Most U.S. residents agree that safety conditions just aren’t there yet for school-age children to return to the classroom because of COVID-19, but the consensus begins to splinter among racial, income and political groups, according to new results from a national survey from Northeastern, Harvard, Rutgers, and Northwestern.
Researchers interviewed roughly 19,000 adults in July and found that only 31 percent of them believe that sending students K-12 back to school was either “very safe” (10 percent) or “somewhat safe” (21 percent).
Not all adults surveyed had children, but for those who do, the findings discovered relatively minor gaps between parents who live with only young children in the household (ages 0-5) and parents with preteen (age 6-12) or teenage (age 13-17) children, though parents who live with children in the youngest age group were a bit less likely to consider schools safe.
“The implication is that parents who live with children are not differentiating their attitudes based on whether the kids are in elementary, middle, or high school, despite emerging research suggesting that the risks associated with COVID-19 may vary for children at different ages,” researchers wrote.
