The School Learning Modalities dataset provides weekly estimates of school learning modality (including in-person, remote, or hybrid learning) for U.S. K-12 public and independent charter school districts for the 2021-2022 school year. These data are modeled using multiple sources of input data to infer the most likely learning modality of a school district for a given week. These data should be considered district-level estimates and may not always reflect true learning modality, particularly for districts in which data are unavailable. If a district reports multiple modality types within the same week, the modality offered for the majority of those days is reflected in the weekly estimate. All school district metadata are sourced from the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) for SY 2020-21.
School learning modality types are defined as follows:
In-Person: All schools within the district offer face-to-face instruction 5 days per week to all students at all available grade levels
Remote: Schools within the district do not offer face-to-face instruction; all learning is conducted online/remotely to all students at all available grade levels
Hybrid: Schools within the district offer a combination of in-person and remote learning; face-to-face instruction is offered less than 5 days per week, or only to a subset of students
An interactive dashboard and visualizations of these data are available here.
Data Information and Disclaimers
School learning modality data provided here are model estimates using combined input data from Burbio and MCH and are not guaranteed to be 100% accurate. A probabilistic Hidden Markov Model (HMM) was implemented to determine the learning modality of each district by week. This is an unsupervised model which infers the sequence of learning modalities most likely to produce the observed data and includes reported modality data from each source. The HMM was trained using data from MCH Strategic Data, Burbio, American Enterprise Institute’s Return to Learn tracker, and available state education dashboards (including Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington). You can read more about the model in the CDC MMWR article here: COVID-19 Related School Closures and Learning Modalities Changes.
The metrics listed for each school learning modality reflect totals by district and the number of enrolled students per district for which data are available. School districts represented here include the following NCES subtypes and exclude private schools:
Public school district that is NOT a component of a supervisory union
Public school district that is a component of a supervisory union
Independent charter district
July data is included but schools are closed during this month.
