October 1, 2021
An economics professor at Brown University and her team have launched the COVID-19 School Data Hub. The website serves as a central database for educators, researchers, and policymakers looking to study and understand how the pandemic shaped students’ modes of learning in the 2020–21 school year and what the implications of that are going forward. The site’s data show when school buildings were open, closed, or operating in hybrid mode. In 11 states, the hub tallies the number of students who participated in each mode of learning. It also includes counts of coronavirus cases discovered in schools in 30 states. In the coming months, the team hopes to add data on student achievement and school enrollment to the site, tracking whether students who left local schools last year returned. In the future, researchers may be able to answer if and how school closures affected high school graduation rates, crime, obesity, and mental health needs.