Arguments against school closures during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, 2020-21

This page captures the main arguments that have been advanced against school closures during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. These arguments come from a variety of sources, including public officials, journalists, think tanks, economists, scientists, and other stakeholders. We encourage you to share the debates happening in your local community to editor@ballotpedia.org.

There are eight main types of arguments against school closures:

• School closures are ineffective in preventing the spread of the virus
• School closures pose significant unintended consequences
• School closures and reopening plans have disparate economic effects
• School closures and distance learning exacerbate digital divide
• Reopen schools to protect the economy
• School-aged children have reduced COVID-19 risk
• Re-opening schools should be the highest priority
• School closures violate students’ constitutional rights

Click here to read about arguments in favor of school closures.

School closures are ineffective in preventing the spread of the virus

Claim: Schools closures are not the most effective means to slow the spread of infection

• University College London (The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health): 

  "[A study] concluded that school closure as an isolated measure was predicted to reduce total deaths by around 2–4% during a COVID-19 outbreak in the UK, whereas single measures such as case isolation would be more effective, and a combination of measures would be the most effective. The authors concluded that school closure is predicted to be insufficient to mitigate (never mind suppress) the COVID-19 pandemic in isolation, which is in contrast to seasonal influenza epidemics where children are the key drivers of transmission." - "School closure and management practices during coronavirus outbreaks including COVID-19: a rapid systematic review," April 6, 2020.

• Buffalo News Editorial Board (Buffalo News): "As schools began welcoming students back last fall, their protocols made those buildings the safer place to be. School mandated and enforced mask-wearing. They implemented traffic patterns and seating arrangements to provide distance. They tested for the novel coronavirus. And, as counterintuitive as it seems, failing to send children to school could actually elevate community spread. For one thing, parents who couldn’t remain at home had to find child care, which was in diminishing supply and liable to be less safe than a well supervised school." - "Buffalo schools finally and belatedly seem ready to reopen," January 21, 2021.

Claim: Fall 2020 data indicates re-opening schools does not increase virus transmission

• Margaret A. Honein, PhD, Center for Disease Control (Journal of American Medical Association): "As many schools have reopened for in-person instruction in some parts of the US as well as internationally, school-related cases of COVID-19 have been reported, but there has been little evidence that schools have contributed meaningfully to increased community transmission. . .[And] the preponderance of available evidence from the fall school semester has been reassuring insofar as the type of rapid spread that was frequently observed in congregate living facilities or high-density worksites has not been reported in education settings in schools." - "Data and Policy to Guide Opening Schools Safely to Limit the Spread of SARS-CoV-2 Infection," January 26, 2021.

Claim: Teachers are at greater COVID-19 risk outside the classroom

• Chicago Tribune Editorial Board (Chicago Tribune): "Teachers in Chicago, like many residents of Chicago, have gone out of town, mingled with family or friends, gone out to dinner, gone shopping or even flown on an airplane, all of which could have exposed them to the coronavirus. They’re not living like hermits. So why not wear a mask and go back to school?" - "Teachers stay home due to science, then ignore science when it’s time to go back," February 1, 2021.

• Dr. Rebecca Same (New York Times): "I completely understand teachers’ and other school employees’ fear about returning to school, but there are now many well-conducted scientific studies showing that it is safe for schools to reopen with appropriate precautions, even without vaccination. They are much more likely to get infected from the outside community and from family members than from school contacts." - "The C.D.C. urges reopening schools and sets out new guidelines for doing so," February 17, 2021.

Claim: There are safe and flexible options to bring students and teachers back to the classroom

• Los Angeles Times Editorial Board (Los Angeles Times): "In areas where COVID-19 rates are quieting down in California, even somewhat, some school doors should be swinging open. It should start with the most vulnerable students — those with special physical or learning needs, as L.A. Unified was doing safely before the most recent surge. Then the youngest students should be brought back. They are the least able to learn remotely and the least likely to pick up and transmit infection.Some remote education will have to continue. Some classes might have to operate part-time, placing students in shifts to allow for physical distancing. Older students might remain at home for longer. There’s room for flexibility in assignments and schedules to let the most at-risk teachers continue to work remotely." - "Editorial: Start reopening California schools. Now," February 5, 2021.

School closures pose significant unintended consequences

Claim: School closures could result in a loss of learning

• Betsy DeVos, U.S. secretary of education (EducationNext): "Everyone needs to rethink education, to get creative about ways to serve students—and that has never been more clear than it is right now. We don’t know how long Covid-19 will disrupt our lives and we will undoubtedly face challenges again in the future. I’m focused on supporting schools in building capacity to be better prepared. I’m also thinking a lot about the current learning loss and how students can make up for lost time." - "Betsy DeVos on Coronavirus: What Are the Feds Doing to Help Schools?," April 8, 2020.

