Succumbing, Surviving, and Thriving: The Development of Low-Income Students in the Long Shadow of COVID-19 - Project Summary The COVID-19 pandemic poses a sustained threat to the wellbeing of all children, as evidenced by low test scores and high rates of absenteeism post-COVID. This complex crisis exposed millions of children to massive disruptions of their educational contexts when schools closed with growing accounts of associated learning loss, social isolation, and emotional distress. Scholars have mobilized to study the pandemic, yet much of this emerging research draws on small, relatively homogeneous community samples, limiting applicability to children most affected by this pandemic and its multisystem disruptions (e.g., those reflective of the public-school population in large school districts that closed during COVID-19). Importantly, little of this existing research contains extensive, repeated measures of pre-COVID-19 child functioning. Nor does it capture the multisystem protective factors likely to influence short- and longer-term developmental recovery for the current U.S. child population. Thus, there is an urgent need for longitudinal research spanning the period from before the pandemic and continuing, on larger, more representative samples of children to inform current and future pandemic preparation and response efforts. The proposed project fills this gap by capturing children’s pre-k-1st grade pre-pandemic functioning and following them through - and well beyond - the period of widespread quarantines and school closures, as they enter adolescence. Leveraging data from an existing, ongoing, large sample of low-income students in Title I public schools in a state’s largest school district, who have been followed since they were preschoolers in 2016, the proposed study will (Aim 1a) determine the impacts of COVID-19 disruptions when schools were closed on children’s short-term outcomes in the years immediately following school reopening (3rd-5th grade); (Aim 1b) investigate how short-term outcomes are exacerbated or mitigated by individual differences in children’s pre-COVID-19 experiences; (Aim 2a) explore the longer-term impacts of disruption on learning and development by adding repeated measurement of children’s outcomes in the longer term following school reopening, through 9th grade; and (2b) identify the most potent features of children’s post-school-reopening family, school, and peer contexts that mitigate the longer-term impacts (through 9th grade) of COVID-19 disruption on recovery of consequential early adolescent outcomes, including mental health. By determining effects of educational and family-based disruptions during school closures, and family disruptions that continue after schools reopened, on varying developmental trajectories, and identifying protective factors, this project will specify shared and unique aspects of children’s family, school, and peer contexts that promote long-term resilience. It thus holds tremendous promise for advancing knowledge to improve public health and inform current and future disaster preparation, relief, and recovery efforts.
