School closures disproportionately hit disadvantaged students in the US

The uneven distribution of school closures in the U.S. since September 2020 threatens to exacerbate regional, racial and class-based divides in educational performance, according to research by Zachary Parolin of Bocconi University's Department of Social and Political Science, recently published in Nature Human Behavior. For example, in October, only 35% of white students were on distance learning, compared with 52% of Black students, 60% of Hispanic students and 65% of Asian students. And schools recording the lowest math scores were 15% more likely to be closed.