School Policies, COVID, and Student Achievement, Emotional, and Civic Outcomes

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Aside from health care, no other sector of society has been more affected by the COVID pandemic than education. Afterall, K-12 education is premised on revealing one’s thoughts, expressions, and feelings to peers and teachers in classrooms, yet the pandemic demands masking and social distancing. Where were K-12 achievement outcomes trending prior to the onset of the pandemic? What effects have various virus mitigation policies had on student socio-emotional outcomes in different types of schools? During the pandemic, enrollments rose in various schools of choice, including religiously conservative private schools. What effects do such schools have on key civic outcomes, relative to schooling in government-run public schools? More generally, are private school choice programs and private schooling threats to or instruments of the conveyance of democratic values to citizens in the U.S. and globally? These are the vital questions examined by these papers. Paper 1 applies a principal-agent perspective to a fresh examination of changes in K-12 student achievement over the past 50 years. It reveals that achievement has grown steadily over the half-century, a “Flynn effect,” with growth varying in interesting ways by educational domain, age, ability level, race, and SES level. These patterns are similar for the U.S. and internationally, suggesting that universal underlying causes are driving them. Paper 2 focuses on the pandemic and its effects on student socio-emotional outcomes. Drawing from national survey data, it examines variance in parental perceptions of the socio-emotional condition of their school-age children based on school factors such as instruction modality, schooling sector, stage of the pandemic, seriousness of community spread, and partisanship of the region. Paper 3 examines concerns surrounding conservative Protestant schools fostering various forms of intolerance. Drawing on fresh survey data, it finds that students educated in conservative Protestant schools demonstrate average intolerance levels that are statistically equivalent to their public-school peers. Finally, Paper 4 examines the perennial concern of the effects of private schooling on civic outcomes more generally. It uses meta-analytic techniques to identify and consolidate the empirical findings from the population of studies on private schooling and a wide range of civic outcomes involving tolerance, political participation, civic knowledge and skills, and community involvement. Collectively, these four papers will tell us much about the challenges faced in K-12 education and the prospects for public policies to improve achievement, socio-emotional, and civic outcomes of the next generation of citizens. The panel Chair and discussants will provide insights based on a wealth of experience in the field, in the case of senior scholars Jennifer Hochschild and David Campbell, and a fresh view, in the case of junior scholar Ursula Hackett.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Cosponsor

• Division 25: Public Policy

Individual Presentations

• Fifty Years of Student Achievement: Agency and Flynn Effects; Ethnic Differences - M. Danish Shakeel, University of Buckingham; Paul E. Peterson, Harvard University

• Religiously Conservative Schools and Democratic Citizenship - David Sikkink, University of Notre Dame

• A Meta-Analysis of Private Schooling Effects on Civic Outcomes around the Globe - Patrick J. Wolf, University of Arkansas; M. Danish Shakeel, University of Buckingham; James David Paul, University of Arkansas; Jessica Goldstein Holmes; Alison Heape, University of Arkansas

• Framing on Facebook: Adapting School Lunch Programs during the COVID-19 Pandemic - Anne Whitesell, Miami University; Clare Brock, Texas Woman's University

Chair

• Leah A. Murray Weber State University

Discussant

• David E. Campbell University of Notre Dame