Gretchen Vogel, Jennifer Couzin-FrankelScience’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.Schools around the world are again the site of a large, and largely uncontrolled, experiment.When schools from New Zealand to Norway to Japan reopened in April and May as the first wave of COVID-19 cases subsided, the virus stayed mostly at bay.
Health and education officials cheered, having bet that the huge benefits of in-person schooling outweighed the risk of viral spread among children and teachers—and from schools to wider communities.As a result, many places that had moved cautiously at first threw open classroom doors in August and September.