STEM-Related Educational Experiences of American Families During COVID-19: Evidence From a Nationally Representative Panel

• In Event: National Studies on COVID-19's Effects on K–12 STEM Education Reported by Teachers, Students, and Families

Abstract

With nearly all K-12 students affected by school closures, the coronavirus pandemic has sent unprecedented shocks through the education system. Though existing research is not subject-specific, impacts may plausibly be exacerbated in STEM, for example, because parents may be less equipped to provide hands-on STEM learning activities. Collection and analysis of high-quality, representative data describing real-time educational experiences, including those related to STEM, will lead to a more efficient and effective policy-making process by identifying the populations most in need of support, and the ways that they need to be supported. Our study is uniquely positioned to provide such evidence, as we report on the only nationally-representative panel data effort to our knowledge to collect real-time, longitudinal data from a large enough sample of parents to explore COVID19’s effects on education, and to disaggregate questions by subject.
We leverage data from the Understanding America Survey (UAS), a nationally representative panel administered by the University of Southern California Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research to approximately 1,452 households with children ages 18 and under. We draw on 5 waves of survey administration (collected between April 1st and September 15th, 2020) to explore:
1. What are the preK-12 educational experiences of American households during the COVID19 crisis, with a focus on STEM, and how do these change over time?
2. How do those educational experiences vary based on parent race/ethnicity, income, COVID19-related employment and health outcomes?
Our survey instrument includes questions related to: 1) the impact of school closures on the home (e.g., availability of child care); 2) the impact of school closures on K-12 students (e.g., engagement in school-related activities across subjects, continued access to school-provided services and programs); 3) attitudes towards policy responses (e.g., support for STEM related policies).
We use descriptive statistics and multiple regression to 1) report results that are robust to statistical thresholds and hypothesis testing; and 2) test the robustness of correlated subgroup differences to multivariate analysis.
Findings from the first three waves suggest that while most parents are receiving work from their children’s teachers (88%), there are stark differences by demographics. For example, 56 percent of parents from the lowest socioeconomic quintile report having interacted with their teacher online, compared to 89 percent of students from the highest quintile. Hispanic respondents (42 percent) are 12 percentage points more likely than non-Hispanic White parents (29 percent) to be concerned that lack of access to educational materials will likely cause academic problems.
While the data we have collected and reported to date are highly informative, they are not subject-specific. Additional waves of survey administration expand on these findings to include STEM-specific questions, and our presentation will incorporate data from all 5 waves.
The results of this work will inform education policy through 2020 and beyond by arming policymakers with the information they need to develop targeted policy to address the effects of COVID19 in education, all with a STEM focus.

Authors

• Shira Haderlein, University of Southern California

• Daniel Silver, University of Southern California

• Anna Rosefsky Saavedra, University of Southern California

• Morgan S. Polikoff, University of Southern California

• Amie Rapaport, Gibson Consulting Group

• Marshall Garland, Gibson Consulting Group