Research to date gives us some clues and also points us to what we could be doing to support students who are most likely to struggle in the online setting.
I think this statement shows why the author thinks this topic is important because it shows that she wants to use the research to find ways to provide more support for students taking online classes.
Susanna Loeb is a professor of education and of public affairs at Brown University and the director of the university’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform. She studies education policy, and her interests include social inequality.
I would assume that the author is exploring this topic because, seeing as she's a professor of education and of public affairs as well as the director of an institute for school reform, it's close to home for her.
Some students do as well in online courses as in in-person courses, some may actually do better, but, on average, students do worse in the online setting, and this is particularly true for students with weaker academic backgrounds.
I think this statement is important because it shows that the argument is not as simple as, "Online courses are bad and in-person classes are good". It shows that, while plenty of students do just fine learning online, the online courses themselves lack a lot of the edge that an in-person course can give a student. This is an important observation because we can use this research to optimize the way we learn online moving forward!
Students’ credit-recovery success rates and algebra test scores were lower in the online setting. Students assigned to the online option also rated their class as more difficult than did their peers assigned to the face-to-face option.
This statement supports the authors argument that online classes are not as effective as in-person learning.
In comparisons of online and in-person classes, however, online classes aren’t as effective as in-person classes for most students.
It seems pretty clear that the author feels that online courses are not as effective and don't provide the necessary support for students taking them.
A version of this article appeared in the April 01, 2020 edition of Education Week as How Effective Is Online Learning?
The article was published on Education Week which is a non-partisan independent organization covering K-12 Education since 1981, according to a quick Google search. Knowing that gives me a bit more confidence in the arguments provided since I can assume (or one can hope) that they are not personally or politically biased but based on research.