research database for elementary students

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A curated list of reliable, user-friendly databases for students K –12.

Databases are the research workhorses in many school libraries, increasingly taking the place of long shelves of reference books and allowing users 24/7 access to information on devices of their choosing. Educators continue to stress the importance of authoritative sources and citations, while students are learning to pick up on the first whiff of “fake news.” Reliable, user-friendly databases are more important than ever.

Input from SLJ reviewers, as well as responses from an August online survey of independent school librarians, gathered by Selene Athas, director of libraries at Roland Park Country School in Baltimore, helped winnow the list of resources that are both scholarly and ease to use. Teachers will approve of features such as links to standards and curriculum content, while students will appreciate intuitive search interfaces, clearly labeled results, the ability to drill down to specifics, and plenty of visuals. And translation and read-aloud options and a wide range of reading levels will benefit everyone. The following databases are paid, subscription-based products, unless otherwise noted. Pricing may vary depending on library and population size, membership in a consortium, or other factors. If your statistics show static database usage, consider requesting a few free trials and promoting some of these offerings.  

National Geographic Kids (Gale) Gr 2-6  –This resource aimed at elementary and younger middle school students boasts bright images and content largely taken from the pages of National Geographic Kids magazine and National Geographic print titles. Carousels display videos, photos, books, and magazines. Youngsters will find everything from butterfly videos to info on sharks. Along with animals, five other topics, such as history and the environment, are included. National Geographic Virtual Library, for older students, archives information from National Geographic Society publications from 1888 to the present.

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Maggie Knapp is a librarian at Trinity Valley School, Forth Worth, TX.

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Gale in Context ~ Elementary  is the perfect educational product for today's young learners. It's a content-rich, authoritative, easy-to-use resource featuring age-appropriate content covering a broad range of educational topics.

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Britannica Library Children :   You can choose from a variety of content types, including articles, images, videos, dictionary, magazines, Web's Best Sites, Primary Sources & Ebooks, and Year in Review.

BookFlix: Learning to Read, then Reading to Learn Thematically paired fiction and nonfiction titles are designed to bridge learning-to-read and reading-to-learn. Animated classic storybooks introduce early learners to the delights of reading while sparking curiosity, creating a natural springboard into the paired nonfiction text for deeper discovery.

Scholastic Teachables —worksheets, lesson plans, learning games, and more! Formerly known as Scholastic Printables, we offer printable activities for any subject: math, science, reading comprehension, STEM, writing, and beyond. Download printable lesson plans, reading passages, games and puzzles, clip art, bulletin board ideas, and skills sheets for kids in any grade. 

PebbleGo —PebbleGo includes interactive lessons for kid-friendly topics, like animals and biographies. The content is robust, engaging, and developmentally appropriate for  K-5 students .

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Databases for Pre K-12 Educators and Students: Home

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Library Databases for PreK-12 Educators

• ERIC (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) is a digital library of education research materials sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education. ERIC is the most comprehensive education database with access to over 1,000 journals.
• PsycINFO This link opens in a new window PsycINFO is an excellent database for researching topics in early childhood and special education.
• EBSCOhost Education Databases This link opens in a new window For teachers and students. Includes: ERIC, Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia, Primary Search, Teacher Reference Center, MAS Ultra - School Edition
• ProQuest Education Database This link opens in a new window Access to over 900 top educational publications, including more than 600 of the titles in full text. Many titles are indexed in the ERIC database. The coverage spans the literature on primary, secondary and higher education as well as special education, home schooling and adult education.
• Teacher Reference Center This link opens in a new window Topics include: Assessment, Best Practices, Continuing Education, Current Pedagogical Research, Curriculum Development, Elementary Education, Higher Education, Instructional Media, Language Arts, Literacy Standards, School Administration, Science & Mathematics, and Teacher Education.

Public Databases for PreK-12 Educators

Databases for K-12 Students

These databases are provided by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and the Massachusetts Library System with state funds and federal IMLS funds.

• Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia This link opens in a new window High School The Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia covers a wide array of subjects and includes brief biographies as well as images.
• Global Issues in Context This link opens in a new window High School Perspectives on international news and events that provides in one resource a multitude of ways to stay up-to-date with economic, environmental, health, military, political, and social global issues.
• Research in Context Middle School Research In Context is cross-disciplinary in nature—spanning literature, science, social studies, and U.S. and world history.
• Kids InfoBits Elementary Kids InfoBits is a database developed especially for beginning researchers in Kindergarten through Grade 5. It covers geography, current events, the arts, science, health, people, government, history, sports and more.
• Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window Full-text articles from scholarly journals and literary magazines are combined with critical essays, work and topic overviews, full-text works, biographies, and more.Researchers at all levels will find the information they need, with content covering all genres and disciplines, all time periods and all parts of the world. From the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and the Massachusetts Library System with state funds and federal IMLS funds.
• MAS Ultra - School Edition This link opens in a new window This comprehensive database, designed specifically for high school libraries, contains full text for nearly 500 popular, high school magazines. All full text articles are assigned a reading level indicator (Lexiles).
• Primary Search Elementary Primary Search provides full text for more than 70 magazines for elementary school research. All full text articles included in the database are assigned a reading level indicator (Lexiles).
• Science (Gale In Context) This link opens in a new window Science (Gale In Context) is an engaging online resource providing contextual information on hundreds of today's most significant science topics. By integrating authoritative, curriculum-aligned reference content with headlines and videos, Science In Context draws students into the subject matter, showing how scientific disciplines relate to real-world issues, from weather patterns to obesity.
• Opposing Viewpoints (Gale In Context) This link opens in a new window Covers today’s hottest social issues, from Offshore Drilling to Climate Change, Health Care to Immigration.
• Student Edition High School It focuses on the core curriculum: history, literature, science, and social studies. With one search students will find information in reference works, magazines, newspapers, primary sources, and a variety of multimedia resources. It has the Lexile reading levels for journal and magazine articles.
• Vocations & Careers Collection This link opens in a new window Finding the right career can be a daunting and high stakes task: finding an appropriate institution of learning, job searching, and maintaining a career are all topics covered by this collection, providing current and applicable content for all vocational milestones. Offering content from nearly 400 journals, this collection provides content from general career guides to highly specialized industry journals. From the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and the Massachusetts Library System with state funds and federal IMLS funds.
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Harvard Reference Generator

