U.S. K-12 School Closures and COVID-19 Metrics During the Pandemic

Records track unplanned public K-12 school district and individual school closures due to COVID-19 in the United States from August 2020 to June 2022. The dataset includes metrics on absenteeism, suspected cases, and closure events, sourced from the CDC's data.cdc.gov platform. It was last updated in May 2024.

Use Cases

• Analyze the correlation between `SuspectedCase` counts and `EventType` (closure) decisions across different `State` jurisdictions.
• Model the duration or frequency of closures (`EventName`, `EventType`) using predictors like `AbsentStudents`, `AbsentStaff`, and `TSCOVID`.
• Assess the relationship between `Mandate` or `Recommendation` policies and the `Widespread` occurrence of school closures.
• Cluster districts (`DistrictNCESID`) based on closure patterns and metrics like `LCStudent`, `LCStaff`, and `SCStaff` to identify regional response profiles.

Strengths

• Covers a defined 23-month period from August 2020 to June 2022.
• Includes granular identifiers like `SchoolNCESID` and `DistrictNCESID` for linking to other education datasets.
• Provides over 25 columns capturing various dimensions of closures, absenteeism, and case tracking.

Limitations

• Unknown row count prevents assessment of statistical power or geographic granularity.
• Sample data is unavailable, making it impossible to verify data distributions, null values, or class imbalances for columns like `MentalHealth` or `Side_effects_of_vaccination`.
• Data is retrospective, ending in mid-2022, limiting analysis of later pandemic phases.

Provenance

Source

data.cdc.gov

Time Range

August 1, 2020 to June 30, 2022

Freshness

Last updated in May 2024, though the core data range ended in June 2022.

Geography

United States