新冠病毒大流行期间学校停课造成的学习损失

Learning loss due to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic

原载《美国国家科学院院刊》2021年第118卷第17期

<Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America>,2021, 118 (17)

【摘要】在COVID-19大流行期间，学校暂停面对面教学导致人们担心对学生学习的影响。到目前为止，研究这个问题的数据是有限的。在这里，我们使用来自荷兰（n≈350,000）的极其丰富的数据来评估学校停课对小学成绩的影响。我们利用在锁定前后进行的国家考试这一事实，并将此期间的进展与前三年的同期进行比较。荷兰仅经历了相对较短的封锁（8周），并拥有公平的学校资助系统和世界上最高的宽带接入率。尽管如此，我们的结果显示学习损失约为3个百分点或0.08个标准差。其效果相当于一个学年的五分之一，与学校保持关闭的同一时期。来自教育程度较低家庭的学生的损失高达60%，这证实了人们对大流行对儿童和家庭造成的不均衡损失的担忧。调查机制，我们发现大部分影响反映了所学知识的累积影响，而不是测试当天的短暂影响。在平衡估计的治疗倾向和使用最大熵权重或使用比较同一学校和家庭中的学生的固定效应规范时，结果仍然稳健。调查结果表明，学生在家学习时取得的进展很少或没有取得任何进展，并且表明在基础设施较弱或学校停课时间较长的国家，损失更大。

【关键词】COVID-1；学习损失；学校停课；社会不平等; 数字划分

[Abstract] Suspension of face-to-face instruction in schools during the COVID-19 pandemic has led to concerns about consequences for students’ learning. So far, data to study this question have been limited. Here we evaluate the effect of school closures on primary school performance using exceptionally rich data from The Netherlands (n ≈ 350,000).We use the fact that national examinations took place before and after lockdown and compare progress during this period to the same period in the 3 previous years. The Netherlands underwent only a relatively short lockdown (8 wk) and features an equitable system of school funding and the world’s highest rate of broadband access. Still, our results reveal a learning loss of about 3percentile points or 0.08 standard deviations. The effect is equivalent to one-fifth of a school year, the same period that schools remained closed. Losses are up to 60% larger among students from less-educated homes, confirming worries about the uneven toll of the pandemic on children and families. Investigating mechanisms, we find that most of the effect reflects the cumulative impact of knowledge learned rather than transitory influences on the day of testing. Results remain robust when balancing on the estimated propensity of treatment and using maximum-entropy weights or with fixed-effects specifications that compare students within the same school and family. The findings imply that students made little or no progress while learning from home and suggest losses even larger in countries with weaker infrastructure or longer school closures.

[Key words] COVID-19; learning loss; school closures; social inequality; digital divide

本中文解析是针对论文《新冠肺炎大流行期间学校停课造成的学习损失》（Learning loss due to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic ）的一篇论文解析，该论文于2021年4月发表于发表于《美国国家科学院院刊》（Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,PNAS）第118卷第17期上，研究者包括英国牛津大学和荷兰斯德哥尔摩大学的佩恩格泽尔（Per Engzell）、英国牛津大学的阿伦·弗雷（Arun Frey）和马克·D·韦尔哈根（MD Verhagen）。

（中文解析请阅《华人心理健康报》2021年12月15日PDF版）

论文原文：Per Engzell, Arun Frey &MD Verhagen PNAS (2021). Learning loss due to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America (PNAS). 118 (17). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2022376118