Lessons Learned From School Closures in the Pandemic

This is the third in an eight-article series on “Restoring Trust in Public Health: Lessons from COVID-19.” Four years of the Biden-Harris administration has left Americans rightly skeptical of public health institutions. This series highlights key findings from several congressional oversight reports, including the final report of the U.S. House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, and offers lessons for Congress and the new administration on ways to restore trust in public health.

In the next national medical emergency, federal public health officials must be more careful in their recommendations for quarantines, lockdowns, and especially school closures.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidance to state and local school districts that resulted in prolonged school closures throughout the United States. In fact, however, there was minimal scientific evidence supporting such radical recommendations.

The consequences of these recommendations proved disastrous, resulting in severe academic setbacks, mental health crises, and social harm. Remarkably, America’s school closure policies during the pandemic also deviated sharply from the public health recommendations in other economically advanced countries.

In its massive final report, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic detailed the impact of these policies and their consequences.  

School Shutdowns

With the rapidly spreading novel COVID-19 pandemic, an initial set of precautionary actions were taken that included recommendations for school closures. As a result, as the Select Subcommittee reported, by the end of March 2020, nearly all schools across the U.S. had closed and transitioned their students to remote learning.

Soon after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the mounting data soon revealed that children were at minimal risk for severe illness or for spreading the virus. According to the CDC’s own data, children accounted for less than 0.01% of hospitalizations and 0.0005% of COVID-19 deaths by mid-2020.

Moreover, as the Select Subcommittee reported, various academic studies showed schools were not “major vectors” of viral transmission. And by April of 2020, emerging scientific data was available indicating that schools were not “vectors” for contagion, including new data from Iceland showing that young children were “less likely” than adults to transmit COVID-19. The same data showed that schoolteachers in a classroom full of students were in no greater danger of getting a COVID-19 infection than members of other professions.

Despite a better understanding of the virus and its impact on children, the Biden-Harris administration had the CDC issue additional guidance in February 2021 keeping 90% of all U.S. schools closed, impacting students in most large counties throughout the country.

Rather than following rigorous scientific analysis, however, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, had “direct access” to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and influenced CDC recommendations that prolonged the nation’s school closures, the Select Subcommittee concluded.

Suffering Schoolchildren

The Select Subcommittee report also showed that prolonged school closures led to “widening achievement gaps” with the most disadvantaged students seeing the largest declines.

Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed significant declines in math and reading scores. Standardized test scores fell to levels last seen 20 years prior, the Select Subcommittee noted, and low-income and minority students were “disproportionately affected” by these school closure policies.

Academic losses translate into economic losses. Hoover Institution economist Eric Hanushek, for example, estimated that pandemic-era students may lose $70,000 in lifetime income, with lower skills and reduced economic output resulting in a cumulative $28 trillion in societal losses over the course of the century.

Children lost more than their previous academic achievements, though. With the onset of the pandemic, mental health issues among children worsened. In 2021, reports of anxiety, depression, and suicidal behaviors surged, with 44% of high schoolers feeling persistently hopeless. On March 31, 2022, the CDC released data on suicide attempts among adolescents. The rates among 12- to 17-year-old girls rose 51% from early 2019 to early 2021.

Childhood physical health also declined. According to one major study, childhood obesity rates doubled and cases of Type 2 diabetes spiked by 182% from pre-pandemic levels. A September 2021 article in Hormone Research in Pediatrics reported that childhood health declines disproportionately affected black children. In a February 2021 literature review published in JAMA Pediatrics, researchers concluded: “School closures as part of a broader social distancing measures are associated with considerable harm to CYP (children and young people) health and well-being.”

Surveying the consequences post pandemic, on Nov. 18, 2023, the editorial board of The New York Times characterized the pandemic school closures as “the most damaging disruption in the history of American education.”

America as Global Outlier

CDC recommendations were inconsistent with public health policies adopted internationally. European countries often prioritized keeping schools open yet experienced no significant COVID-19 outbreaks. Denmark and Finland reopened schools by mid-2020 with no surge in COVID-19 cases. Even the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund warned that closing schools should be a last resort because of the potential of significant harm to children.

Politicization of Public Health

We know now that there was political influence over what should have been science-based CDC guidance. As stated above, the American Federation of Teachers, according to the House subcommittee report, played a major role in influencing school closure policies during the COVID-19 pandemic. As Weingarten admitted, the organization employed no epidemiologists or immunologists to examine the data and even supported lawsuits against state reopening plans.

On Jan. 29, 2021, the subcommittee reported, Walensky asked Weingarten and the teachers union to “provide explicit language” for CDC to use in its guidance on reopening the nation’s schools. Walensky said that it was “uncommon” for the CDC to accept line-by-line edits from outside organizations.

Despite mounting evidence from European and U.S. studies that opening schools back up with certain safety measures in place was relatively safe, the CDC allowed political pressure from unions to influence policy, the subcommittee reported.

Focus on the Interest of Children

Prolonged U.S. school closures, influenced by politics and not science, caused lasting harm to students, their families, and communities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, economically advanced countries with strong public health institutions demonstrated that reopening schools safely was possible and effective, underscoring the preventable nature of this educational disruption.

In confronting the next national medical emergency, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his new team at CDC must prioritize strong, evidence-based policies rather than narrow political agendas, especially in protecting the health and well-being of American children.