The effect of school closures on standardized test scores: Evidence under zero-COVID policies

Abstract

We study the effect of school closures on learning loss under Australia’s zero-COVID policies. School closures occurred together with preemptive shelter-in-place and non-essential workplace closures that successfully eliminated the spread of COVID. We exploit variation in the duration of school closures across Australian regions of 9-157 school days and student-level test score data from a national standardized test with high participation to estimate learning loss. Learning loss was substantially smaller than comparable estimates from the literature, which has almost exclusively studied COVID mitigation (rather than elimination) policy environments. Learning loss was minimal for disadvantaged socioeconomic groups.