The data is in, and the judgment should be harsh.
Two decades of educational gains were wiped out in two years, new test scores in math and reading show. The drop was greatest among black students.
The headlines will say “the pandemic” caused this, but that’s not quite right. COVID-19 has left a terrible trail of death and illness, but the coronavirus is not the cause of the learning loss. It was the local politicians, governors, school boards, and public health authorities who harmed our children by advocating or mandating unjustifiable school closures in the fall of 2020 — and then into the spring.
Those school closures were a mistake, and the people in charge knew or should have known it at the time. The damage to students (academic, emotional, and social) was obvious to every parent after the three-month closure in early 2020. Children’s relative safety in the face of the virus was also well-known by the fall of 2020.
The people who nonetheless closed the schools bear full blame for the lasting harm they have done to children. All of them should lose their jobs.
The math decline was almost three times as great for black students as for white students. Hispanic students were in the middle. This is totally unsurprising, as black students were far more likely to be stuck in remote learning by uncaring bureaucrats and administrators and lazy teachers unions. In November 2020, 70% of black students and 60% of Hispanic students were remote, compared to 40% of white students, surveys found.
Peggy Carr, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, pointed to many factors that could drive the learning loss, and the Washington Post listed them: “Other studies have shown a rise in classroom disruption, school violence, absenteeism, cyberbullying, and teacher and staff vacancies, and schools also say more students are seeking mental health services.”
All of those are fruits of the lockdowns, too. If you kick the children out of school, outlaw Little League, shut down their playgrounds and basketball courts, and scold them not to hang out with their friends, you are harming them. It’s no surprise, but unsocializing children produces antisocial effects on them. Yet those of us who resisted the unnecessary closures were accused of selfishly wanting to get children and teachers (or their grandparents) killed.
Masks also likely interfered with learning, as anyone who has spent time teaching children can tell you. Yet school mask mandates remain in place despite a lack of evidence that masks are beneficial for children.
Sometimes, it’s hard to believe that people in charge would knowingly harm children for no good reason. But looking now, as the predictable harms of the school closures become evident, we must assign blame to the school boards, county officials, and state officials who did this to our children, in addition to the media figures, public health officials, and union bosses who lobbied for this.
