For all the parents who have spent the last two years fighting for our children, I’m sorry to say our brief summer respite is over. The data on pandemic learning loss are coming in, and they are devastating. And yet the failing grades and rising absentee rates dominating the public education system today are exactly what those of us who fought school closures warned would happen.

The liberal teachers unions and their allies in the legacy media downplayed our concerns, but parents knew this would be the result. And unfortunately, our predictions have been confirmed. It is no surprise that the worst learning losses occurred in schools that kept their doors shut the longest and among children who are the poorest. According to a recent Harvard study, high-poverty schools were most likely to have been remote for the longest (over a year in many places), and enrolled students lost the equivalent of 36-40 weeks of learning. Even in low-poverty schools that switched to virtual learning, students lost the equivalent of 13 weeks of learning.