Associations between Community COVID-19 Burden and Student Math and Language Arts Proficiency in California

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified existing educational inequities, resulting from long histories of structural racism and the education debt (Ladson Billings, 2006). Black, Latiné, other students of color, and students from low income families were more likely to live in areas with higher rates of COVID-19 compared to their white/high income counterparts and were more likely to attend school virtually, which has been associated with less learning (Parolin & Lee, 2021). Though some posit standardized test scores mirror and maintain racial inequity (Perry, 2021), they can offer a window into the impact of the pandemic on students. It is critical to understand the disparate effects of the disruption to students, which is likely to widen existing inequities and have long lasting effects for students. As such, this study examined the relationship between county-level COVID-19 case rates across California and school-level student academic outcomes of math and language arts proficiency.

Methods: 2020-2021 school year data were derived from the publicly available COVID-19 and Equity in Education database and the California Department of Education Dashboard (n=10,579 schools). Outcomes include the percent of students proficient in math (34%) and language arts (45%) per school; covariates include COVID case rates per county (n=58), school racial demographics, and the proportion of students that qualify for free and reduced price lunch (FRL; 61%), a measure of poverty. As only ⅓ of schools provided test scores for the 2021 school year, analysis of variance (ANOVA) testing was first completed to identify school characteristics related to missingness. Stepwise multi-level models (i.e., schools nested in districts nested in counties) examined first (model 1) the influence of COVID case rates on math and language arts proficiency, accounting for race, enrollment, and high school status (i.e., designation as a high school); model 2 included FRL as an additional covariate.

Results: Schools with higher proportions of students with FRL or Hispanic students were significantly more likely to have missing test scores than schools with lower proportions of students with FRL or higher proportions of white students. In model 1, the COVID case rate had a significant standardized effect associated with decreasing math (β=-.21) and language arts (β=-.17) proficiency rates. Race inequites were found in the expected directions. In model 2, the associations of both race and COVID cases with language and math proficiency were no longer significant after including FRL; schools with higher proportions of students with FRL status reported significantly lower standardized math (β=-.62) and language arts (β=-.61) proficiency rates.

Conclusions: Results suggest that students in poverty and attending schools with higher proportions of non-white students were exposed to higher levels of community burden in the form of higher COVID case rates. However, it appears that poverty, over and above community levels of COVID-19 and race, was related to math and language arts proficiency. These findings underscore the critical role of social workers in supporting students and advocating for programs and policies to address systemic inequities in the education system.