Education Week - August 18, 2021 - 21

Remote or Virtual?
The Choice Was Complicated
S
chools and their leaders
had a decision to make last
summer. Should schools
open fully remote, fully in
person, or somewhere in
between? Different leaders
made different decisions.
The question is, why?
We wish that this question were merely
academic, interesting from a " what happened
last summer? " perspective. But unfortunately,
with the rise of the Delta variant and recent
spikes in coronavirus cases, we'll be debating
the same questions as we approach the new
school year.
Together with our colleagues, we
explored what motivated school
reopening decisions in the 2020-21 school
year, both in Michigan and nationally.
The results turned out to be complicated.
Ideally, health considerations would have
driven school reopening decisions last
summer. Specifically, in places where
COVID-19 was widespread and growing,
schools would go fully remote. In other
places, they would open in person, at least
until a threat emerged.
Early research, however, suggested that
the strongest predictor was partisanship.
Schools in Republican counties opened in
person, and those in Democratic counties
opened remotely or, sometimes, in a hybrid
model. Similarly, many teachers' unions,
whose leaders are more politically aligned
with Democrats, were vocal in their call
Protesters rally outside the San Diego
Unified school district headquarters last
October demanding that schools reopen
for in-person learning.
for remote education. It is not surprising
that politics played a role in the decision to
reopen school buildings. Then-President
Donald Trump and then-Secretary of
Education Betsy DeVos strongly urged
schools to open in person.
However, the reality behind school
building openings is much more complicated
than just politics. Cause and effect are
always difficult to tease out. Correlation is
not causation, and the problem with these
correlational analyses is that race, ethnicity,
income, occupation, and population density
are all strong predictors of both political
affiliation and COVID-19 health risk. And it
is very difficult to disentangle them.
For instance, people of color have
contracted, been hospitalized for, and
died from COVID-19 at higher rates than
white people. People of color are also much
more likely to vote Democratic. Could it be
that this population's greater health risk is
driving the apparent relationship between
Democratic counties and a lower likelihood
of reopening in-person schooling?
COVID-19 transmission is, additionally,
more likely in large and densely populated
areas where people live in closer proximity
and with greater physical contact.
Population density also tends to be higher
in places where there are more people of
color, more people working in personalservice
industries, and with a greater share
of Democrats. It is difficult to isolate one of
these interconnected factors as the leading
cause of school building closures.
Also, unions' calls for remote instruction
may not really have been rooted in politics.
Conflating the two obscures teachers'
unions' legitimate concern about the health
risk to teachers, school staff, and students.
This distinction reinforces the difficulty of
isolating political and health factors when
they're intertwined.
One way of handling this jumble of
potential causes is to predict school
opening decisions based on all these (and
other) factors, holding each one constant.
In both studies-of reopening decisions in
Michigan and nationally-that's what we
did. Here is what we found:
* Politics and partisanship were indeed
important. Consistent with other studies,
ours found that a higher Democratic vote
share was associated with more remote
instruction. The results are similar when
we focused on polling data.
"
The reality
behind school
building
openings is
much more
complicated
than just
politics.
* Districts with stronger teachers'
unions were more likely to open
remotely. However, this relationship was
not as strong as with Democratic vote share
and less significant than what some antiunion
critics have suggested.
* Demographics-especially race and
poverty-also strongly predicted fall
2020 in-person school reopenings.
Specifically, school districts with more
Black and Hispanic residents were more
likely to have remote instruction. Other
factors being equal, districts with more
people living in poverty and in large,
densely populated areas were also more
likely to have remote instruction.
* Direct health measures also predicted
school reopening decisions. Districts
with higher rates of COVID-19 were less
likely to open for in-person schooling.
However, after controlling for the other
measures, COVID-19 played a smaller role
than politics and demographics.
We also examined factors like school
funding and broadband access, which, when
holding constant all the above factors, did not
predict school reopenings.
What do all these data tell us about what
drove school reopening decisions? There is
no simple answer. Our best guess is that the
direct and indirect measures of COVID-19
health risks, including demographics, all
affected school reopenings, as did identityoriented
politics and polarization. Some
groups were more likely to favor reopening
schools in person because of their personal
circumstances. Their political leaders
seemed to mostly follow the leads of their
constituents.
Studying the causes behind school reopening
decisions raises a related question: Why aren't
more people getting vaccinated? Why are so
many people risking their own lives-and
the lives of their parents, siblings, children,
neighbors, church members, and others-by
refusing the vaccine? After all, the vaccines are
safe, effective, and widely available to anyone
12 and older. Here, too, politics plays some role,
but it is likely not the only factor.
Whatever role politics is playing in
prolonging the pandemic, it is almost
certainly part of the solution. Our political
leaders-local, state, and federal-now need
to step up. They can no longer simply follow
the loudest crowd. They must lead with
accurate information and focus attention on
the damage being done by low vaccination
rates and the resulting consequences for our
communities, including schools. We need
leadership and we need it fast. 
By Douglas N. Harris
& Katharine O. Strunk
HARRIS is a professor and the chair
of the department of economics,
the Schlieder Foundation Chair
in Public Education, and the
director of the National Center
for Education Access and Choice
(REACH) at Tulane University.
STRUNK is the Clifford E. Erickson
Distinguished Professor of
Education Policy and, by courtesy,
Economics, and the director of
the Education Policy Innovation
Collaborative (EPIC) at Michigan
State University.
EDUCATION WEEK | August 18, 2021 | www.edweek.org/opinion | 21
Sam Hodgson/The San Diego Union-Tribune via TNS
http://www.edweek.org/opinion
Education Week - August 18, 2021

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