Damaged by School Lockdowns

How do you measure the damage done to children by the Covid-19 school lockdowns? Let us recall that teachers’ unions militated for these lockdowns and that supine Democratic politicians acceded to their imperious demand.

We have been following the story, because it is an important story. While everyone is worrying about who wins or loses the next election, we must keep our focus on the way that the American educational system is rendering children stupid and incompetent.

Anyway, the latest results come to us from the college admissions tests called ACT. These are taken by seniors in high school. 

The news is bad. Children’s test scores are declining, alarmingly. The Daily Mail has the story:

Scores on the ACT college admissions test have hit their lowest point in more than 30 years - the latest evidence of the enormity of learning disruption during the pandemic lockdowns. 

The class of 2022's average ACT composite score was 19.8 out of 36 when the results released on Wednesday, marking the first time since 1991 that the average score was below 20. 

As for meeting benchmarks of competence, the results were calamitous:

An increasing number of high school students failed to meet any of the subject-area benchmarks set by the ACT.

The test scores show 42% of ACT-tested graduates in the class of 2022 met none of the subject benchmarks in English, reading, science and math.

So, America’s children are not prepared for college. They are not prepared for life outside of college. They are not prepared for the jobs of tomorrow. And you think that America is going to remain competitive???

At the least, we should understand that this is alarming:

'Academic preparedness is where we are seeing the decline,' said Rose Babington, senior director for state partnerships for the ACT.

'Every time we see ACT test scores, we are talking about skills and standards, and the prediction of students to be successful and to know the really important information to succeed and persist through their first year of college courses.'