Falling test scores illustrate the disaster of distance learning

New data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that student test scores nationwide suffered their worst decline in history.

PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY STUDENT PERFORMANCES SLIP UNDER DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP

The NAEP, also known as the Nation’s Report Card, measures student proficiency in reading and math at the fourth and eighth grade levels. This year, it found that students at all levels, from the most advanced in the 90th percentile down to the lowest achievers in the 10th percentile, have seen a significant decline in their math and reading proficiency.

Although there are surely other culprits — in Virginia, for example, Democratic appointees watered down educational standards starting in 2015, followed by precipitous declines in proficiency — the obvious culprit for most of the national decline is distance learning during COVID-19.

And there’s no question that the closures contributed significantly to the decline in learning. There are two proofs of this. First, Catholic schools almost everywhere were open full time by the fall of 2020, and on aggregate, the data show that they avoided the worst of the learning loss, avoiding declines in proficiency in fourth grade math and eighth grade reading.

Moreover, states that kept more schools open experienced smaller declines in proficiency than their peers — a statistically significant result that this chart illustrates graphically.

Once it was clear that COVID-19 was not a major threat to children, that they were neither likely to suffer severe symptoms nor to pass the disease to others, every schoolhouse in America should have reopened immediately for in-person instruction.

That is to say, any jurisdiction that kept its schools closed in the fall of 2020 is guilty of letting students down despite knowing better.

Unfortunately, special interests run many state educational bureaucracies, and of course, special interests positively own the Biden administration. Government emails obtained by journalists damningly demonstrate that President Joe Biden’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even reversed its scientific judgments about school closures based on pressure from the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union.

Whereas the best-governed states acted to keep schools open despite the special interests, many others followed Biden’s lead, allowing unnecessary closures even into the 2021-22 school year.

This is not the first result or study showing that school closures caused massive learning loss — it is only the latest. Yet the educrats still haven’t learned the lessons. Indeed, believe it or not, some school districts even made noises about going to distance learning at the beginning of this school year.

It is telling that at no point did Democrats as a party place the needs of schoolchildren ahead of the demands of their grifting union allies. This was one of the two big reveals of COVID-19 — the other being the rot that parents suddenly noticed within school curricula due to the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” agenda.

If you enjoy having your government run by far-left special interest groups that care nothing for you or your children or for the quality or quantity of education they receive, you can reward this behavior by electing more Democrats. If you support the people who want to reach into your pocket rather than help you prosper, the Democrats are your party.

Otherwise, you should vote them all out of office on Nov. 8.

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