Students Attending School Remotely Suffer Socially, Emotionally, and Academically

Abstract

What is the social, emotional, and academic impact of attending school remotely rather than in person? We address this urgent policy issue using survey data collected from N = 6,576 high school students in a large, demographically diverse school district that allowed families to choose either format in fall 2020. Controlling for baseline measures of well-being collected one month before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as student demographics and other administrative data from official school records, students who attended school remotely reported lower levels of social, emotional, and academic well-being (ES = 0.10, 0.08, and 0.07 standard deviations, respectively) than classmates who attended school in person—differences that were consistent across gender, race and ethnicity, and socioeconomic status subgroups but significantly wider for older compared to younger students.