Most governments around the world have temporarily closed educational institutions in an attempt to

contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some 1.3-1.5 billion students and youth across the planet
are affected by school and university closures. These nationwide closures are impacting over 72% of the
world’s student population. Several other countries have implemented localized closures impacting
millions of additional learners. Governments around the world are making efforts to mitigate the
immediate impact of school closures, particularly for more vulnerable and disadvantaged communities,
and to facilitate the continuity of education for all through remote learning.

School closures carry high social and economic costs for people across communities. Their impact
however is particularly severe for the most vulnerable and marginalized boys and girls, and their
families. The resulting disruptions exacerbate already existing disparities within the education system
but also in other aspects of their lives. UNESCO has put out many detailed, and learned, papers on the
unprecedented current situation in the world of academics – one that has not occurred since the Second
World War, though the scale and human impact of the current pandemic is far far larger than any war in
human history. Closure of schools has a catastrophic impact on society, and the UNESCO studies
summarize some of it as follows:

• Interrupted learning: Schooling provides essential learning and when schools close, children and youth
are deprived of opportunities for growth and development. The disadvantages are disproportionate for
under-privileged learners who tend to have fewer educational opportunities beyond school.

• Poor nutrition: Many children and youth rely on free or discounted meals provided at schools for food
and healthy nutrition. When schools close, nutrition is compromised.

• Confusion and stress for teachers: When schools close, especially unexpectedly and for unknown
durations, teachers are often unsure of their obligations and how to maintain connections with students
to support learning. Transitions to distance learning platforms tend to be messy and frustrating, even in
the best circumstances. In many contexts, school closures lead to furloughs or absenteeism by teachers.

• Parents unprepared for distance and home schooling: When schools close, parents are often asked to
facilitate the learning of children at home and can struggle to perform this task. This is especially true for
parents with limited education and resources.

• Challenges creating, maintaining, and improving distance learning: Demand for distance learning
skyrockets when schools close and often overwhelms existing portals to remote education. Moving
learning from classrooms to homes at scale and in a hurry presents enormous challenges, both human
and technical.

• Gaps in childcare: In the absence of alternative options, working parents often leave children alone
when schools close and this can lead to risky behaviors, including increased influence of peer pressure
and substance abuse.

• High economic costs: Working parents are more likely to miss work when schools close in order to take
care of their children. This results in wage loss and tend to negatively impact productivity.
• Unintended strain on health-care systems: Health-care workers with children cannot easily attend
work because of childcare obligations that result from school closures. This means that many medical
professionals are not at the facilities where they are most needed during a health crisis.

• Increased pressure on schools and school systems that remain open: Localized school closures place
burdens on schools as governments and parents alike redirect children to schools that remain open.

• Rise in dropout rates: It is a challenge to ensure children and youth return and stay in school when
schools reopen after closures. This is especially true of protracted closures and when economic shocks
place pressure on children to work and generate income for financially distressed families.

• Increased exposure to violence and exploitation: When schools shut down, early marriages increase,
more children are recruited into militias, sexual exploitation of girls and young women rises, teenage
pregnancies become more common, and child labour grows.

• Social isolation: Schools are hubs of social activity and human interaction. When schools close, many
children and youth miss out on social contact that is essential to learning and development.

• Challenges measuring and validating learning: Calendared assessments, notably high-stakes

examinations that determine admission or advancement to new education levels and institutions, are
thrown into disarray when schools close. Strategies to postpone, skip or administer examinations at a
distance raise serious concerns about fairness, especially when access to learning becomes variable.
Disruptions to assessments results in stress for students and their families and can trigger
disengagement.

With COVID-19, schools are rapidly changing the basic way they do their work.
Some have become old-fashioned correspondence schools, with the vast majority of
interaction happening by written mail. Others have tried to recreate the school setting
online using digital tools like Zoom. Others are in-between, directing students to
online tutoring and practice programs, and posting videos. Most people think that they
just want to get things back to normal. That makes sense. After all, the schools didn’t
do anything to cause the crisis. So, why change them?

That’s what many thought after Katrina. The schools didn’t cause the devastation, so
why change them? Yet, change they did. The state took over almost all the city’s
public schools, eventually turning their operations over to nonprofit charter
organizations. Teacher tenure and the union contract ended. The attendance zones,
which assign students to the schools they attend based on where they live, were
eliminated so that families had a chance to choose any schools they wished. Only a
handful of cities had ever done any one of these things before—New Orleans did all
of them at once.

I’m going to focus here on the “school choice” part of the New Orleans reforms
because it’s especially revealing. After Katrina, the city essentially had to eliminate
attendance zones and switch to school choice because the returning population was
too dispersed for any “zone” to have enough students. Also, families were switching
from one temporary home to another; the zones would have required students to
constantly change schools. The switch to school choice was therefore partly a
practical one—to deal with the crisis. School choice suddenly became necessary.

And guess what happened? Families got used to having choice. While there is
growing concern about the distance children have to travel to go to school and the
district is starting to allow neighborhood to be one factor in assigning students, there
has been almost no conversation at all about going back to traditional attendance
zones—even though the storm and most of its effects are long gone.

The shift to choice also led to other changes. For example, the end of attendance
zones means that most students no longer go to the same schools as those who live
down the block. This means, further, that neither children nor parents in the same
neighborhood develop the same kinds of community bonds as they did before. Also,
as choice advocates argue, choice allowed students to match their needs to school
offerings.