Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, University of Southern California, 3502 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA.
Bill Lane Center for the American West, Stanford University, 473 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA.
Sci Rep. 2022 Feb 8;12(1):2079. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-06050-9.
Climate change impacts such as disasters and higher temperatures can disrupt academic learning and reduce academic performance. Here, we use two-ways linear fixed effects regression to estimate the effects of short-term school closures (1-5 days) due to wildfires, natural hazard impacts, infrastructure, and student safety on academic performance in California, focusing on mathematics and English scores from state assessments and college preparatory exams. Wildfires are responsible for the majority of school closures. Wildfires generate significant negative impacts on academic performance among younger students. We primarily find insignificant impacts on academic achievement due to school closures from other causes, including from the interaction between number of closure days and socioeconomic and racial/ethnic makeup of the school, across all causes. The effects of school closures lasting more than one week (6-10 days) are also generally insignificant, except for the negative impacts of wildfire closures on elementary school students. These results suggest that older students are resilient to most unexpected short-term school closures (1-5 days) or that teachers can make up lessons effectively after schoolwide closures.
气候变化的影响，如灾害和更高的温度，可能会扰乱学术学习并降低学术表现。在这里，我们使用双向线性固定效应回归来估计由于野火、自然灾害影响、基础设施和学生安全而导致的短期学校关闭（1-5 天）对加利福尼亚学术表现的影响，重点关注州评估和大学预备考试中的数学和英语成绩。野火是造成学校关闭的主要原因。野火对年幼学生的学业成绩产生了重大负面影响。我们主要发现，由于其他原因（包括关闭天数与学校的社会经济和种族/族裔构成之间的相互作用）导致的学校关闭对学业成绩没有显著影响，所有原因的情况均如此。持续超过一周（6-10 天）的学校关闭的影响通常也不显著，除了野火关闭对小学生的负面影响。这些结果表明，年长的学生对大多数意外的短期学校关闭（1-5 天）具有较强的适应能力，或者教师可以在全校关闭后有效地补课。
