Catholic Schools 1, Public Schools 0
Don’t blame covid.
A virus that barely affected kids did not cause the devastating drop in learning suffered by most American schoolchildren during the pandemic.
Reading scores fell. Math scores plummeted.
Minority children suffered the worst. (Of course they did. Many of their parents weren't part of the pajamas and laptop class. They were the folks delivering for Amazon and Door Dash to those hiding under their beds.)
School closures did the damage.
The decision to close schools was hasty and premature. The decisions to keep them closed were simply cruel and not based on science. In Virginia, we have Ralph Northam to thank for student failures.
As Fox News reports, just 8% of all teachers were old enough to face a significant health risk from covid. There was no reason to shutter schools and keep them shuttered.
Eight percent. That’s the absurdly tiny fraction of America’s public-school teacher workforce aged 60-or-older who faced non-trivial mortality risk from COVID-19 before vaccines were available.
Eight percent also happens to be the share of Black 13-year-olds who – according to recently released federal data – performed at the top level in mathematics on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). And while traditional public schools have failed to deliver for disadvantaged students of color for far too long, these alarming numbers represent a significant drop in their performance since before the pandemic.
…These troubling results come years after politicians dumped hundreds of billions of dollars in additional federal funding into the school system. Throwing more money at the problem didn’t help. Part of the reason, as Georgetown University researchers recently found, is that "investments in social-emotional learning are more popular [with public schools] than expanded learning time." And they found that "despite warnings from the feds against taking on new construction or extensive renovations, some 20% of [the money] has been invested in facilities… [doing little to resolve] gaps in learning."
Not all kids fell behind, however. Fox News reports that Catholic schools, which stayed open, saw no loss in learning.
America’s Catholic schools defied these sobering trends. Students attending parochial schools experienced no meaningful decline in either subject on the latest NAEP.
Although over twice as many private school educators (17%) were in the COVID-vulnerable 60-or-older category, Catholic schools stayed open for their students.
Funny how that worked.
Yet Randi Weingarten, the odious president of the American Federation of Teachers, who had the CDC’s Rachel Walensky on speed dial and lobbied to keep schools closed. now whines about all the hate aimed at her.
No. You hurt kids. You don't get a minute. https://t.co/eemaGkhgiu
— Meghan Maureen (@Keggs719) June 26, 2023
She deserves every bit of our scorn.
But what did the Biden administration do with the person most responsible for damaging America’s school children?
They plopped Weingarten into a plum position on a Homeland Security advisory board.
No remorse for what they did to America’s kids,
It’s not shocking. Public schools are a failure. Get your kids out if you can. https://t.co/PX9FnAComU
— kerry dougherty (@kerrydougherty) June 26, 2023
