The Washington Post – Emma Brown
“It’s become a maxim in education: More learning time leads to greater student achievement. So when schools close for snow — as they did over and over this winter across many states — the assumption is that student achievement will suffer. Not so, says Joshua Goodman, an assistant professor of public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Goodman examined weather data, student test scores and attendance data in Massachusetts between 2003 and 2010. He found that the number of canceled school days because of snow in a given year had no impact on children’s math and reading test scores. Instead, it was the number of days that were merely snowy — when schools remained open, but many students were absent — that appeared to hurt achievement, particularly in math.”(more)