital learning option,鈥� the , district last month offered an official warning: 鈥淒igital learning is not optimal for every student. Some students did not do as well academically, socially, or emotionally in the digital learning environment.鈥�

In the long term, Kogan said, his larger worry is that this could open the door to a two-tier education system: a bigger, functional one for students whose parents are comfortable sending them to school, and a smaller, inferior one 鈥渇or kids whose parents are too scared and keep them home.鈥�

The long-term damage, he said, 鈥渋s going to be so devastating. It鈥檚 going to exacerbate all the inequalities that we already have.鈥�

Anderson, the Baltimore educator and mother, acknowledged the dilemma, but emphasized it was nothing new: Millions of kids weren鈥檛 being served well before the pandemic. Here鈥檚 a chance for something better, especially for students of color who are already staying away in large numbers.

While leaders may insist that everyone attend in-person on the first day of school this fall, Anderson said, 鈥淚鈥檓 not hearing what is going to significantly shift over the summer that is going to make sure that these large numbers of families of color are going to suddenly show up in September.鈥