School District Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Round 4, Halfway through Closures

When school buildings first closed in mid-March, few education leaders knew how long such closures would last. Now, that picture is becoming increasingly clear. Nearly all state governments have issued orders or recommendations requiring school buildings to remain closed for the duration of the 2019-20 academic year due to the threat of COVID-19. As schools enter the final leg in the academic year, this report provides updated data on the state of America's schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. It documents how public school districts responded to the crisis from April 23 to 24. School districts' responses for this period were captured by the fourth wave of the American Enterprise Institute's (AEI) COVID-19 Education Response Longitudinal Survey (C-ERLS), a nationally representative survey of public school districts. Findings show: (1) A bare majority of schools (51 percent) are now beyond the halfway point of scheduled closures--meaning they are now closer to the end of the school year than they are to the date in which buildings closed; (2) For the first time, the estimated percentage of schools offering asynchronous forms of remote instruction exceeded the estimated percentage of schools offering instructional packets; and (3) Over half of schools rely mostly or wholly on online platforms to provide remote instruction, which is more than double the share of schools that rely mostly or wholly on packets or hard copy materials. [For "School District Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Round 3, Plans for a Remote Finish," see ED606199.]