Disconnected: The unequal impact of online learning on minority students

Online instruction holds the promise of expanding access to education for disadvantaged groups, yet it often deepens existing performance gaps. This study examines its impact on high-stakes exam outcomes, focusing on mechanisms driving differential effects for minority students. We leverage rich administrative data on students from five consecutive cohorts in 31 Israeli vocational colleges and the abrupt transition to online instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. A key advantage of our setting is that exams were held in-person and graded centrally, ensuring comparability to pre-pandemic performance. Using a difference-in-differences design that compares outcomes within students and across cohorts, we find significant declines in both exam attendance and demonstrated knowledge following the switch to online instruction. These effects are not explained by local infection rates or childcare responsibilities, and are especially pronounced among Arabic-speaking minority students, regardless of their socioeconomic status. Drawing on variation in internet infrastructure, residential crowdedness, language of instruction, and prior academic performance, we show that poor internet access is a central mechanism underlying the adverse effects among minority students. For majority-group students, negative effects are concentrated among weaker students, suggesting widening disparities within the majority group. For minority students, the difference by prior achievement is not statistically significant, and if anything, the drop is larger for higher achievers.