Abstract
By 15 April 2020, more than 1.5 billion students worldwide experienced school closures in an effort to slow the spread of a novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), during the worldwide coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. These interruptions in formal in-person educational experiences caused adverse consequences on school-age children’s academic outcomes. Using a pre-existing database, we calculated changes in children’s reading ability without formal education (i.e., the summer months). The resultant models predicted that the rate of reading ability gain in kindergarten children during COVID-19 school closures without formal in-person education will decrease 66% (2.46 vs. 7.17 points/100 days), compared to the business-as-usual scenario, resulting in a 31% less reading ability gain from 1 January 2020 to 1 September 2020. Additionally, the model predicted that kindergarten children who have books read to them daily would have 2.3 points less loss (42%) compared to those who do not, who are predicted to have a 5.6-point loss during the same time period. Even though reading books to children will not substitute the critical role of formal education in teaching children how to read, families, educators, and policy makers can promote this simple strategy to facilitate and maintain reading ability gain during school closures, which may be a common occurrence as nations see the public health benefits of physical distancing for the current and future pandemic outbreaks.
Highlights
To stop the spread of a novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2(SARS-CoV-2), during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, by 15 April 2020, 91.3%of children enrolled in formal schooling—1.5 billion children worldwide from 192 countries—were ordered to stay home [1]
We are interested in whether these differences persist in COVID-19 school closures; we modeled the rates of reading ability gain in kindergarten children in families with different socioeconomic backgrounds
During the summer childrenreceived received no from schools and the reading ability gain decreased to children no formal formaleducation education from schools andrate theofrate of reading ability gain decreased
Summary
To stop the spread of a novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2(SARS-CoV-2), during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, by 15 April 2020, 91.3%of children enrolled in formal schooling—1.5 billion children worldwide from 192 countries—were ordered to stay home [1]. The interruptions in formal in-person educational experiences adversely impacted school-age children [2]. All fifty states in the U.S had closed their schools for at least 3 weeks, and 49 states had closed all public and private schools for the rest of the 2019–2020 academic year [3]. In these unprecedented times, children will be out of school half as much as they were in school this academic year (approximately 92 days out of 180 days) [4]. High income + high education (Score Per. 100 Days) β2 Rate during.
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