A excellent tool for producing Harvard-style references in the correct format. While it lacks the save bibliography functions of other reference generators, it is simple and accurate. Provides tried and tested results examined by tutors to ensure the correct method of referencing.  The Harvard Reference format is most widely used in Europe and Australia.

Sweet Search

Sweet Search is a search engine designed for students. It has several research and search tools. The search engine restricts its results to 35,000 sites reviewed by experts, teachers and librarians for quality and appropriateness.

Other tools on the site include:

• a Biographies section, with guidance for writing a biography
• SweetSearch2Day, with guidance on improving your research skills, web guides on social studies topics, and articles about students who are improving their communities and the world.

CiteThisForMe

CiteThisForMe is a tool designed to help students prepare their whole bibliography or reference list. It will generate your list in any of several styles. These include APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, Turabian, and Vancouver among others.

Historical Marker Database

This website is an illustrated searchable online catalog of historical information viewed through the filter of roadside and other permanent outdoor markers, monuments, and plaques. It contains photographs, inscription transcriptions, marker locations, maps, additional information and commentary, and links to more information. Anyone can add new markers to the database and update existing marker pages with new photographs, links, information and commentary.

This is a useful research tool for local history. The database contains more than 92,000 markers nationwide. For a short-term history project in the classroom, consider having students contribute to the database by adding entries for local markers in your area. Review the guidelines for submission .

NASA Image and Video Library

Theses images, videos, and audio recordings are free for public use. They can be used by students and teachers for classroom presentations, research papers, websites, etc. You may not, however, use any of the NASA logos that appear on the site.

The site contains everything from classic photos to educational programming and HD video. New media are continually added. The collections is an excellent resource for students working on STEM projects. NASA’s goal in creating it is to promote education in math and sciences at all levels, and to build general interest and excitement around space exploration, aeronautics, and astronomy.

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K-12 Databases and Search Engines: K-12 Databases

K-12 databases.

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• ELM ELM is the Electronic Library for Minnesota and includes research databases and resources for elementary, middle school, and high school students.

Contains middle and high school-appropriate magazine, journal, and encyclopedia articles and also includes primary source documents, reference books, and multimedia. 

Contains full text for more than 540 popular, high school magazines. Provides more than full text reference books, biographies, primary source documents, and photos, maps & flags, color PDFs and expanded full text backfiles 

Coverage includes: America's Civil War, American Heritage, American History, Archaeology, Astronomy, Bioscience, Careers & Colleges, Civil War Times, Congressional Digest, Discover, Economist, History Today, Nation, National Review, New Republic, New Scientist, Popular Science, Science News, Scientific American, Smithsonian, World War II, etc.

A curricular content hub specifically designed for K-5 students. Informational articles, ready-made activities, and literacy supports including read-along audio and word-by-word highlighting.

K-12 E-Books

The collection is accessible online at EbooksMN.org and via free apps from iTunes, Google Play, and Kindle. Ebooks Minnesota is open to all individuals and libraries within Minnesota’s borders. Contains more than 3,800 books, including titles Minnesota publishers.

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• SIRS Discoverer ** General reference database for elementary and middle school learners, researchers, and educators covering curriculum areas and content sets such as reading, language arts, current events, science, social studies, history, health, and technology. SIRS Discoverer provides editorially-selected, indexed, and curated materials from over 2,100 newspapers, magazines, and websites offering guided research for young researchers.

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Some resources are subscription databases provided for free by the Arkansas State Library to Arkansas residents. This list may change as subscriptions to databases change. Make sure to check this list or the State Library for a current list of free subscription-based databases.

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The library provides a diverse collection of online databases. Simply click on a database to be directed to the online database in question. If you are prompted for a library card number enter your full 14 digit number with no spaces (the one exception being the Salem databases which need only the last 6 digits). If your card is not a Margaret E. Heggan Free Public Library card or your card is expired or has fines you may be unable to access a database. Contact the library if you are unsure.

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Peer Review

Peer Review is a process by which other scholars evaluate a work.  The is a measure to ensure the accuracy of the data and the quality of the work, a means of self-regulating scholarly literature.

