Developmental Asset Profile (DAP)
Category: Student Well-Being
Education personnel play a crucial role in identifying and reporting child maltreatment. However, school closures amid COVID-19 pandemic disrupted this vital reporting system. I causally investigate how remote learning influenced trends in child maltreatment reports and risks, leveraging county-level variations in remote learning instructional weeks in the United States during the 2020-21 school year. Utilizing maltreatment report and maltreatment-related fatality data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), I find that counties with higher exposure to remote instruction experienced fewer screened-in allegations of school-aged children, but a higher substantiated allegations and an increase in maltreatment-related child fatalities. The reduction in allegations was primarily driven by those reported by education personnel, and the impacts varied significantly based on characteristics such as the child's race/ethnicity and the type of maltreatment. These results highlight an unintended cost of distance learning: remote instruction impaired the detection of child maltreatment, leading to fewer reports but more severe cases that could have lasting impacts on children. They also urge prompt policy interventions to safeguard children who remain undetected and to repair the reporting gaps caused by educator-child disconnection.
Education level
Topics
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/vx07-4d24
