President Joe Biden got it right when he said on Tuesday, « We can keep our K-through-12 schools open, and that’s exactly what we …
President Joe Biden got it right when he said on Tuesday, « We can keep our K-through-12 schools open, and that’s exactly what we should be doing. » But that didn’t prevent the Chicago Teachers Union from illegally going on strike. Pay no attention to the $1.8 billion of federal tax dollars Chicago got in last year’s shakedown. Prince George’s County, Md., public schools are closed for two weeks of January. In Washington, D.C., public schools are now on day three of their « only two days » closure – and the mayor signaled much longer closures coming, crafting the new euphemism « situational virtual learning » for prolonged closures. Worst of all is New Jersey, where over 33 percent of all students in the state are locked out of school this week. They are disproportionately in economically disadvantaged districts. And New York’s UFT union is also threatening – ironically, a sick out. Are our educators ineducable? They appear to have learned nothing from the catastrophic school lockdowns in 2020. The effect was a full year of lost schooling for millions of school-age children, and the most damage was done to the lowest income and minority students, for whom online schooling was ineffective and alternative education opportunities were scarce. The effect on COVID spread? Worse than nothing – closing schools has been shown in study after study to actually increase spread, because students and teachers not in school are in the community, where infections spread more easily. McKinsey found that students ended the last school year, on average, five months behind in math and four months behind in reading. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/education/our-insights/covid-19-and-education-the-lingering-effects-of-unfinished-learning Another study from Ohio State found that « districts with fully remote instruction experienced test scores declines up to three times greater than districts that had in-person instruction for the majority of the school year.