If an article is provided by a database as Full Text it is available to read in its entirety on the database.  The alternative is an abstract, where a citation is provided, informing the reader how to seek out the full article. Explora: Elementary Schools EBSCO Explora is EBSCO’s interface for Schools and Public Libraries. Designed to meet the unique needs of its users, Explora supports both student research and classroom instruction with the following features:

• Simple search that quickly delivers relevant results
• Easy-to-browse categories organized by popular topic
• Topic overviews that provide students with a starting point for research
• Colorful, mobile-friendly design with feature areas that provide context to students
• Reading level indicators (Lexile® Measures) to simplify discovery of grade-appropriate content
• Text-to-speech for HTML articles to assist struggling readers or those learning English
• Curriculum Standards Module to help educators correlate EBSCO content quickly and easily to Common Core, state- or province-specific curriculum standards

A state-funded collaboration between the Delaware Department of Education and the University of Delaware Library providing online magazines, journals, encyclopedias and training for all Delaware K-12 public schools

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Elementary school, access the following databases for free either at the library or online using your personal or school library card., biography in context, britannica escolar, culturegrams, history resources: facts on file, homework helpnow, literature resource center, novelist k-8 plus, reference e-books, world almanac for kids, customer service: (303) 791-7323, tax resources  | tax help for seniors.

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Book Collection: Nonfiction — Elementary School Edition

Book Collection: Nonfiction — Elementary School Edition is a rich research database for elementary-aged students, containing abstracts and searchable full text for hundreds of popular nonfiction books. The database includes content on animals, weather, holidays, adventure, sports and more.

An Invaluable Reference for Elementary Teachers and Students

Content in Book Collection: Nonfiction — Elementary School Edition   is appropriately selected based on reading level (Lexile) and is correlated to Curriculum Standards. It offers full text for a variety of nonfiction books that are part of the popular Accelerated Reader ® program.

Subjects Include:

• Biographies
• Native Americans
• United States

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Elementary (Kids!) Resources & Research: Project Ideas & Research Sites

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Home › Blog Topics › Community/Teacher Collaboration › 5 Tips and Tricks for Teaching Research in Elementary

5 Tips and Tricks for Teaching Research in Elementary

By Kelly Hincks on 05/16/2023 • ( 3 )

Have a Process

Having a defined process that is appropriate for the age of your learners helps to organize your lessons.  With my students, we use a modified version of the Super3 model , called the Super3+1. This includes the steps of plan, do, review, and share.  This process is taught in a linear fashion with each step being explained and completed on its own.  As adults, we know that research is not linear and that you jump back and forth between the steps.  However, for young children teaching research in a step-by-step way helps them understand what each step looks like and how it relates to the next. 

Assume You Have to Teach It

Students in kindergarten, first, and second grade have limited experience using the research process.  What comes naturally to adults has to be explicitly taught.  For example, if learners are going to have to open a resource and scroll to the bottom to find what they are looking for you are going to have to teach that.  If learners are going to have to develop a guiding question as part of their project then you are going to have to teach that.  If they are going to find the title and author’s name then, you guessed it, you are going to have to teach that!

When organizing a research project the homeroom teacher and I will develop our plan and then take a minute to think about each step.  We look at how it is organized, how much reading and writing is involved, and what is the purpose of the project.  Usually, we have to go back and change something because we know that students are going to need extra support to find what they are looking for. 

Keeping it simple is important so you can focus on the skills you want to teach.  We make sure to build in time to explain why we need to do things in a certain way.  For example, we have students beginning in first grade write the title and author of the resource they are using to make sure they begin to understand the need for citations. 

Make It Visual

Images can help immensely when explaining how to conduct research.  We use images to represent the process so learners can track their progress.  We also use images to help learners understand what they are looking for.  How they are used is different based on the reading ability of the learner.  With kindergarteners, we use almost all pictures, and with third graders, we use significantly less. 

This is an organizer that we use with kindergarten for an animal research project. Students were asked to find out what the animal looks like, what they eat, and where they live. They used sticky notes inside a nonfiction book to help them collect their facts.

This is another kindergarten resource. They color each image once they have completed that step of the process.

Graphic organizers are your friend! Whenever we are doing a project we always use a graphic organizer to help students collect their information.  We tailor these organizers to meet the needs of the project and the timeline we have for completing the work.

This is a graphic organizer used with first grade. Each step is numbered to help them organize their work. They can track their progress using the images at the bottom of the page.

Numbers help too!  When an image is not helpful, then a number often is.  We use Canvas as our learning management system.  When creating modules with links to resources that students can use for each project we always number them.  This makes it easy for us to help students find a specific resource.  We can say use #7.  This helps students end up in the right place. 

This module was created for 2nd grade for their career project. Each resource is numbered to help students find their information easily.

We also use numbers are part of our graphic organizers to show students how to move through the steps of the process.  We can tell them we are on numbers 2 and 3 today.  Again, it keeps things simple! 

Read-Aloud Resources

Of course, we want students to use print books when they are researching, but using resources that have a read-aloud option can be critical to helping learners be independent.  Databases like PebbleGo, World Book Kids, Britannica Elementary, Epic! Books, and many others all have read-aloud options.  When working with students on individual projects we provide them a credible resource, but then they can listen to find the answer.  This allows them to feel success and ownership throughout the process.  

Basket of Tools

There are a few tools that I use whenever I complete a research project with students.  All these tools are inside a small basket that can be taken with me to classrooms or nearby when working with students in the library.  In this basket, you will find sticky notes of different sizes, sharpened pencils, highlighters, highlighter tape , and guided reading strips .  These tools help me to make research more accessible.

Basket of tools used when working with students on a research project.

Highlighter tape is used inside a book.

One of my very favorite things is when a student finds the answer they were looking for.  The look on their face, when they discover just the thing they wanted to know, is pretty awesome.  It is the moment when they realize they have the power to ask a question and find the answer.  That is what research is truly about!

Do you have any research tips or tricks for elementary learners? I would love to hear about them!

