RAPID: The Impact of COVID on American Education in 2021: Continued Evidence from the Understanding America Study

COVID-19疫情对美国学生及其家庭的教育造成了巨大的破坏，有证据表明，这种破坏在收入和种族/民族方面对家庭的影响是不平等的。虽然其他正在进行的数据收集工作侧重于从学生或教育工作者的角度理解这种破坏，但对于父母报告的COVID-19对儿童12岁前教育经历的影响，特别是在STEM科目中，了解得较少。这项研究将建立在该小组在大流行早期的研究基础上。研究人员将继续从家庭中收集数据，并利用具有全国代表性的纵向研究“了解美国研究”（UAS），了解家长对COVID-19教育影响的看法。该研究将跟踪2021年春季和夏季以及2021-22学年的教育经验。该团队将分析总体结果和感兴趣的关键人口群体，因为学生和教师将在2021年期间返回现场教学。这个快速项目允许继续收集至关重要的数据，并有助于继续了解美国家庭对大流行病的影响和应对措施。 自2020年3月以来，UAS一直在跟踪COVID-19对全国约1，400个有学前儿童的家庭的教育影响。早期结果的重点是量化数字鸿沟并记录COVID-19开始后获得的重要教育服务（例如免费膳食和特殊教育服务）。该项目将支持继续有针对性地管理无人机系统向家长提出的关于学生学习经验和参与的问题，包括总体和STEM科目、数据分析以及向主要利益攸关方群体传播结果。调查结果将报告整体和关键人口群体，包括种族，残疾，城市化和社会经济地位。该项目还将制作有针对性的研究简报，解决紧迫的政策问题，旨在支持各州、地区和学校的干预战略。将通过现有网络并与其他专注于了解COVID-19危机的研究项目合作进行广泛传播。所有横截面和纵向UAS数据文件将在管理结束后不久公开，以便其他研究人员可以探索COVID-19的相关性和相关结果。探索研究PreK-12计划（DRK-12）旨在通过研究和开发新的创新和方法，显着提高preK-12学生和教师的科学，技术，工程和数学的学习和教学。DRK-12项目中的项目建立在STEM教育的基础研究以及为项目提供理论和经验依据的先前研究和开发工作的基础上。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The COVID-19 epidemic has been a tremendous disruption to the education of U.S. students and their families, and evidence suggests that this disruption has been unequally felt across households by income and race/ethnicity. While other ongoing data collection efforts focus on understanding this disruption from the perspective of students or educators, less is known about the impact of COVID-19 on children’s prek-12 educational experiences as reported by their parents, especially in STEM subjects. This study will build upon the team's prior research from early in the pandemic. Researchers will continue to collect data from families and aims to understand parents’ perspectives on the educational impacts of COVID-19 by leveraging a nationally representative, longitudinal study, the Understanding America Study (UAS). The study will track educational experiences during the Spring and Summer of 2021 and into the 2021-22 school year. The team will analyze outcomes overall and for key demographic groups of interest as students and teachers return to in-person instruction during 2021. This RAPID project allows critically important data to continue to be collected and contribute to continued understanding of the impacts of and responses to the pandemic by American families. Since March of 2020, the UAS has been tracking the educational impacts of COVID-19 for a nationally representative sample of approximately 1,400 households with preK-12 children. Early results focused on quantifying the digital divide and documenting the receipt of important educational services--like free meals and special education services--after COVID-19 began. This project will support the continued targeted administration of UAS questions to parents about students’ learning experiences and engagement, overall and in STEM subjects, data analysis, and dissemination of results to key stakeholder groups. Findings will be reported overall and across key demographic groups including ethnicity, disability, urbanicity, and socioeconomic status. This project will also produce targeted research briefs addressing pressing policy questions aimed at supporting intervention strategies in states, districts, and schools moving forward. Widespread dissemination will take place through existing networks and in collaboration with other research projects focused on understanding the COVID-19 crisis. All cross-sectional and longitudinal UAS data files will be publicly available shortly after conclusion of administration so that other researchers can explore the correlates of, and outcomes associated with, COVID-19.This RAPID award is made by the DRK-12 program in the Division of Research on Learning. The Discovery Research PreK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics by preK-12 students and teachers, through the research and development of new innovations and approaches. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for the projects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.