Oh no, please, say it isn’t true. But yes, of course it is, and it’s not exactly a surprise. We have had a report, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, showing that students in our schools are faring egregiously worse in reading and math than before COVID-19 interference, with two whole decades of progress erased for one age group.
The calamity is mainly a consequence of you know what: school shutdowns urged by teachers’ unions and the discovery that teaching with computers is about as enlightening as TikTok. Were the shutdowns necessary for virus evasion? Scientists argued with scientists but, as data accumulated, the case grew that classes could be reasonably safe for both students and teachers on certain levels. There were countries with open schools from the start that said hey, look, all is fine. Sadly, nothing counted in this dispute so much as the teachers’ unions that too often put teachers before students and remain persuasive through votes, political donations and propaganda, all prompting the affection of certain politicians.
Congress made $190 billion available in 2020 and 2021 for safety measures when schools opened even as many still stayed motionless. But even though classrooms are now in action, too many are making up for lost time by focusing on gender and gender pronouns. Not just a handful of schools are instructing students that we have a historically embedded system of oppression while some schools are highlighting a book calling our founders frauds. It’s an offshoot of the New York Times’ “1619 Project” meant to save us from what the paper has called a “corrupt mythology” while making clear that just about everything American is a consequence of slavery. Some of the country’s best historians say phooey.
We learn from a Wall Street Journal editorial that one analysis of learning decay contends the problems actually arose from “classroom disruptions” in closed classrooms. President Joe Biden once said while running for the presidency, “This is a national emergency. President Trump doesn’t have a real plan for opening schools safely. He’s offering nothing but failures and delusions.” Biden was going to achieve this objective in his first 100 days and got there hundreds of days later.