Author: Kelly Hincks

I am the librarian at Detroit Country Day Lower School in Bloomfield Hills, MI. I have worked as a school librarian for the past eleven years. I was a classroom teacher for four years prior to that. I have worked in charter, public, and private schools. My favorite thing about being a school librarian is the opportunities I have to work both with students and teachers. I love the co-teaching opportunities and connections I have been able to make! I have served on AASL committees as a member and chair. I currently serve as secretary of my state association, Michigan Association of School Librarians (MASL).

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Categories: Community/Teacher Collaboration , Student Engagement/ Teaching Models

Tags: collaboration , information literacy , Research , school librarian

Thank you so much for this article it has really helped me consolidate some idea.

This is so helpful! I am excited to you use these ideas next year with my elementary kiddos.

Excellent article! My experience aligns with Kelly’s. I would just add that over the years, I have learned to treat “research” as a subset of “inquiry.” Sometimes students are inquiring but not researching, but the same tips and tricks apply. Graphics, graphic organizers, and consistency in modeling the school’s designed research/inquiry model are essential.

Depending on the unit, I’ve done entire lessons on asking questions (forming your own using the IB’s Key Concepts) or distilling an author’s key question from just a few lines of text. In exploring nonfiction, a popular lesson is “Five Facts and a Story” in which students find five facts then write a short story that embeds their learning into a graphic tale. Example: The Panda Who Wanted Colors!

I would also emphasize that using audio materials is so important, especially for EAL students. In my last school, an Early Years teacher and I developed a parent guide to using audio materials to support learning English. Tools designed for research can serve multiple purposes, and language learning is supported with “read aloud” features in some of the better database subscription tools.

Research with elementary students can be so much fun for the kids! It was a delight to see an article that captures the essence of this important work. Well done!

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10 Free Online Educational Databases Every Student Should Know & Use

We are lucky to live in an era of technological development and digitalization. Before the computer was invented and made accessible, all generations of students had to spend hours in libraries reading to find the information they needed.

Modern students need to enter a few keywords to get more information than they could expect. However, scientific information is not always on the surface. It is hard to find anything worthy by simply typing keywords into Google. Students have to use special educational databases to retrieve the information they need.

Thus, many end up asking what databases they should use to find credible resources for their essays and researches. We forwarded this question to the writers at write my paper and they are ready to share their answers with you.

Here is the list of top online educational databases that are must-know for students and absolutely free to use.

This online system is one of the largest bibliographic databases available online and for free. It has gathered over 107,000 full-sized non-journal documents dated 1993-2004 and has over 1.1 million citations from 1966.

Students can use ERIC materials without any hesitation concerning their credibility and reliability. The system is programmed to verify every new file to ensure the highest quality of the offered references.

MIT OpenCourseWare

One of the U.S. leading universities has made its college class materials database available for everyone online. It is absolutely free of charge for anyone interested. Independent learners from all over the world can learn from the materials provided on the MIT website.

The COVID situation has made this database update even more. All people interested in learning can find useful information on various subjects just by clicking "Find Courses" or navigating through the search function.

Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching provides a supply of materials for both students and teachers of higher educational institutions. The database includes links to online learning materials of exceptional quality. Also, one can find annotations and peer-reviewed materials there, as well.

The database continues to be updated. Most recently, content creation tools and support materials were added.

Google Scholar

This database is one of the most well-known on the Internet. It is universal, so you can find content on every discipline you need. Also, it has millions of citations, annotations, different types of assignments, and more.

However, even though such tools as Google Scholar try to update their databases regularly, they are still not comprehensive enough. Moreover, lots of papers there are not available even for preview.

JSTOR database offers content for free and under subscription. Papers that are not exclusive or very fresh are provided for free. Thus, students can get access to full-text journal articles and ebooks on various disciplines under no limit.

However, if you are looking for something issued in 2019 and 2020, you may be requested to create an account and pay for a subscription. It definitely has its benefits to go through registration.

CORE is the world's largest open research aggregator. By using it, students can get access to research papers and workbooks issued by scholars and organizations throughout the world. The bonus is that this is all available for free.

However, it is worth noting that the preference is given to UK-based sources. Their percentage is much higher compared to research papers coming from other countries.

The Directory of Open Access Journals is a database that can boast with over 12,000 journals in open access. This scientific base refers to various areas of science, including Medicine, History, and Technology.

Of course, 12,000 sources are not enough to call this database comprehensive. However, it is often helpful in writing short essays and discussion boards as a part of university assignments.

WorldWideScience

This website works a bit differently compared to other databases. WorldWideScience is a global academic search engine that helps find other scientific databases based on your request. It is free to use.

This website is especially helpful to students working on international projects or studying about other countries. The search results can be automatically translated thanks to the in-built function.

E-Theses Online Service hosts over 500,000 doctoral theses, most of which are available for free. If you are writing a paper where you need to use peer-reviewed sources, this site is the best to find such. Also, you can use it if you need to reference the most recent research on the topic. Since the service is UK-based, the number of British doctoral papers here prevails.

Bielefield Academic Search Engine is an educational database that offers access to over 140 million documents. 60% of these files are in open access. To hide those requiring payment, you can use a special filter.

The tool is an exemplary one when it comes to convenience and affordability. Whatever your major is, BASE has a document that will be a good reference for your paper.

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Teacher Collaboration Often Means Analyzing Student Data to Boost Learning. But Does It Work?

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When teachers have used scarce professional learning time to analyze student-assessment data, achievement results have often been mixed. And that’s despite the fact that teacher collaboration itself has a record of improving student learning. As Harvard scholar Heather Hill noted somewhat delicately in 2020 , “The research in this area suggests that district and school leaders should rethink their use of state and interim assessments as the focus of teacher collaboration.”

