The Biggest Disruption in the History of American Education

On March 4, 2020, a week before the World Health Organization formally declared the coronavirus a global pandemic, Northshore School District, in Washington State, closed its doors, becoming the first in the country to announce a districtwide shift to online learning. Within three weeks, every public-school building in the United States had been closed and 50 million students had been sent home. Half of these students would not reenter their schools for more than a year. No other high-income country in the world relied to such a great extent on remote instruction. The coronavirus caused by far the biggest disruption in the history of American education. Neither the Great Depression nor even the two World Wars imposed anything close to as drastic a change in how America’s schoolchildren spent their days.

Adulthood is stasis: Any year in one’s 50s tends to be much like the next. But childhood is growth, and when schools closed, they shut children out of the place where much of this growth happens. Some of the lost growth was academic and social, as school closures cut children off from teachers and friends. These losses were compounded by children’s exclusion from an array of other goods and services. In the United States, almost all public services for school-age children in some way run through schools. Schools provide nutrition; dental care; nursing services; mental-health care; physical, occupational, and speech therapy; child care for teen parents; referrals to social workers and child-welfare agencies; and laundry facilities and clothing for homeless students. Even in an era of mass shootings and COVID outbreaks, schools are the for children. Moreover, schools don’t