Was it a mistake to close schools?

The decline in math scores was significantly jarring, with 26% of eighth graders scoring as proficient, in comparison with 34% in 2019. The New York Times called the decline “the most definitive indictment yet of the pandemic’s impact on millions of schoolchildren.”

The most vulnerable students fell farthest behind — many lacked the devices and high-speed internet connections needed to keep up in remote studying environments. “The results in [the] nation’s report card are appalling and unacceptable,” stated Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. “This is a moment of truth for education. How we respond to this will determine not only our recovery, but our nation’s standing in the world.”

The federal government last year invested a record $123 billion, or about $2,400 per student, to assist public school students to catch up. Given the price — to taxpayers and to students — was closing schools the appropriate thing to do?

Democrats kept children out of classrooms way too long

“This is not the first result or study showing that school closures caused massive learning loss — it is only the latest,” says the Washington Examiner in an editorial. There isn’t a question distance learning was the reason so many kids fell behind. Simply have a look at Catholic schools: Nearly all over, they’d opened full-time by fall 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.”

The lesson right here is apparent: “Once it was clear that COVID 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.”

Remote studying wasn’t the issue

“It turns out that all the bitter back-and-forth between red and blue states about how quickly to reopen schools during the COVID-19 pandemic was nothing but political theater, as far as test scores are concerned,” says Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. “Student performance suffered across the board.”

California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, opened schools more slowly that his Republican counterparts Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas, who “made a big show of reopening their states’ schools in the fall of 2020.” But fourth and eighth graders’ math proficiency dropped a point less in California than in Florida and Texas.

“Political posturing might have mattered to governors who’d like to be president someday, but it made no difference to the millions of children in the nation’s schools.” Enough already. Instead of politicizing education, let’s join forces and assist students make up for 2 lost years. “Our students need to learn reading and math — and they’re losing ground.”

Admitting errors is step one towards correcting them

Some individuals simply cannot admit when they’re mistaken, says Scott McCaffrey in the Northern Virginia Sun Gazette. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the federal government’s COVID response, with all its lockdowns, not too long ago acknowledged that “excessive school lockdowns following COVID’s arrival were, on balance, a bad thing for students.” Fauci, in fact, insists he did not inform anybody to lock down schools.

But if he can at the very least admit the strategy was pointless and dangerous, cannot local school districts concede that errors have been made? “Will they ever admit a massive miscalculation in judgment”? Do not bet on it. We live in a world where everything is “hyper-politicized,” even the schooling of our kids.

No one needs to be boasting about these scores

Plenty of states that reopened early had dismal test outcomes, says Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times, “including Kansas, Maine, and Idaho in reading and Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, and Idaho in math.” No one has something to “brag about.” We should take an honest look at things that worked, just like the efforts that some states, including California, “put into remedial programs during the pandemic and after it ebbed.”

And things that did not: “There’s little evidence that reforms such as charter schools are an answer; according to the NAEP report card, average scores in math, reading, and science are worse in charter schools than in conventional public schools, and the gap grows larger from fourth grade to eighth grade to 12th.”

It did not need to be this bad

It’s certainly “hard to compare scores by the degree of lockdowns,” says The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. However it’s clear that keeping schools closed so long in so many locations was a mistake, given children’s limited COVID risk. “Sweden kept its schools open and avoided the catastrophic learning loss of the U.S.” A few of our districts that struggled before the pandemic, like Detroit, had the toughest lockdowns, and “some of the worst learning loss.”

That is an argument for school choice. And do not forget that teachers’ unions influenced most of the districts that closed classrooms. Politicians endorsed by American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten needs to be the first to face a backlash over these scores.

We should concentrate on the way to repair this, not the way it broke

The pandemic did not create the issues with our education system, says the Los Angeles Times in an editorial. It simply made them worse. It is “no surprise that educational achievement suffered after two chaotic years of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The “most troubling” factor concerning the Nation’s Report Card was that “low-performing students’ scores declined at much higher rates than higher-performing students.” Los Angeles children eligible for the free lunch program, for instance, have been 35 points lower than other students. The gap was just 14 points in 2002.

The good news is that now “educators have the funds and the data to help guide them.” The outcomes “offer concrete proof that K-12 students need more focused attention and resources in the form of tutoring or extended instruction time, depending on specific circumstances.” The math backsliding suggests “one-on-one tutoring or more teacher instruction” might help. Let’s make good use of the lessons of the pandemic, and the cash approved to assist students catch up. “Our children’s future depends on it.”