Nearly all school districts finally offer some in-person instruction: We should not be satisfied

School reopenings hit two remarkable milestones in the first week of May. First, the percentage of fully remote school districts dwindled to a mere 2 percent. Equally noteworthy, districts offering full-time in-person instruction topped 50 percent. Despite this seemingly good news, an unflinching look at the past year makes clear that this glass is half-empty, and we should neither be relieved nor satisfied.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona rightly noted recently that “There is no substitute for in-person learning. Every day that kids aren’t in school is a lost opportunity.” I’ll put it more bluntly: Districts not offering fully in-person instruction are not just losing opportunities, they are actively taking opportunities away from students and their families. With rising vaccination rates, COVID cases lower than any point since September, and a clear understanding of how to open schools safely, there is no longer any good justification for keeping students from in-person classes.

Parents should demand more.

Another reason to hold off on celebrating is that in many places, huge percentages of students are opting out of in-person learning.

Last week Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, finally stated that schools should be fully open — by fall. That assurance is too little and far too late. A year’s worth of ingrained risk aversion and hand-wringing by school leaders, teachers’ unions, and public health officials, fortified by a steady diet of fear-stoking media stories, provided plenty of reason for students to stay remote, to their own detriment.

Why has the return to in-person instruction been so slow? It’s less the threat of COVID — which we might first expect — than it is local attitudes toward the threat of the virus.

Instructional offerings over this past year have been only weakly related to local COVID rates. In fact, according to data from the Return to Learn Tracker, districts in the highest third of COVID-19 case rates were more likely to be fully in-person for the first half of the school year, while those with the nations’ lowest COVID-19 rates were more likely fully remote. After January, the relationship turned to a more sensible pattern. Still, despite the receding pandemic threat, the slowest districts to return to in-person learning have mostly been in low-COVID-19 counties.

Whether districts are open or closed appears to have much more to do with attitudes about the pandemic than COVID-19 case rates.

Districts in counties with above-average mask usage — measured last June — have been two to three times more likely to be fully remote, and about half as likely to be fully in-person, than those where mask usage was less prevalent. Vaccine hesitancy — measured this March — shows a reverse pattern; districts whose residents were less hesitant to get vaccinated have been far more hesitant to return to in-person instruction. Perhaps unsurprisingly given our political polarization, both of these patterns align with county differences in the 2020 presidential vote.

It has not been the risk of the pandemic, but the risk assessments of the pandemic that have kept students out of school so long. 

Districts’ slow progress to provide fully in-person options is far from satisfactory, especially given the urgency repeated by the Department of Education, the CDC, and a host of public health experts. Leaving students learning from home — even just one day a week — has dire, rippling consequences. Beyond keeping students from the most effective form of learning, it sends a powerful message that in-person learning is still risky. District actions are one of the strongest influences on whether the public views those options as safe, and consequently, whether many students do return to in-person classes when given the chance.

We should avoid painting with too broad a brush since there have been many districts and states that have opened schools for most or all of this school year. The leadership behind those accomplishments is surely worth celebrating, though in those districts the public is accustomed to the normal opportunities that students in more apprehensive districts are doing without.

In partly open districts, it may be tempting — this late in the school year — to simply accept how far they have come and hope for better in the fall. That would be a costly mistake. The same timidity that has kept students away from school this year — taxing them educationally, socially, and personally — will influence what districts offer and what families choose next fall. The reasons to drag our feet are weak and the consequences are high.

Secretary Cardona rightly implored educators and school leaders, “Do everything you can to get the students in now.” Half the nation’s school districts have failed to do so, and we should not be satisfied until they do.

Nat Malkus is a resident scholar and the deputy director of education-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.