In March 2020, most schools in the United States transitioned to distance learning in an effort to contain COVID-19. A significant number of students did not fully engage in remote learning opportunities due to resource or other constraints. An urgent question for schools around the nation is how much did the pandemic impact student academic and social-emotional development. This paper uses administrative panel data from California to approximate the impact of the pandemic by analyzing how absenteeism affects student outcomes. Our results suggest student outcomes generally suffer more from absenteeism in mathematics than in ELA. Negative effects are larger in middle school. Absences negatively affect social-emotional development, particularly in middle school. Our results suggest districts will face imminent needs for student academic and social-emotional support to make-up for losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

2020年3月，美国大多数学校都改用远程学习，以遏制COVID-19。由于资源或其他限制，大量学生没有充分参与远程学习的机会。全国学校迫切需要解决的问题是，大流行对学生的学术和社会情感发展有多大影响。本文使用加利福尼亚州的行政管理小组数据，通过分析旷工对学生成绩的影响来估算大流行的影响。我们的结果表明，在数学上比在ELA上，学生的学业遭受的缺勤更多。中学的负面影响更大。缺勤会对社会情感发展产生负面影响，尤其是在中学时期。