Survey: 68% of Students Would Not Fully Reopen Their School

This article has an update; you can view new survey results here.

America waits with bated breath to find out where students will be taking their classes this fall.

National, state, and district education officials have clashed day after day with little time remaining before classes begin. We’re tracking the largest U.S. school districts to see what the most influential leaders decide.

Several districts have sent surveys to their parent and teacher communities, asking for feedback on what would make them feel comfortable sending their kids back to school.

But 57 million U.S. students are waiting to hear what their future holds, and we think their voice deserves to be heard. 

In a survey on July 7th, Brainly asked 4,552 students in middle and high school what they would do, given the responsibility of making decisions for their school this fall.

Here’s what we found.

Question 1: Reopening Decision

We put middle- and high-school students in the decision seat, asking them what they would decide if they were in charge of reopening their school for the 2020-21 school year.

• 31.2% would fully reopen their school.
• 35.8% would have a hybrid of in-school and virtual learning.
• 33.1% would keep their school closed in favor of virtual learning.

Each surveyed student provided their school level (middle or high school) and state. Among school levels, the results were very similar. However, by state, the results varied:

Question 2: Safety Standards

This question was asked to the combined 68.9% students who did not elect for a full school reopening, in an effort to understand what sorts of environmental or procedural improvements would change their decision.

These students selected from the below 6 options we showed them in random order.

While we did accept other text responses as an option, none of the keywords or patterns carried across more than 0.2% of entries.

Question 3: The Effectiveness of At-Home Learning

• 58.3% said students learn less at home than at school.
• 25.7% said students learn about the same at home and at school.
• 16.3% said students learn more at home than at school.

The decision to reopen schools was split somewhat evenly, but this response confirms it’s about more than just the educational experience. Over half of students in all age groups reflected on their past few months of learning at home and decided that the quality of their education had lessened.

Conclusions

As the reopening debate surges on, schools are frantically compiling their versions of “Plan B.” This includes better technology, platforms, and training for virtual learning resources, in case schools decide to continue at least some aspect of remote learning this fall. 

Over 68% of students agree that would be the best course of action right now.

Methodology

These results were taken from a single survey on June 7th, 2020 of 4,552 unique Brainly users, selected at random, who self-identified as a middle- or high-school student. These students supplied their school level and their state before answering our questions.