Should school leaders throw out the practice? I can understand why that would be tempting not only from the research findings but from personal experience.

As a data coach for over 30 years, I still too often see teacher teams spend lots of time giving reasons for poor performance that are way outside their ability to have much impact, such as a difficult home life, students’ failure to study, or the unfair demands society puts on schools. There is little attention to students’ assets and their specific misunderstandings or to improving future instruction. No wonder analyzing student-assessment data hasn’t lived up to what some would call its hype but I would call its potential.

Data analyses often fail to have positive impact on student learning because district directors of assessment (I was one) and university faculty members (I am one) have not given educators the words or structure needed to redirect conversations to what the data show that students know, what students do not know, and what the adults on the team are going to do about it. In other words, leaders have too often told teachers to conduct data analyses but very seldom taught them exactly how to do it.

In her seminal 1982 study “Workplace Conditions of School Success,” sociologist Judith Warren Little found that in successful schools, teachers engage in “frequent, continuous, and increasingly concrete and precise talk” about “what teachers do, with what aims, in what situations, with what materials, and with what apparent results.” But “concrete and precise talk” does not occur automatically. Here are a few lessons the teachers in my educational leadership class and I have learned to move teams to a comfort level of being concrete and precise with one another about instruction.

First, a protocol for the conversation must be in place. Using “data dialogue” protocols helps school teams navigate difficult and uncomfortable conversations by providing a predictable series of questions or topics for members to discuss sequentially. Predictability builds teachers’ trust with the school leader who could be part of the conversation and with each other.

Leaders have too often told teachers to conduct data analyses but very seldom taught them exactly how to do it.

There are several good protocols in use. Some of the best are based on the premise that teachers are not responsible for their data but are responsible for their response to their data. My leadership students report that this slight wording change makes a world of difference in teachers’ attitudes and their commitment to their work.

Effective protocols are action-oriented, with predetermined facilitative moves that avoid the “blame game,” triangulate test scores with teachers’ and students’ observations (sometimes called “street data” or “local expertise”), and require teachers to follow up in their classrooms and report results at the next meeting. Classroom follow-up is often the weakest part of the process, my students say.

In the most helpful protocols, teams address classwide patterns of student performance first. The idea is to avoid fixating on the needs of individual (such as “watch list”) students too soon. Once teams head down the path of considering individuals, there is usually no end to the list, collaborative time runs out, and only a few students get attention, while team members whose students aren’t being discussed zone out.

My leadership students report that the best protocols aim for team consensus on the most effective, evidence-based responses—the type, timing, and extent of the interventions. Is the concept that was missed by many students so important that new instruction must stop right away and the concept retaught? Or should teachers integrate additional instruction on the weak content seamlessly over time into the next topic? Do students have a basic understanding of the concept but need more practice? Or is the next step reaching out to students ready for enrichment and to those who need additional time on the weak skills?

To empower dialogue participants to act, leaders must grant teams the autonomy not to be bound by standardized pacing charts that do not provide teachers flexibility for differentiated instruction. If a concept is essential for further learning and teachers have multiple data points indicating a widespread need and have identified a different way to teach it, it is, in my view, educational malpractice not to address it.

Once there is team consensus on the most appropriate follow-up, team members use their combined expertise to help each other plan instructional strategies, in as much detail as possible, so individual teachers don’t have to do this on their own time.

Lack of closure is often the missing ingredient to make meetings impactful, according to management expert Paul Axtell. Therefore, effective protocols include a three- to five-minute closing segment to validate individuals’ contributions, review the takeaways, and agree on what each person will do and by when.

As teams use practices such as these, they move toward concrete and precise dialogue. Members feel empowered, gain instructional insights from each other, and increase their respect for the protocol and for their professional colleagues. And when teachers return to the next dialogue session with evidence of student improvement, their positive feelings about collaboration and the value of data analysis grow even more.

So throw out team analysis of student-assessment data? Not so fast. School leaders have found that the practice works for teachers and students when teachers are provided with the structure and the autonomy to do it well.

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What the Data Says About Pandemic School Closures, Four Years Later

The more time students spent in remote instruction, the further they fell behind. And, experts say, extended closures did little to stop the spread of Covid.

By Sarah Mervosh ,  Claire Cain Miller and Francesca Paris

Four years ago this month, schools nationwide began to shut down, igniting one of the most polarizing and partisan debates of the pandemic.

Some schools, often in Republican-led states and rural areas, reopened by fall 2020. Others, typically in large cities and states led by Democrats, would not fully reopen for another year.

A variety of data — about children’s academic outcomes and about the spread of Covid-19 — has accumulated in the time since. Today, there is broad acknowledgment among many public health and education experts that extended school closures did not significantly stop the spread of Covid, while the academic harms for children have been large and long-lasting.

While poverty and other factors also played a role, remote learning was a key driver of academic declines during the pandemic, research shows — a finding that held true across income levels.

Source: Fahle, Kane, Patterson, Reardon, Staiger and Stuart, “ School District and Community Factors Associated With Learning Loss During the COVID-19 Pandemic .” Score changes are measured from 2019 to 2022. In-person means a district offered traditional in-person learning, even if not all students were in-person.

“There’s fairly good consensus that, in general, as a society, we probably kept kids out of school longer than we should have,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatric infectious disease specialist who helped write guidance for the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommended in June 2020 that schools reopen with safety measures in place.

There were no easy decisions at the time. Officials had to weigh the risks of an emerging virus against the academic and mental health consequences of closing schools. And even schools that reopened quickly, by the fall of 2020, have seen lasting effects.

