The coronavirus pandemic changed education in the United States forever. It cast a critical light on school financing, the ability of students, teachers, and parents to adapt to a new scholastic landscape, and gave teachers unions more power than they’ve had in a generation. In this series, Students Left Behind, the Washington Examiner takes a closer look at the toll the pandemic had on our nation’s public school system and the lessons learned along the way.

When second-grader Ethan Daniel was firing up his laptop for a long day of remote learning at Barrow Elementary School, his big brother JD, a seventh-grader at Athens Academy, was getting face-to-face instruction, interacting with classmates, and playing sports.