In his response to President Joe Biden’s joint session address on Thursday, South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott rightly called out Democrats for ignoring both science and commonsense by keeping schools closed during the coronavirus pandemic.
“I am saddened that millions of kids have lost a year of learning when they could not afford to lose a day,” Scott said. “Locking vulnerable kids out of the classroom is locking adults out of their future.”
Public schools should have reopened months ago, Scott added, especially since the data proved they could open their doors once again with minimal spread of the virus. But Democrats, wary of upsetting the education unions, resisted efforts to return children to the classroom and allowed union bosses to shift the goalposts again and again and again. All the while, students were suffering from severe academic and social setbacks.
The worst part is that the students who have suffered the most are the ones Democrats claim to represent: low-income minority children who have a hard enough time gaining access to a good education as it is. One Yale study found that children living in the poorest 20% of U.S. neighborhoods will experience the most negative and long-lasting effects of school closures, while children in rich communities will remain relatively untouched. Where there was an academic gap before, now there is a chasm — and Democrats chose not to do anything about it.
They had every chance to. Many of the fights over school re-openings took place in Democratic-run cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles. Instead of standing up for these students, city officials deflected to the unions at every turn — even though they knew the unions’ claims were absurd. They knew that children are very unlikely to spread the virus, that vaccinated adults are almost entirely safe from contracting it, and that remote learning is a total failure. But still, schools remained closed.
Scott’s conclusion is the same one many parents have reached this past year: There has never been a better case for school choice. Thousands of parents have pulled their children from public schools and enrolled them in private or charter schools that are open for in-person learning. They should have the right to send their children to whichever school they choose, especially since the Democratic officials who want to make that choice for them are busy sacrificing students’ academic achievement to their political donors.
This is a losing issue for Democrats. They gave in to political fear and ignored the science at the cost of students’ well-being, and parents are going to remember that. Republicans will, too.