But as experts plan for the next public health emergency, whatever it may be, a growing body of research shows that pandemic school closures came at a steep cost to students.

The longer schools were closed, the more students fell behind.

At the state level, more time spent in remote or hybrid instruction in the 2020-21 school year was associated with larger drops in test scores, according to a New York Times analysis of school closure data and results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress , an authoritative exam administered to a national sample of fourth- and eighth-grade students.

At the school district level, that finding also holds, according to an analysis of test scores from third through eighth grade in thousands of U.S. districts, led by researchers at Stanford and Harvard. In districts where students spent most of the 2020-21 school year learning remotely, they fell more than half a grade behind in math on average, while in districts that spent most of the year in person they lost just over a third of a grade.

( A separate study of nearly 10,000 schools found similar results.)

Such losses can be hard to overcome, without significant interventions. The most recent test scores, from spring 2023, show that students, overall, are not caught up from their pandemic losses , with larger gaps remaining among students that lost the most ground to begin with. Students in districts that were remote or hybrid the longest — at least 90 percent of the 2020-21 school year — still had almost double the ground to make up compared with students in districts that allowed students back for most of the year.

Some time in person was better than no time.

As districts shifted toward in-person learning as the year went on, students that were offered a hybrid schedule (a few hours or days a week in person, with the rest online) did better, on average, than those in places where school was fully remote, but worse than those in places that had school fully in person.

Students in hybrid or remote learning, 2020-21

80% of students

Some schools return online, as Covid-19 cases surge. Vaccinations start for high-priority groups.

Teachers are eligible for the Covid vaccine in more than half of states.

Most districts end the year in-person or hybrid.

Source: Burbio audit of more than 1,200 school districts representing 47 percent of U.S. K-12 enrollment. Note: Learning mode was defined based on the most in-person option available to students.

Income and family background also made a big difference.

A second factor associated with academic declines during the pandemic was a community’s poverty level. Comparing districts with similar remote learning policies, poorer districts had steeper losses.

But in-person learning still mattered: Looking at districts with similar poverty levels, remote learning was associated with greater declines.

A community’s poverty rate and the length of school closures had a “roughly equal” effect on student outcomes, said Sean F. Reardon, a professor of poverty and inequality in education at Stanford, who led a district-level analysis with Thomas J. Kane, an economist at Harvard.

Score changes are measured from 2019 to 2022. Poorest and richest are the top and bottom 20% of districts by percent of students on free/reduced lunch. Mostly in-person and mostly remote are districts that offered traditional in-person learning for more than 90 percent or less than 10 percent of the 2020-21 year.

But the combination — poverty and remote learning — was particularly harmful. For each week spent remote, students in poor districts experienced steeper losses in math than peers in richer districts.

That is notable, because poor districts were also more likely to stay remote for longer .

Some of the country’s largest poor districts are in Democratic-leaning cities that took a more cautious approach to the virus. Poor areas, and Black and Hispanic communities , also suffered higher Covid death rates, making many families and teachers in those districts hesitant to return.

“We wanted to survive,” said Sarah Carpenter, the executive director of Memphis Lift, a parent advocacy group in Memphis, where schools were closed until spring 2021 .

“But I also think, man, looking back, I wish our kids could have gone back to school much quicker,” she added, citing the academic effects.

Other things were also associated with worse student outcomes, including increased anxiety and depression among adults in children’s lives, and the overall restriction of social activity in a community, according to the Stanford and Harvard research .

Even short closures had long-term consequences for children.

While being in school was on average better for academic outcomes, it wasn’t a guarantee. Some districts that opened early, like those in Cherokee County, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, and Hanover County, Va., lost significant learning and remain behind.

At the same time, many schools are seeing more anxiety and behavioral outbursts among students. And chronic absenteeism from school has surged across demographic groups .

These are signs, experts say, that even short-term closures, and the pandemic more broadly, had lasting effects on the culture of education.

“There was almost, in the Covid era, a sense of, ‘We give up, we’re just trying to keep body and soul together,’ and I think that was corrosive to the higher expectations of schools,” said Margaret Spellings, an education secretary under President George W. Bush who is now chief executive of the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Closing schools did not appear to significantly slow Covid’s spread.

Perhaps the biggest question that hung over school reopenings: Was it safe?

That was largely unknown in the spring of 2020, when schools first shut down. But several experts said that had changed by the fall of 2020, when there were initial signs that children were less likely to become seriously ill, and growing evidence from Europe and parts of the United States that opening schools, with safety measures, did not lead to significantly more transmission.

“Infectious disease leaders have generally agreed that school closures were not an important strategy in stemming the spread of Covid,” said Dr. Jeanne Noble, who directed the Covid response at the U.C.S.F. Parnassus emergency department.

Politically, though, there remains some disagreement about when, exactly, it was safe to reopen school.

Republican governors who pushed to open schools sooner have claimed credit for their approach, while Democrats and teachers’ unions have emphasized their commitment to safety and their investment in helping students recover.

“I do believe it was the right decision,” said Jerry T. Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which resisted returning to school in person over concerns about the availability of vaccines and poor ventilation in school buildings. Philadelphia schools waited to partially reopen until the spring of 2021 , a decision Mr. Jordan believes saved lives.

“It doesn’t matter what is going on in the building and how much people are learning if people are getting the virus and running the potential of dying,” he said.

Pandemic school closures offer lessons for the future.

Though the next health crisis may have different particulars, with different risk calculations, the consequences of closing schools are now well established, experts say.

