Education Law and Policy in the Time of COVID-19 - Using a Legal Framework to Expose Educational Inequity

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by McQueen

Raquel Muñiz examines education law and policy through a legal framework to expose how the COVID-19 pandemic intensified educational inequity. Empirical evidence shows deepening social inequalities harming low-income students of color, especially amid crisis constraints on legal protections. The study analyzes the bounds of the law in large-scale emergency conditions and highlights limitations that policymakers must address through equity-promoting policies and informed practice within education research.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages18

Reading Time45 min

AccessFree to download

Background: COVID-19 and educational inequity

How law and policy face crisis constraints

Implications for policymakers and practice

AERA Open January-December 2021, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 1–18 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584211054107 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2021. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) Education Law and Policy in the Time of COVID-19: Using a Legal Framework to Expose Educational Inequity Raquel Muñiz Boston College Empirical data show that the COVID-19 pandemic deepened and exacerbated social inequalities, to the detriment of lowincome communities of color. Using the law as a conceptual framework and legal research methodology, this study examines education law against the exacerbated social inequalities low-income students of color faced during the pandemic. Considering the bounds of the law against the exacerbated social inequalities surfaces the limitations of the law in a time of large-scale crisis and thereby exposes issues of educational inequity. In this context, policymakers bear the responsibility to adopt policies that promote educational equity. The study brings educational law and policy issues in the COVID-19 context to the fore of the educational equity discourse within the educational research community and has implications for policy and practice as well. The study is of import as educational researchers continue to examine the impact of COVID-19 across numerous social contexts and disciplines. Keywords: education law, education policy, marginalized populations, educational equity The COVID-19 pandemic changed the context in which K–12 and higher education institutions (HEIs) operated and raised questions regarding the law and policies governing education (National School Boards Association, 2020; Smalley, 2020; U.S. Department of Education [DoE], 2020a, 2020b) . Educational institutions were required to safeguard students’rights during the crisis and prepare for its aftermath (Carver, 2020; Reich et al., 2020; U.S. DoE, n.d.-a, n.d.-b) . In this context, the rights of low-income students of color are of particular interest (e.g., Burch, 2020; NAACP, 2020); they have historically faced educational inequities (e.g., Kosciw et al., 2018), exacerbated during the pandemic. Thus, it is important to examine the law against the exacerbated inequalities to identify the limitations of the law in a time of large-scale crisis. In this article, I employ a legal framework to examine the limitations of the legal bounds against the exacerbated social inequalities during the pandemic to expose issues of educational inequity. The pandemic exacerbated inequalities (Armitage & Nellums, 2020; Fisher & Bubola, 2020; Lancker & Parolin, 2020; van Dorn et al., 2020), disproportionately, negatively affecting low-income communities of color (e.g., Benfer & Wiley, 2020) who have historically faced rampant inequality (Eisenhauer, 2001; Park & Quercia, 2020; Wilson & Shelton, 2012) . To minimize the spread of COVID-19, governments adopted social distancing policies (Chiu et al., 2020) . Businesses operated under restricted conditions and some subsequently closed (Bartik et al., 2020) . Most affected were low-income people of color holding low-wage jobs (K. Parker et al., 2020; see also Halpern-Meekin et al., 2015; Hoffman, 2017) . People lost their jobs and, with them, employer-provided health insurance (see Koch, 2009; Legerski, 2012). Low-income people of color who kept their jobs faced different challenges: reduction in workhours or change in working conditions (K. Parker et al., 2020) . People of color were also more likely to live in racially segregated low-income communities and households with essential workers (DeLuca et al., 2013; Kantamneni, 2020) who risked their health each time they left home (Gray et al., 2020; van Dorn et al., 2020) . They were also more likely to contract COVID-19 (Benfer & Wiley, 2020; Haynes et al., 2020) and had a higher likelihood of having underlyi

FAQs

How does the article connect COVID-19 to educational inequity?

It argues the pandemic deepened and exacerbated social inequalities, harming low-income students of color and intensifying existing educational inequities.

What research approach does the study use?

The study uses a legal framework and legal research methodology to examine education law relative to exacerbated social inequalities during the pandemic.

Why does the article say the law has limitations in a large-scale crisis?

It considers the bounds of legal protections when inequities expand at scale, concluding that those bounds surface limitations during major emergencies.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by McQueen