• Chris Minnich, chief executive officer of NWEA (CNBC): "The activities parents and educators engage in between now and September are going to be really important to making sure that this learning loss doesn’t happen. We can change this." - "Coronavirus school closures could cause epic slide in math and literacy skills," May 12, 2020.

Claim: School closures will impact the mental health of the next generation

• Doug Harris, professor at Tulane University (NPR): Tulane University Professor Doug Harris said that it took two years for students affected by Hurricane Katrina to recover their lost learning. He said the economic impact and emotional trauma affected the students as much as the school closures and that these same principles apply to students affected by the coronavirus pandemic. - "9 Out Of 10 Children Are Out Of School Worldwide. What Now?," April 2, 2020.

• James Lane, Virginia's Superintendent of Public Instruction (NPR): "I also think that there is a need for us to focus on social and emotional learning for students, and not only how we can provide the academic support, but how can we provide the mental health support and the wraparound supports for students when they come back, to help them recover and bring back that safety net of schools." - "9 Ways Schools Will Look Different When (And If) They Reopen," April 24, 2020.

Claim: School closures increase potential for childhood obesity

• Joseph Workman, a University of Missouri sociologist who focuses on educational inequality (The Counter): "As the pandemic rages on, the nation’s attention has focused on the immediate dangers of the coronavirus: the ongoing infection, hospitalization, and deaths of adults. But more than a dozen pediatricians and public health experts interviewed by The Counter say that a more subtle, insidious outcome should not be overlooked: a predicted surge in childhood weight gain, caused by the closure of schools. Workman: "It’s really a case of one health crisis exacerbating another health crisis. It’s taking what’s already considered a crisis of childhood obesity and making it worse.””The childhood obesity crisis started before Covid-19. The pandemic has made it much worse." - "The childhood obesity crisis started before Covid-19. The pandemic has made it much worse.," January 19, 2021.

School closures and reopening plans have disparate economic effects

Claim: School closures affect poor and working-class students the most

• Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft (CNBC): 

  "If your school doesn’t have that online capability, you’ve lost three months of learning. Different school districts have decided some don’t do online learning because it would be unjust in terms of the kids who don’t have online access, so that’s really a dilemma." - "Coronavirus school closures could cause epic slide in math and literacy skills," May 12, 2020.

• Michael Petrilli, a fellow at the Hoover Institution (The Washington Post): "All of this time away from school is going to be particularly devastating for poor and working-class youngsters. Their parents are often working the sorts of jobs that don’t have the option of being done virtually, and their homes are more likely to lack high-speed Internet and ample devices." - "Schools should consider keeping kids in the same grade this fall," April 6, 2020.

• Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, Lauren Sampson (WBUR): "With state of emergencies declared at the municipal, state and federal level, teachers, parents and superintendents scrambled to bring public education online. In one fell swoop, the pandemic both exposed and widened the gaps caused by years of defunding public schools. In wealthy districts, students already had access to laptops or tablets. They could receive personalized attention in smaller virtual classrooms and complete their coursework online and on-time. But in cities like Chelsea, where over 60% of students are economically disadvantaged and over 40% are English language learners, where residents are packed together in dense, multigenerational housing, often without reliable internet, and where COVID-19 infection rates are among the highest in the state, remote education has been near-impossible." - "This School Year, Low-Income Students Will Suffer The Most," September 10, 2020.

• Jarrah Faye, U of North Carolina (Vox): "The decision to plow ahead with reopening disproportionately affects low-income students, especially those who count on schools for work-study jobs, food, housing, and health care needs. The unavoidable closures in March had already displaced thousands of students, some of whom relied on mutual aid networks and the generosity of strangers and alumni to afford their move home or a place to stay. The discordant nature of how colleges are moving online have left the most economically marginalized students with minimal resources, forced to make frantic changes to their lives at the directive of their institutions." - "College reopenings — and closures — are harming low-income students," August 26, 2020.

• Laura Elder, Managing Editor (The Daily News): "Parents of means can always find ways to educate their children, whether by enrolling them in private school or hiring tutors,' Jenin Younes, a public defender in New York City wrote earlier this month in an article titled 'What’s Gone Wrong with Left-Liberalism and Lockdowns' for the conservative American Institute for Economic Research. 'But for working-class and poor parents, who do not have those options, and cannot afford a laptop per child, the continued school shutdown is an epic disaster." - "The poor suffer most when schools call for COVID shutdowns," September 7, 2020.

