MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Across the U.S., a whole lot of us are digging out today after that massive storm over the weekend, which means flight cancellations and power outages and school closures. Now, the kids with sleds headed for the hill behind my house this morning were celebrating, but is that time off from school good for them? Are snow days good for students? Joshua Goodman is professor of education and of economics at Boston University. He has written about this. Professor Goodman, welcome.
JOSHUA GOODMAN: Thanks for having me.
KELLY: As basic as I can put it, are snow days good for kids?
GOODMAN: Emotionally, probably yes, but in terms of their learning, probably no. When they miss a day of school, they miss 1 out of 180 days that they have in the school year, and it shows up in the data later as being a little bit less good in reading, a little bit less skilled in math.
KELLY: How much is a little bit less? Like, what does the data actually tell us?
GOODMAN: Maybe not surprisingly, when you miss 1 out of your 180 days, you lose roughly 1% of your learning for the school year. Just like during the pandemic when we were concerned about kids missing school, when you miss a little school, you miss a little learning. You know, a few snow days aren't going to destroy anyone's career aspirations, but we should use them sparingly just to make sure that kids are doing what they're supposed to be doing.
KELLY: I'm also thinking of some of the other issues. For some students, for example, school is where you get lunch. It may be where you get a hot breakfast. It may be the only square meal a day you get.
GOODMAN: That's absolutely right. I mean, we learned this lesson the hard way over the last five years, when we had longer-term school closures, that schools play a lot of functions beyond just teaching math and reading and science and history. They're an important place for kids to get fed, to be watched and cared for, that enable parents to go to work physically. And so my kids are very happy to be off today. They are literally out sledding right now.
KELLY: Wonderful.
GOODMAN: I'm very lucky that I can work at home and talk to you from home. But that's not true of many parents, and it can be a challenge for families that depend on schools for a full range of services.
KELLY: Yeah, I will allow that much as I loved snow days as a kid, I loved them a little bit less as a working parent. I'm listening to you as you tell me some of the data about lost learning, about the downsides of snow days. What about the upside? What about the positives?
GOODMAN: I'll give you three upsides. One is there are real safety concerns. We don't want people getting into school bus accidents on the way to school during a snow day. So that's, I think, the first one. The second one is it is a magical time for kids if there's enough snow to actually go out and do something with it. The fact that my kids are out sledding is going to create memories with them and their friends that arguably are as, or maybe more important, than what they would have learned in school just for today. And then the third - and I'm saying this as a former high school math teacher myself...
KELLY: (Laughter).
GOODMAN: ...Is that if you don't declare a snow day when there's a lot of snow out, what tends to happen is you still get a lot of people absent from school. And it turns out that's actually harder to deal with in terms of learning and more disruptive in the long run than just saying, everyone's out today. We're going to start again tomorrow from scratch.
KELLY: Because what do you do if half the class was there and got the lesson you had planned and the other half didn't?
GOODMAN: Exactly. It's very hard for a teacher to teach half of the students in a room, catch the absent kids up the next day. It just wastes everyone's time. So it's better to just coordinate and all agree to go sledding together and come back for learning tomorrow.
KELLY: Professor Joshua Goodman of Boston University, talking us through the pros and cons of school snow days. Thank you so much.
GOODMAN: It's been a pleasure.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE PIANO GUYS' "LET IT SNOW") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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