As the United States goes through another brutal election cycle, I have noticed one topic about which candidates are staying quiet: the government response to the COVID pandemic. It is not only the fact that policy decisions from both parties that made the pandemic all the more unbearable. What makes it all the more jaw-dropping is that in spite of President Biden declaring the pandemic over in September 2022, we are still reeling from the poor policy choices that were made.
There is the Fed printing a lot of money and the federal government spending a ton of money that gave us the inflation that has eaten into Americans' purchasing power. Everyday citizens trust public health experts and all vaccines (not only COVID vaccines) less. We should also think of the children because children have especially paid a terrible price for lockdowns and other non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI). It is not only the decline in socio-emotional skills or the chronic absenteeism that worry me about the children that will eventually be the future adults in this country.
Student achievement among grade school students has taken quite the hit, according to research from the testing nonprofit Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA). This new report from NWEA, entitled Recovery Still Elusive: 2023-24 student achievement highlights persistent achievement gaps and a long road ahead, shows that growth during the 2023-24 school year fell short of pre-pandemic trends. The average student will need 4.8 additional months of schooling to catch up in reading and 4.3 additional months to catch up in mathematics. What makes this more perturbing is that the gap is the same for mathematics as it was last year and even larger for reading than it was last year. What was expected to have ended, as expressed by the authors of the NWEA report, is taking much longer to recuperate.
As eye-opening as these findings are, we still do not know the full extent of the damage that school closures, lockdowns, and other NPIs caused to millions of students. Lower academic achievement is as tragic as it was predictable. I expressed my concerns as early as July 2020 that school closures would have a considerable and negative impact on student achievement.
I highlighted preliminary findings in June 2022, one of which included that a loss of three months of schooling is equivalent to 2.5 to 4 percent of one's life income. Given that the NWEA findings show an average of over 4 months of lost schooling, the school closures have damaged life earnings even more than 2.5 to 4 percent. This will translate into a smaller economy, a diminished purchasing power that will adversely impact these future adults, and even shorter lifespans.
As the NWEA report points out, lower achievement and widened inequities are the new norm. What makes this more lamentable is that no one is going to be held responsible. It certainly will not be Dr. Anthony Fauci. Not only did Fauci's recommendation influence many school districts to remain closed. It was Fauci's six-foot social distancing recommendation (which has since been shown to be anti-science nonsense) that made school re-opening impractical for many classrooms, thereby delaying children from returning to a sense of normalcy.
Aside from knowing that those responsible for such mayhem will not be held responsible, I do know one other thing. If there is to be a recovery in which lower achievement is not a permanent norm, there is quite the uphill battle. A high teacher turnover rate, chronic absenteeism, higher rates of anxiety and depression among students and teachers alike, and now diminished student achievement to the list. Assuming that the damage can be reversed, it is going to take years to do so. Outside of that, there is the faintest of hopes that we do not put our trust in the government next time there is a pandemic. That way, we can avoid of harming all of our citizens, including our children.
No comments:
Post a Comment