As racial test score gap widens, still no accountability for school closures
Timothy P. Carney
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Three years ago, families were beginning a very weird summer vacation. The kids had all been home for three months already. In much of America, the community pools weren’t opening, and there was no graduation or championship baseball game or end-of-year party.
The supposed difference was that school was over. The truth is, school had already been over for three months. Remote learning was a farce, and every parent knew it. But the people in power all pretended otherwise. The politicians, the news media, and the teachers unions all insisted that remote learning was just fine.
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Over that summer, we debated on the local, state, and national levels whether schools should reopen. The closers, despite their intervention being radical and unprecedented, proceeded with smug certainty, accusing the reopeners of wanting to kill children and teachers.
The American Academy of Pediatrics made it clear that school closures would harm children, but then former President Donald Trump said school closures would harm children, especially the disadvantaged poor and minority children, and so the entire media, Democratic Party, and public health establishment reversed course.
President Joe Biden’s Democratic National Committee started running ads against school reopening.
Democratic health czars tried closing even nonpublic schools in fall 2020, and Democratic lawyers attacked the Republican governor who prevented this overreach.
The closers were dead wrong. Holding real school didn’t significantly increase the spread of COVID-19, and yet even in late 2020, the teachers unions insisted school was racist and that remote school was perfectly fine.
The last two years have been an endless avalanche of data showing how disastrous “remote schooling” was. School closures harmed children’s mental health, spurred chronic absenteeism, and spurred a youth crime wave. The latest data today show unprecedented drops in math and reading skills for the nation’s 13-year-olds.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress published test scores today and showed huge drops compared to pre-pandemic levels. They also showed a widening of the learning gap between white students and black students.
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This is the fault of the teachers unions that not only insisted on closing schools but slandered the reopeners. This is the fault of public health authorities whose myopia and hubris led them to neglect the emotional and intellectual well-being of children and families. This is the fault of politicians, most notably Biden, who turned school closing into a culture war badge of honor. These politicians thought hating Trump was more important than sound science or caring for children.
Sometimes the lockdowners and closers on social media scold me for still being angry about this. Well, everyone who loves children should still be angry about this. The closers ruined children’s lives.