In the future, infectious disease experts said, they hoped decisions would be guided more by epidemiological data as it emerged, taking into account the trade-offs.

“Could we have used data to better guide our decision making? Yes,” said Dr. Uzma N. Hasan, division chief of pediatric infectious diseases at RWJBarnabas Health in Livingston, N.J. “Fear should not guide our decision making.”

Source: Fahle, Kane, Patterson, Reardon, Staiger and Stuart, “ School District and Community Factors Associated With Learning Loss During the Covid-19 Pandemic. ”

The study used estimates of learning loss from the Stanford Education Data Archive . For closure lengths, the study averaged district-level estimates of time spent in remote and hybrid learning compiled by the Covid-19 School Data Hub (C.S.D.H.) and American Enterprise Institute (A.E.I.) . The A.E.I. data defines remote status by whether there was an in-person or hybrid option, even if some students chose to remain virtual. In the C.S.D.H. data set, districts are defined as remote if “all or most” students were virtual.

An earlier version of this article misstated a job description of Dr. Jeanne Noble. She directed the Covid response at the U.C.S.F. Parnassus emergency department. She did not direct the Covid response for the University of California, San Francisco health system.

How we handle corrections

Sarah Mervosh covers education for The Times, focusing on K-12 schools. More about Sarah Mervosh

Claire Cain Miller writes about gender, families and the future of work for The Upshot. She joined The Times in 2008 and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for public service for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. More about Claire Cain Miller

Francesca Paris is a Times reporter working with data and graphics for The Upshot. More about Francesca Paris

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Rainbow Elementary fourth-graders bring Black…

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Rainbow elementary fourth-graders bring black american history to life in a unique way.

Nearly 160 community members attended Rainbow Elementary School’s Black History Wax Museum last week, in which students showcased a month of research about famous Black Americans.

“The students were so excited and proud to be able to showcase their research efforts,” said Jennifer Augustine, one of Rainbow’s fourth grade teachers whose class participated in the project. “They were able to put their nervousness aside to teach others about the impact of the famous Black American they chose to research and highlight.”

Fourth-graders Jameson Osborn and Daniah Myers. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of America’s most prominent Civil Rights leaders.. (Courtesy of CASD)

Fourth-graders Josie Chmielecki and Zalyn Brown. Serena Williams is largely regarded as the greatest tennis player of all time.(Courtesy of CASD)

The fourth grade project began during Black History Month in February at Rainbow, one of the Coatesville Area School District’s elementary schools. Fourth graders chose a Black American who had an historical impact and began to research their life and contribution. Students wrote reports and scripts, and teamed together to bring their research to life. Families and community members rotated throughout each student ‘exhibit’ and students took turns presenting information about the historical figure portrayed by their classmates.

“I thought it was fun because I got to learn about someone new,” said Raine Hopkins, a fourth- grader in Mrs. Jessica Guyer’s class. “It was also fun working with my partner!”

Raine chose to portray Wilma Rudolph, an American sprinter who overcame childhood polio and went on to become a world-record-holding Olympic champion and international sports icon in track and field, following her successes in the 1956 and 1960 Olympics.

Rainbow’s fourth grade teaching team — Jessica Guyer, Kerri Cupstid, Kevin Maggs, Jennifer Augustine, and Heidi Williams — agreed the project is a great way to build historical knowledge and also get students engaged in research. The wax museum format also helps them to begin to develop public presentation skills.

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Admitted undergraduate students, welcome to cal.

Congratulations! Your acceptance to UC Berkeley marks an exciting milestone in your academic journey, and we are delighted to welcome you to our community. We eagerly anticipate the remarkable achievements you will accomplish during your time here.

Now that you're in, it's time to start planning for your future with us. Below, you'll find essential information and next steps to help you prepare for your arrival on campus. Be sure to keep an eye out for updates on summer and fall programming, as we will provide additional details and deadlines.

Dear Newly Admitted Undergraduate Students,

Congratulations on being accepted to the University of California, Berkeley Department of Industrial Engineering & Operations Research! Being admitted to Cal means that you have already triumphed through challenges and excelled in many ways.

It’s truly an exciting time to join the IEOR department. Since its establishment in 1966, our department has been at the forefront of IE/OR research and education, with some of the most successful, world-renowned alumni graduating from our program.

Our alumni embark on exciting, rewarding paths in academia and industry. Picture yourself as a professor leading a large research program at a top university making groundbreaking discoveries that can benefit future generations. Or envision contributing to a tech giant, analyzing pricing data, or streamlining warehouse operations with cutting-edge optimization and machine learning techniques.

Nestled in the vibrant San Francisco Bay Area, UC Berkeley's IEOR department stands at the forefront of innovation and entrepreneurship. Amidst this hub of creativity, the demand for data-driven, AI-powered decision-making is surging across industries, from e-commerce to healthcare and beyond. Companies and governments alike are leveraging data to adapt swiftly, manage costs, mitigate risks, and enhance operational efficiency.

With a focus on optimization, stochastics, and data analytics, our IEOR faculty and students are creative innovative solutions for a myriad of sectors, including healthcare, supply chains, energy, finance, and risk management.

Feel free to contact me or our staff with any questions about the program. During the upcoming Cal Day, we'll showcase the diverse opportunities at Berkeley IEOR. We hope you'll join us in accepting your admission to Cal, and we eagerly anticipate welcoming you in the Fall!

