Study finds which students suffer the worst when schools close due to natural disasters

Researchers examined the effects of school closures due to natural disasters and found that these closures had similar effects on student performance across economic groups. The researchers found that nearly all student groups saw test scores decline, although white students and high-achieving students were the least affected.

The topic is of particular interest after Hurricane Helen, which caused some students in western North Carolina to miss weeks of school. Schools in Asheville, North Carolina, reopened on October 28th.

“A variety of natural disasters, from wildfires to hurricanes, can lead to school closures, and research shows that global climate change will only increase the frequency of these events,” the study said. said Melinda Morrill, corresponding author and Jenkins’ co-author. Distinguished Professor of Family Economics at North Carolina State University’s Poole College of Business.

“As a result, for us, it is important to not only understand the extent to which these closures impact student learning, but also whether certain student groups are affected more than others. The latter question is what we focused on in this study.”

In the study, published in Economics of Education Review in 2023, researchers used data from North Carolina elementary and middle school students from the 2015-16 to 2018-19 school years.

The 2018-19 school year is particularly interesting because Hurricane Florence caused widespread damage in central and eastern North Carolina in 2018. Due to this damage, schools were closed for between 0.5 and 26.5 days, depending on the extent of damage in each school’s area. The researchers focused on understanding the effects of hurricane-related school closures. To do so, the researchers used data from the past three years and used modeling tools to account for variation between schools.

Student data available to the researchers included end-of-year test scores designed to measure student performance, as well as demographic and economic information.

“We found that almost all students were negatively impacted by hurricane-related school closures,” Morrill said. “The only group that did not see a decline in performance was the ‘overachievers’, defined as students who scored in the top 20% of their class on the previous year’s end-of-year exam.

“We also found that white students were also affected by the closures, but not as much as other races and ethnicities.”

The group that experienced the steepest decline in math performance was quite broad and consisted of “middle achievers,” or students who had scored between 20% and 80% of their class on the previous year’s end-of-year exams. The steepest declines in reading comprehension were among children who scored between 20% and 40% the previous year.

“While these effects were similar for middle school and elementary school students, we found this to be somewhat surprising because the effects were slightly larger for middle school students than for elementary school students,” Morrill said.

“Student learning has clearly been impacted by disaster-related closures,” Morrill added. “And we’re going to see more of these closures in the future. If we’re going to call for action here, we need research that explores strategies to repair these learning losses so that all students can succeed.” This is especially true in areas where there are repeated closures related to natural disasters. ”