Where Would We Be Without Researchers?

Anyone who has ever been a second-grade student, should have realized this was going to be the case. The original article is behind a paywall. Here's another link. ‘Not Good for Learning’ - New research is showing the high costs of long school closures in some communities.

Because of the pandemic, some schools were completely remote. Others had in-class instruction. Some were a mixture of both.

These differences created a huge experiment, testing how well remote learning worked during the pandemic. Academic researchers have since been studying the subject, and they have come to a consistent conclusion: Remote learning was a failure.

And this is an article from the NY Times, so progressive issues are at the forefront.

One of the most alarming findings is that school closures widened both economic and racial inequality in learning. In Monday’s newsletter, I told you about how much progress K-12 education had made in the U.S. during the 1990s and early 2000s: Math and reading skills improved, especially for Black and Latino students.

The Covid closures have reversed much of that progress, at least for now. Low-income students, as well as Black and Latino students, fell further behind over the past two years, relative to students who are high-income, white or Asian.

Was any other outcome expected? And if a different outcome was expected, who expected that outcome? Aside from the unions.

Expecting kids to sit in front of Zoom call is insane. I would have trouble with 6 or 7 hours of Zoom in a day, and I have pretty good concentration.

I'm sorry, but no one should have expected a 1st or 2nd grader to get much education from "remote learning."

This is a problem that will reverberate for at least a generation.

Here's another look at the same issue from the WaPo. These schools did less to contain covid. Their students flourished.

In suburban Colorado Springs. Classes reopened quickly.

In the country’s largest school systems, such as those in New York City, Los Angeles, D.C. and Chicago, teacher unions and concerned parents fought plans to reopen. Public health officials warned that social distancing would save lives, and schools responded by devising hybrid programs or simply sticking with virtual learning. But, over time, these measures also imposed costs: Today, students are contending with significant learning loss and mental health issues.

The mental health issues are not just elementary school kids, but reach into the higher grades.

Who would have thought that isolating teenagers would have an impact on their mental health? Not the Experts.

Now the WaPo being to the Left of Charmian Mao, won't come out and say, "Conservative communities did the right thing for the kids," but they come pretty damn close.

Every might-have-been is hashed over; how they were not "following guidelines" or "doing everything to keep people safe." But then it's the WaPo. (The Unions can't be wrong, can they?)

Hat tip to Had Enough Therapy? The Effect of School Lockdowns, in which the following is noted:

Longtime readers of this blog know that closing schools during the pandemic was a very, very bad idea. Today, most sensible adults accept this judgment, but, what is most intriguing is the revelation, offered in a Guy Benson interview with Dr. Deborah Birx, that the CDC knew all about the damage being inflicted on American schoolchildren, but refused to keep schools open.

You might say that in the war between the teachers’ unions and the science, the teachers’ unions won. And we should all question how seriously the CDC takes the science.

There is more and many more links at Had Enough Therapy?