• David Brooks (NY Times): "This situation is especially devastating to poorer Black and brown students. Many affluent kids have fled the public school disaster for private schools. It’s Black and brown kids who live in cities with progressive mayors and powerful unions, and those are the places where in-school learning has been closed down. . .The unions are not reflecting reality. Instead of addressing legitimate fears with facts and evidence, they are using their political muscle to inflame those fears. The most vulnerable people in our country are the victims." - "Children Need to Be Back in School Tomorrow: Teacher resistance is a disaster for the most vulnerable," January 28, 2021.

School closures and distance learning exacerbate digital divide

Claim: Less access to internet and moving to on-line instruction will increase education disparities for low-income and rural households

• Janice K. Jackson, CEO Chicago Public Schools (Wired): "In my mind, the single biggest issue as it relates to educational equity—besides funding, that’s number one, so we won’t lose sight of that—is to make sure that every student has access to high-speed internet across this country." - "A ‘Covid Slide’ Could Widen the Digital Divide for Students," August 7, 2020.

• New Jersey Star-Ledger Editorial Board (NJ.com): "Even though the Department of Education maintains it’s not allowed to tell districts to use federal funds to buy laptops, the state can still effectively make sure that happens. The governor should say he won’t approve a reopening plan until he’s satisfied that every child has a computer and connectivity." - "Gov. Murphy, tell schools: You can’t reopen unless you close the digital divide," July 12, 2020.

• Fredericksburg (VA) Free Lance-Star Editorial Board (The Free Lance-Star): "With or without a pandemic, 2020 made something perfectly clear: Inside or outside of the classroom, computers and reliable internet access are the modern building blocks of Virginia’s constitutional educational promise going forward. Abandoning that responsibility over technological or financial hurdles is not a solution. Delivering a high-quality school experience requires more than identifying the problem. We need to invest in our children’s future, with tools other than stacks of textbooks." - "As schools reopen, digital divide can't be ignored," August 28, 2002.

Claim: School closures are more detrimental to students who cannot participate in remote learning

• Jason Tan, an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University’s National Institute of Education in Singapore (Bloomberg): "The biggest obstacle to closing schools is a question of equity. Not everyone has a laptop or a tablet to support online learning, and remote instruction is a challenge for younger kids regardless. Low-income families could miss out on free school meals." - "Should Schools Close to Fight Virus? These Places Say No," March 27, 2020.

Reopen schools to protect the economy

Claim: Workforce cannot adequately return to jobs until children return to in-person schooling

• Nick Morrison (Forbes): "The reality is, until children go back to school, parents will have to remain at home looking after them, and it will be impossible to fully restart the economy. And amid predictions of a global recession - with the U.S. economy shrinking at its fastest rate since the financial crisis of 2008 - the economic imperative trumps even the impact on education." - "Reopening Schools Is As Much About Economics As It Is About Education," May 1, 2020.

• Wilkes Barre PA Citizens' Voice Editorial Board (Wilkes Barre PA Citizens' Voice): "Reopening schools is crucial not only for the educational, mental and social wellbeing of millions of American children, but to make possible a rapid economic recovery. Even when parents safely can return to work, they can’t actually do so if their young children remain at home." - "Schools should have resources to reopen safely," February 15, 2021.

• John Fernald, Huiyu Li, and Mitchell Ochse, San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank economists (WHBL): "With college-educated workers far out-earning those with less education, the projected decline in overall educational attainment could trim annual U.S. output by an average of a quarter of a percentage point over the next 70 years, the [Federal Reserve Bank study] found. The hit to GDP would peak in 2045, at just shy of $150 billion in that single year, the researchers estimated. The closures may also contribute to income inequality because lower-income families likely have fewer resources to make up for lost learning than higher-income households. 'Disruptions to children’s learning today can have a persistent and large impact on the production capacity of the economy and harm future growth.. "The long-run effects of learning disruptions on the economy will depend crucially on how fast the economy recovers, which will impact how much lost education during the pandemic can be remediated." - "COVID school closures may slightly stunt U.S. economic growth: Fed paper," February 16, 2021.