Go Bears! Alper Atamturk Professor and IEOR Department Chair

Here's what do next

• Learn more about academic opportunities, extracurricular activities and student life at Berkeley. Check out the  Events Page .
• Attend Cal Day!   Join us for our annual open house where the Berkeley community welcomes you, our newly admitted students and families. YOU ARE BERKELEY
• Confirm your acceptance : Are you ready to commit to Berkeley? Go to  MAP@Berkeley to formally accept your offer of admission. Confirm your enrollment before April 15 for admitted first-year students and June 1 for admitted transfer students.

In this award-winning video , Berkeley IEOR students explain what industrial engineering & operations research is and how their skills make an impact and improve the world.

Supply Chain & Logistics

IEOR students are the premier experts in getting anything from one place to another in the most efficient and optimal manner.

Stochastics & Data Science

IEOR students learn the latest statistics, artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to help companies make better  decisions.

Optimization & Algorithms

IEOR students can find the most elegant way to make any system more efficient, saving companies millions of dollars, time and other resources.

IEOR graduates lead the way in lucrative careers

Recently, CNBC featured IEOR as the second highest-paying college major. A separate report from the HEA group also identified operations research as the most financially rewarding path for graduates. This positions our alumni for success in a competitive job market and underscores the tremendous potential that awaits our graduates, especially with a projected 23% increase in positions for operations research analysts.

IEOR In the News:

IEOR Degree Holds a Top Spot Among Highest-Paying Majors

• Berkeley IEOR Graduates Lead the Way in Lucrative Careers: Report Highlights Operations Research as Highest-Earning Field

By the Numbers

73% of our students secure full-time employment by graduation, and 11% pursue graduate school as part of their post-graduation plans.

$100,000 average starting salary for undergraduates.

11:1 student-to-faculty ratio allows IEOR students to build strong relationships with professors who go above and beyond to ensure students get the most from their classes.

CalDay Program

Saturday, April 13 9 AM to 4 PM UC Berkeley Campus

Imagine seeing the most exciting, outrageous, informative aspects of Berkeley and the College of Engineering, all in one day. It’s called Cal Day, an extravaganza of events that showcase the brilliance and fun of Berkeley.

Cal Day 2024 , on Saturday, April 13, is only for newly admitted students and their families. We are looking forward to getting to know you and helping you get to know us. Join us from 9 a.m.–4 p.m. for a full day of events, exploration, and interactions with engineering students, advisers and faculty.

At Berkeley, you'll be part of a dynamic global network that spans over 500,000 UC Berkeley alums across 180 countries. Benefit from valuable connections, mentorship, and knowledge sharing within our thriving community and engage with industry leaders seeking to leverage UC Berkeley's top talent in analytics. Our students have successfully secured internships and full-time positions with renowned companies such as Tesla, Deloitte, HP, KONE, and many others.

IEOR Alumni Profiles

Andrew Laffoon

Courtney Z. Chow

Lucie Kresl

Vishrut Rana

Ieor alumni news.

Berkeley IEOR Alum Sonita Lontoh Featured in Manufacturing Today Magazine

Celebrating Valentine’s Day with Berkeley IEOR Alums Steve Tai and KC Wu

Ask an Alum: Jack O’Donoghue, MAnalytics ’23

5 Questions for Anika Ramachandran, Class of 2022

Paul Grigas

Assistant professor.

"Berkeley IEOR gives me the opportunity to work with world-class students and colleagues on challenging, exciting, and impactful projects at the forefront of research in machine learning and optimization."

Rhonda Righter

Professor and head graduate advisor.

"We have great students - curious, passionate, hard-working! Berkeley's an amazing institution that excels in education and research, yet still prioritizes concerns for society and the environment. IEOR at Berkeley is even more amazing - a small, tight-knit community within this great institution."

Student Spotlights

Rishika gorai, bs ieor 2026.

Berkeley IEOR has helped me shine brighter by giving me many opportunities to explore future career paths. Last summer, I was able to complete a summer internship at Yukka Lab in Berlin, Germany as a Data Intelligence & Business Development intern. This past fall, I acquired a summer internship at a Big 4 consulting firm & this semester, I am interning as a Product Management & Business Development intern at Daicus Technology. The diverse opportunities & overarching curriculum that IEOR offers definitely aided me in gaining such helpful experiences to learn about my interests & strengths in depth.

Jelo Francisco

Bs ieor 2024.

"Transferring into IEOR has been one of the most rewarding decisions in my life. The program's academic rigor, dedicated faculty and staff, and vibrant community have all equipped me with the confidence and skills to thrive in any career path I choose. With an ever-expanding toolbox of data-driven strategies to make decisions amid uncertainty, I feel empowered to tackle complex problems and create positive change on the global scale."

Meet Your Advisor

Ginnie Sadil

Meet your IEOR student services advisor, Ginnie Sadil.

Email her about any questions you have at [email protected] or you can   book  a virtual meeting time to chat online.

What Alums are Saying

Class of 2021.

I love the IEOR community. I've met amazing friends and love the warmth of the entire department. Particularly at such a large university, I've truly appreciated having a tight knit department to lean on for support throughout my years at Cal. - Sarina Xin

Class of 2022

I chose to study IEOR as it introduces me to tools and techniques for problem solving and allows me to explore some of the grandest challenges faced by our modern world. - Vishrut Rana

Class of 2023

The IEOR community welcomed me with open arms from my first Cal Day and it has been one of my favorite parts of Berkeley. From our friendly students, excellent faculty, and supportive staff, my Berkeley experience would not be what it is without the members of this amazing community. - Duncan Barcelona

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Self-Guided Tour Instructions for Berkeley Campus

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