Making a case for studying pandemic’s overall impact on students | American Federation of Teachers New Jersey, AFL-CIO

Boston University Wheelock College of Education’s Andrew Bacher-Hicks and Joshua Goodman are not among those who are “framing the pandemic as a ‘natural experiment’ for studying specific educational interventions.”

Writing for Education Next, they recommend that researchers “focus on helping education leaders understand the overall impact of the pandemic on students, putting particular emphasis on discovering which groups have suffered the worst effects.”

“The best evidence to date indicates that COVID-19 has had a substantial negative impact overall and has disproportionately harmed the learning of disadvantaged students,” they add. “Continued research in this direction could provide a sharper picture of which students have faced the most severe challenges under COVID-19, pointing the way toward how best to allocate resources to address learning losses.”