The Cost of Shutting Down Schools

What effect has the school shutdown had on America’s children? The media has obscured the story-- because it is impossible to blame it on Donald Trump-- but this blogger has been seriously attempting to find some reliable numbers about the damage remote learning has done to children’s minds. That is, how much damage have the teachers unions and the Democratic Party done to America’s children?

This morning the New York Times has a go at it, and its information seems reliable enough. Naturally, it chooses one child in one school in Mississippi to show how bad it is. If your empathy needs some juicing this morning, feel free to read the harrowing story of how remote learning is hurting him.

First question-- how many children have stopped going to class?

By one estimate, three million students nationwide, roughly the school-age population of Florida, stopped going to classes, virtual or in person, after the pandemic began.

As you know, most of these children are children of color. The people who are up in arms about black lives apparently do not much care about the minds of black children. And the Democratic Party and the teachers unions do not either:

A disproportionate number of those disengaged students are lower-income Black, Latino and Native American children  who have struggled to keep up in classrooms that are partly or fully remote, for reasons ranging from poor internet service to needing to support their families by working or caring for siblings. Many are homeless or English language learners. Others whose parents work outside the home have struggled in the absence of adult supervision.

Next question: how much learning have American children lost over the past year?

Studies of how much learning American students have lost in the past year are underway, but the preliminary reports are mostly grim. Even one of the more optimistic surveys found significant losses in math, with a doubling of the proportion of students described as “sliders,” because they had moved down in their rankings compared with a typical year.

Another study confirms the bad news:

Another national study, from the assessment company Curriculum Associates, found a decline of up to 16 percent in the number of elementary school students performing at grade level in math, and up to 10 percent in the number of students performing at grade level in reading.

In one Mississippi district, there has been a fivefold increase in students with failing grades:

In the Clarksdale Municipal School District, where all of the 2,368 students qualify for free meals, a key indicator of poverty, the number of students with failing grades has increased fivefold this school year, data provided by the district shows.

The story is unremittingly grim. We have certainly not heard the last of it, but we will continue to follow the studies documenting the horrors that government officials in some states have inflicted on the most vulnerable children.