• Karl Smith (Bloomberg Opinion): "In December [2020], near the height of the pandemic, seven states reported unemployment rates below 4%. Of those, four scored higher that 80% on the in-person [school instruction] index, while the other three scored above 60%. None of this means — much less proves — that opening schools will lead to lower unemployment. It does, however, lend support to the contention that the effectiveness of the stimulus will be blunted if schools remain mostly closed. Even with wildly divergent initial economic conditions, there aren’t very many employment success stories in counties with little in-person instruction." - "Biden’s economy will depend on school reopenings," February 10, 2021.

School-aged children have reduced COVID-19 risk

Claim: Data indicates that young children are less vulnerable to COVID-19, so schools should be open

• Marc Thiessen (The Washington Post): "The reason we shut down schools in the spring was because children are usually the most vulnerable group during a pandemic. But we now know that children are least vulnerable to covid-19. New York City, which was the epicenter of the pandemic, reports just 16 confirmed or suspected deaths among those 17 and younger — almost all of whom had an underlying illness." - "Schools aren’t that risky, and teachers are essential workers. We must reopen.," July 30, 2020.

• 150 Berkeley CA doctors and health care professionals, in open letter to Berkeley Unified School District (Berkeleyside.com): "As physicians, scientists, and public health professionals, we rely heavily on research evidence to guide our practice. Early on in this pandemic, in the presence of a novel pathogen, we assumed that children would be primary drivers of the virus. In that setting, school closures seemed prudent. This assumption was later disproved, and it is now clear that, with the appropriate safety measures in place, schools can, in fact, safely provide in-person instruction." - "Opinion: An open letter to BUSD — Open schools as soon as possible," February 10, 2021.

Re-opening schools should be highest priority

Claim: Policies mistakenly emphasize re-opening commerce and risky activities over re-opening schools

• Dr. Tanya Altmann, a pediatrician who practices in Southern California (CNN): "Let's try to get the kids back, and let's try to mitigate the things that maintain and just push the kind of community spread that we're trying to avoid. And those are the things that you know well -- the bars, the restaurants where you have capacity seating indoors without masks. Those are the things that drive the community spread -- not the schools." - "To open schools safely, mask up and close bars and malls," December 1, 2020.

• Katy Martin, Denver CO 3rd-grade teacher (Denver Post): "If we want classrooms open, we might have to do as this new report suggests, and limit the indoor sports practices and games that are occurring for high schoolers across the state. If we want our schools to be the centers of our community, as they have been for so much of our nation’s history, we have to prioritize making them the safest places in our communities. Our schools, where our children go to grow, develop, and learn about what it means to be a member of a community, should have the strongest safety guidelines in our state, not the weakest." - "Teachers are ready for the classroom. Is Colorado ready to keep them safe?," February 2, 2021.

• Alexander Cherniss Superintendent, Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified Schools (Palos Verdes Peninsula News): "We have hundreds of pages of policies and protocols along with millions of dollars invested in PPE and air filtration systems. Our schools are more than ready to serve kids. If we wait until our cases dip below 7 per 100,000, we could be in the summer, the fall, or who knows when. There is an inherent inequity in the determination of who can attend school and who cannot, based on which county you live in and not based on science. California must align with science, not just when it is convenient politically, but always. Vaccinations are critically important but slow to implement. The science states that all K-12 schools should reopen now." - "The case for immediately reopening all schools, all grades," February 12, 2021.

• San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board (San Diego Union-Tribune): "Community spread is being mitigated in grocery stores and other locations deemed essential. What is more essential to a community than the education of its children? These discussions have gone on long enough. All districts need reopening plans now." - "Opinion: ‘Follow the science’ and reopen schools in San Diego and elsewhere," February 12, 2021.

School closures violate students’ constitutional rights

Claim: Distance learning violates rights to education

• San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera (AP): "Distance learning is a form of instruction; it is not school.' Keeping kids out of schools 'constitutes a substantial violation of their constitutional rights." - "San Francisco sues schools, cites high of suicidal students," February 11, 2021.

Claim: States’ closure of religiously affiliated schools violates freedom of religion

• Brian Broderick, executive director of the Michigan Association of Nonpublic Schools (Bridge Michigan News): "The state’s latest order inhibits the faith formation of students and violates their constitutional right to practice religion while leaving open secular businesses where transmission of COVID-19 is more likely to occur. . .We think the decision (to hold classes in-person or go fully remote) should be made locally. At some point, we’re saying, we can do this safely, and we want to educate children according to their religious liberties." - "Catholic high schools sue for exemption from Michigan COVID closure order," December 8, 2020.

See also

• Arguments in favor of school closures during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, 2020-21
• Taxonomy of arguments about school closures during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, 2020
• Debate over school closures during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, 2020