Covid-era school closures caused the U.S. significant economic and educational loss while being less effective than other transmission interventions, according to new research.
The University of Washington and Oxford University study found that closing schools created $2 trillion in future economic losses — a conservative estimate — while reducing Covid spread by just 8%.
Mask mandates, on the other hand, lessened transmission by nearly 20% and cost relatively little, researchers concluded.
“Hindsight is 20/20, right?” said Adrian Raftery, a professor emeritus of statistics and sociology at UW and a co-author of the study. “This study’s an opportunity to look back and see what worked, what didn’t work, and what we could’ve done better.”
The research examined 11 different non-pharmaceutical interventions — including mask mandates, public testing, contact tracing, social distancing, and workplace closures. Those interventions combined saved almost 900,000 lives and reduced the death rate by about 70%, Raftery said.
“Overall, they worked extremely well,” he said. “It was very good that they were put in place.”
Mask mandates were the most cost-effective measure, Raftery said. But other interventions, such as stay-at-home orders, closing public transportation, and school closures — not so much.
Through disease modeling, the study estimates shuttering schools in particular averted about 80,000 deaths — about 20% of total U.S. Covid deaths during that time.
“Obviously, that’s a lot, it’s a good thing to have done,” Raftery said. “But actually, we could have improved — both had fewer deaths and [spent] much less money.”
Raftery and his colleagues found that a combination of more effective measures, like social distancing, publicly available tests, and well-tailored, reactive workplace closures, could’ve slashed the Covid death rate by half and saved the U.S. about $2.5 trillion — without shuttering schools.
Following widespread school closures and virtual learning during Covid, research and test scores have documented significant learning loss.
For example, the latest “nation’s report card” found students in Washington state and across the country still have not bounced back from the vast academic declines of the pandemic in both math and reading.
Researchers have also measured the direct costs of school closures in terms of lost school staff productivity and parents missing work to care for kids during distance learning.
But the new study also examines the substantial indirect costs of school closures.
“Students suffering acute learning loss go on to become less skilled and less productive members of the workforce,” the study says, “which in turn leads to future losses in personal income and national GDP.”
The study found school closures cost the U.S. $2 trillion in future losses to the economy and individuals’ income, Raftery said. That means every death that was averted by school closures cost the country $26 million — and every American lost out on about $6,000.
“That is very, very high and by most measures, that was not a good use of resources,” Raftery said.
And that’s a conservative estimate, he added, noting the study assumes that online learning was 90% as effective as in-person school.
“I think that’s actually a very optimistic approach,” he said, adding that another study estimated the cost per death was seven times higher than his team’s $26 million estimate.
“The reality is probably in between those two,” Raftery said.
His study also assumes the average American student lost about a third of a year of in-school learning. But other research shows that some students missed more than that.
For instance, researchers from Harvard and Stanford universities found that between 2019 and 2022, the average Washington state student lost over five months of learning in math and about three months in reading.
That research also concluded that the learning loss varied widely even among neighboring districts — largely depending on poverty rates.
At the end of the day, Raftery said he hopes his study doesn’t come off as blaming leaders or school districts for their decisions during the pandemic.
“As a nation, we were kind of flying blind because the data were pretty bad and policymakers were grasping for something to base decisions on,” he said. "We're not at all criticizing them. This is for future reference in a future pandemic.”
Copyright 2025 KUOW
This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media stations in Oregon and Washington.