Low-income students, as well as Black and Latino students, fell further behind over the past two years, relative to students who are high-income, white or Asian. “This will probably be the largest increase in educational inequity in a generation,” Thomas Kane, an author of the Harvard study, told me.
There are two main reasons. First, schools with large numbers of poor students were more likely to go remote.
Why? Many of these schools are in major cities, which tend to be run by Democratic officials, and Republicans were generally
quicker to reopen schools. High-poverty schools are also more likely to have unionized teachers, and some unions
lobbied for remote schooling.
Second, low-income students tended to fare even worse when schools went remote. They may not have had reliable internet access, a quiet room in which to work or a parent who could take time off from work to help solve problems.