Opinion | The Startling Evidence on Learning Loss Is In "In the thick of the Covid-19 pandemic, Congress sent $190 billion in aid to schools, stipulating that 20 percent of the funds had to be used for reversing learning setbacks. At the time, educators knew that the impact on how children learn would be significant, but the extent was not yet known. "The evidence is now in, and it is startling. The school closures that took 50 million children out of classrooms at the start of the pandemic may prove to be the most damaging disruption in the history of American education. It also set student progress in math and reading back by two decades and widened the achievement gap that separates poor and wealthy children. "These learning losses will remain unaddressed when the federal money runs out in 2024. Economists are predicting that this generation, with such a significant educational gap, will experience diminished lifetime earnings and become a significant drag on the economy. But education administrators and elected officials who should be mobilizing the country against this threat are not. "It will take a multidisciplinary approach, and at this point, all the solutions that will be needed long term can’t be known; the work of getting kids back on solid ground is just beginning. But that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be immediate action."
Remote learning is tough. I wonder about the ripple. The answer should be to invest more in learning resources and elevate the in school experience to world class levels around the country but we dont have the will to do that. Half of Americans don’t even want people to learn.
This part makes no sense to me. Money cannot reverse learning setbacks. Unless we are talking about brain transplants. Kids that were low achieving before were going to be low achieving even with the money, the affect it would have is in minimal degrees.
Education builds upon itself and when you lose 6 months to a year, unless you repeat that year, you will never reach the levels you would have been without the closure.
The kids who live in strong, supportive homes - who were already doing better in school - were in much better position to keep up than the kids whose parents didn't have the time, interest or ability to make sure their kids were doing the work. The gap only increased.
I don’t have time to look up what I’ve seen before, but the evidence was a bit less clear. There was learning loss, but less than preliminary estimates. And there was far greater Covid spread through schools than has been appreciated. The school closing decision has become conventional wisdom but the actual case is far less clear. In retrospect, I put it in the category of greater Syrian intervention under 44. A decision that looks worse mainly because of second order effects. In Syria, the wave of emigration from a failed state destabilized Europe and helped seed the conditions for a fascist revival that continues to this day. School closures alienated plenty of Americans who couldn’t make child care work and grew resentful of the system, giving room for darkness and demagoguery which has resulted in hated of knowledge, persecution of nonconformity and fresh infusion of support for theocracy. In retrospect, both were likely the correct decisions for first order effects, but not second. Not worth it.
My son did fine with remote learning while my daughter did not. What a nightmare the whole thing was! And I'm still seeing people walking around with masks on including outdoors. Just bizarre!
The collective amnesia about the startling impacts of a deadly virus grows. People complained about the sacrifices they had to make, big and small. They complained about schools closing and exaggerate the length of the closings. Now folks are complaining about the impacts from necessary measures. It's almost as if the Covid-19 virus had substantial negative global impacts.
That's an interesting statement. I have a lot of conservative friends and coworkers, many of whom home school. They were quite organized and their kids all did well. In fact, I can't think of any that did not do at least as well as public educated kids.
The problem is you can’t try to replicate in school learning via zoom at home. There are home schooling approaches that apparently successful. It would seem to me that school districts adopt one of those approaches for instances when this happens.
Two things can be true at once. I think states like TX got it mostly right (perhaps by accident or for political reasons but still ). Kids were at home from March to end of that school year. But Fall 2020 they opened back up, with modified environments and durations, and a choice of in school or at home learning. In my case based on the evidence of how Covid impact on kids was mostly minimal I felt comfortable sending our son back as soon as they opened back up in fall 2020. Other states stayed closed longer. I do agree with you everybody is having amnesia of the situation at the time. Piles of cadavers in refrigerated trailers in NY. Hospitals with people on gurneys in the halls. Teachers getting sick and dying in places like FL. Over 1 million dead. To some people it’s as if it never happened.
In March 2020 most of us awakened to a world in which we were not permitted to open our businesses or send our kids to school or attend church or comfort our dying or bury our dead. So you’ll pardon us for being a little grumpy.
All of this may be true, but what's the value on hindsight in this case? It was an unprecedented event for our lifetime requiring consequential actions. There was not going to be much winning in the face of Covid.
School is more than math and English (which most people are incomplete to do must less teach). It serves to develop social awareness and how to interact. Home school kids struggle with these things by and large.
