COVID-19 and K–12 School Reopening : A Simple Information Provision Proposal

Month for month, the COVID-19 pandemic has done more damage to the American workforce than the Great Recession. By shutting down schools, local policymakers risk making this damage permanent. What has come to be called educational scarring helps explain why the Great Recession was so great and why the recovery took so long to benefit low-wage workers.In this policy brief, I propose an (apparently novel) dynamic information provision strategy tailored to parents and local policymakers. This strategy can be implemented without any additional data collection. If the United States follows the same trajectory in the rates of COVID-19 death and infection as other countries experiencing earlier peaks in these rates, then I anticipate that my proposal will accelerate school reopenings. My policy recommendation also balances potential future harms from COVID-19 by serving as an early warning system in the event of a COVID-19 mutation occurring in a particular area or the weakening of a particular population’s immunity