NYT: The Pandemic Learning Loss Is the Biggest Setback in the History of American Education

Oh that's right, it's been three years. Three years is the Industry Standard "Decent Interval" period of time for leftwing NPCs to admit the truth that the rest of us saw immediately.

This morning the NY Times editorial board stated the obvious. Pandemic learning loss is a historic disaster which the country has not recovered from yet.

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.

John Sexton points out the Times could not possibly be so stupid as to believe the recommendations they make, which begin with paying higher wages to teachers whose students show objective improvements. The communist unions absolutely refuse any output-based bonuses. They'll allow input-based bonuses, like paying teachers higher for getting advanced degrees which are of little use in instructing children, but they will absolutely not permit any insinuation that some teachers are better than others, other teachers are worse than others, and some teachers are just damned incompetent and must be fired.

Sexton points out that the left wing simply will not admit their fellow leftists' responsibility for this disaster.

Nor will they even begin to contemplate their own responsibility. Sexton quotes from this NYT editorial disguised as straight reporting, attacking DeSantis for reopening the schools in 2020:

Of all the ways to describe the fraught decision to reopen schools during a pandemic, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a former Navy prosecutor, chose an especially dramatic example when he compared the commitment of teachers and administrators to the resolve of Navy SEALs given the mission to go after Osama bin Laden.

"Just as the SEALs surmounted obstacles to bring Osama bin Laden to justice, so, too, would the Martin County school system find a way to provide parents with a meaningful choice of in-person instruction or continued distance learning -- all in, all the time," he said, citing the leader of a local school district.

He meant for the line to be inspirational. But perhaps unintentionally, Mr. DeSantis also highlighted an undeniable truth in Florida since students began returning to classrooms last week: There will be virus casualties...

A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday in a lawsuit filed by the American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest teachers' union in the country, and one of its affiliates, the Florida Education Association. The union argues that the reopening mandate violates a requirement in Florida law that schools be "safe."

"There will be virus casualties."

To this day, there has not been a single documented case of a child who did not have severe comorbidities already dying of covid or even "with" covid.

But perhaps we're giving teachers too much credit -- they're not interested in teaching children about math and reading and science anyway, so what's the difference if kids are in school or not?

From Becky Noble at RedState:

The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) is an organization that offers various resources to English teachers. They are very excited about hosting their upcoming teachers' conference and have announced some of the topics being discussed with the teachers charged with instructing your kids. They are very eager to bring the latest woke ideologies to the classroom. The conference, dubbed "Conexiones 2023," will be held in Columbus, Ohio....

According to the description in the listing on the conference schedule regarding the critical race theory session:

"This presentation is a literary analysis of a short story using CRT as an instructive lens. The idea is to offer teachers another concept of applying a critical theory to their teaching repertoire while showing how CRT can help our way of thinking and teaching literature."

The takeaway from this description appears to be inserting CRT into a short story that doesn't otherwise include it to teach children in the classroom that some of them are oppressed and some of them are the oppressors, thus teaching them to hate each other. Welcome to public school English class in 2023. A quick perusal of the entire schedule of the conference reveals a whole host of leftist issues like climate activism, social justice, and LGBTQ issues.

These alleged English teachers also insist that they cannot remain silent, but must indoctrinate children about... why Israel is an oppressor state and Palestine must be free from the river to the sea:

@ncte should focus more on teaching English and not indoctrinating our children. How will this help raise our abysmal reading scores? https://t.co/flOlQrJQU2

— Red-pilled Librarian 🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱 (@redpillblustate) November 15, 2023

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 05:30 PM

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