Chronic absenteeism was “substantially higher” in public school districts that went online during the COVID-19 pandemic than in those that maintained in-person instruction, a study has found.

Three economists from the University of Notre Dame compared the number of virtual school days in 11,017 districts during the 2020-21 academic year to their tallies of students who missed at least 10% of classes before and after campus lockdowns.

They found that the rates of perpetually missing K-12 students rose from an average of 8.1% in 2018-19 to 29.3% in 2021-22. 

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Schools that held 100% of their classes online reported chronic absenteeism rates that were 6.9% higher than those that offered 100% in-person instruction.

“Understanding how to reduce chronic absenteeism and use virtual learning without potentially negative consequences are key policy questions moving forward,” William Evans, Kathryn Muchnick and Olivia Rosenlund wrote in the study, published Wednesday in JAMA Network Open.

The researchers noted that virtual learning hit poor students the hardest.

They reported students living in extreme poverty in districts with 100% virtual learning had chronic absenteeism rates that were 10.6 percentage points higher than students in districts that kept all students on campus.

On the positive side, the study found that schools offering a mix of online and in-person classes didn’t experience similar absenteeism spikes.

According to several experts reached for comment, the findings add to a growing body of evidence that school closures during the pandemic were a tragic mistake.

They said the federal government, teachers unions and state officials share responsibility for using emergency measures to keep children home.

“Here in Seattle, it was the teachers refusing to go back who kept the schools closed for two years,” said Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician and professor at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute. “Teachers should have been classified as essential workers and not allowed to self-categorize out of that group.”

Dr. Christakis, who researches the negative effects of digital screens on childhood development, pointed to decades of research showing that chronic absenteeism always rose when teacher strikes kept students out of school for prolonged periods.

“It’s entirely predictable that you would see rises in absenteeism after a prolonged pandemic,” he added. “When you talk about virtual learning, I would put the ‘learning’ part in quotes. It just doesn’t work for young kids.” 

The nation’s two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

Stewart D. Roberson, an education professor at the University of Virginia, said the responsibility for school shutdowns ranged from the governors of some states to local leaders in others.

“In either case, the leaders were utilizing the best available data they had regarding an unknown virus,” said Mr. Roberson, a former public middle and high school principal in Fredericksburg who also served as superintendent of Falls Church City Public Schools. “I’m not sure that holding leaders accountable for anything other than utilizing the best available data about the next pandemic is necessary.”

But conservative parental rights groups that opposed K-12 lockdowns throughout the pandemic say officials should have known better. 

They point out that medical experts learned early on that the risks of transmission and infection on school campuses were lower than some teachers feared.

“The correlation between lockdowns and chronic absenteeism [is] about authority figures prioritizing their own comfort above the well-being of students,” said Kimberly Fletcher, president of the conservative Moms for America. 

“Forced remote learning just confirmed the students’ belief that no one at school actually cares if they attend or learn,” said Sheri Few, president of the right-leaning U.S. Parents Involved in Education.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, faulted the federal government for failing to implement a clear policy of “targeted mitigation” like other nations did.

“That opportunity was squandered because of massive evasion from the federal government in the early months of 2020, leading to blunt measures being enacted by states,” said Dr. Adalja, an infectious disease specialist who has treated COVID cases. “Schools in many jurisdictions were the last facilities to reopen, the opposite of the situation in many other countries where in-person schooling was prioritized.”