For two full years, Democratic-run states sacrificed their economies for a benefit that, according to a recent New York Times analysis, was at best minor and probably nonexistent.
But that’s not the worst of it — they also sacrificed their children’s well-being for that nonexistent benefit. Three recent studies suggest that learning loss in schoolchildren due to pandemic restrictions on in-person instruction has been even more severe than previously believed.
A University of Virginia study, for example, has found that early reading skills for students in second grade and below are at a 20-year low. As always, nonwhite students have been hit hardest.
Another study, by the curriculum company Amplify, found that the share of kindergartners at risk for not learning to read has risen from 29% to 37% since the pandemic began. A third study, released in the fall, found that the share of students overall who read below grade level has risen by more than one-third since the pandemic began and now sits at 33%.
For some time, teachers unions have tried to deflect blame for something that is clearly the result of their own obstinacy and unwillingness to work. They dragged the restrictions out as long as possible, long after the science had demonstrated that they were unnecessary and ineffective. They tried to deny that there even is such a thing as pandemic-related learning loss. But the proof is in the pudding.
The unions’ habitual de-prioritization of students in favor of greed, unaccountability, and inertia has been an anvil hanging around the necks of American schools for decades. But the unions’ role during the pandemic has made their destructive power impossible to ignore.
There is also a broader lesson to take away here about irrational fears of infection and panic over a disease whose death rate is at this point negligible. Pandemic restrictions were directed by people whose sole expertise was in public health, not necessarily in any other field. But every restriction involved trade-offs and required the weighing of public goods. Is it worth saving a small number of lives at the expense of 10 million jobs? Or what if it means the entire next generation consequently suffers an inferior education?
These sacrifices become even more senseless as the inefficacy of pandemic restrictions becomes more apparent. What if the pandemic restrictions in schools — the least effective restrictions of all, judging by the data — cannot justify such a trade-off?
When you study the numbers, you realize that the states that kept their schools open through hell and high water did a big favor for the next generation of their citizens.
The saddest aspect of the coronavirus pandemic has been the fact that a small group of panicky but influential adults, with their irrational behavior, have caused so much lasting damage to the next generation. The ramifications will not be fully understood for decades to come.
