Survey: 4 in 10 parents say their child fell behind in school last year

The survey supports a long-argued position that children of color and lower income children have been more adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It also underscores early observations from educators, that children who learned partly or completely remotely suffered academically.

Still, a small majority of parents the Kaiser Family Foundation surveyed did not report significant adverse affects from the pandemic in terms of academics, social and emotional development, or mental health or behavior.

About half of lower-income parents and Hispanic parents reported at least one of their children fell behind academically. For Black families and households earning between $40,000 and $89,900, about four in 10 reported that.

But parents felt like their children’s progress slowed in ways beyond academics during the COVID-19 pandemic. About one in three said at least one of their children fell behind in social and emotional skills, and about three in 10 said at least one of their children suffered from mental health or behavioral problems during the pandemic.

Answered varied by how their children attended school last year. Those whose children learned entirely, mostly or about half remotely were more likely to say their children had these problems than those whose children were learning mostly in-person during the school year.

The study dug into several other factors that may have influenced responses, such as parental job loss.

The differences in survey results by whether the student was mostly in-person or now “may be at least partially due to differences in other demographic characteristics of parents whose child’s schools offered in-person schooling compared to those who did not,” researchers wrote.

But when the researchers controlled for parent’s race and ethnicity, gender, income, region, age, educational attainment and political party identification and whether they had a child attending private or public school, they found a consistent result: the method of instruction directly correlated with likelihood of reporting adverse affects on the children.

The researchers wrote, “parents with a child who attended school at least partially online are more likely than those whose children attended school all or mostly in person to report their child experienced a negative impact to their wellbeing due to the pandemic.”

Nearly half of those whose children didn’t attend school mostly or completely in-person reported at least one of their children fell behind in school, about the same as how many reported a child falling behind in social and emotional development. About four in 10 of those parents said they had a child who has experienced mental health or behavioral problems during the pandemic.

Many of those parents told researchers their child struggled to concentrate and complete assignments while learning remotely.

Among parents whose children attended school mostly or completely in-person, only about a quarter said they had a child who fell behind in school, about a third said their child has fallen behind in social and emotional development, and about one in five said at least one of their children has experienced mental health or behavioral problems.