Abstract
ABSTRACT Recent research on the effects of school cancellations because of snow or storms confirms what school authorities in Canada and the United States have understood for some time: missed school days have a detrimental effect upon student learning. Disrupted instructional time and student learning have been analyzed in Massachusetts and in policy studies conducted in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. One 2012 study in Massachusetts showed a strong relationship between student absences and achievement, but little or no impact attributable to inclement-weather school closures. Yet on balance, most research studies link school-day cancellations with declining student test scores. This research note assesses the impact of storm closings in Nova Scotia between the school years 2008-2009 and 2017-2018. There, the number of snow days is normally double that of Massachusetts and reported rates of student absenteeism are higher. This study assesses the ‘accumulative effect’ of missing whole school days, planned and unplanned, on student mathematics scores and high-school completion, and it proposes a some policy responses. Some consideration is given also to the profound impact of COVID-19 school disruptions and remote learning experiments on the changing policy landscapes in both Nova Scotia and Massachusetts.
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