Do American Students’ Lives Matter?

Teachers’ union-mandated school lockdowns could have lifetime ramifications for many kids.

The results of the first post-lockdown National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were released on June 1, and they revealed anything but progress. Most subgroups took a big hit, but blacks and Hispanics sustained the greatest damage.

“These results are sobering,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the test. “It’s clear that COVID-19 shocked American education and stunted the academic growth of this age group.” (It’s worth noting that the NAEP given during the 2019-2020 school year, before the pandemic craziness took hold, revealed that U.S. students’ scores in both reading and math were already declining.)

Sadly, the academic loss the students experienced was just the tip of the iceberg. Studies have shown a rise in classroom disruptions, school violence, absenteeism, and students seeking mental health services as a result of the shutdowns. Also, youth crime is increasing, and there have been significant jumps in obesity as well as rates of childhood anxiety and depression.

We’re also learning about unanticipated health effects. Because kids have been cloistered away from normal childhood illnesses, their immunity has suffered. As Bethany Mandel explains, “Traditional ‘winter’ viruses like the flu and the respiratory virus RSV have been seen in hospitals during off-peak months, filling beds and taxing healthcare resources.” And lastly, Scottish researchers reported in July that a lack of exposure to two common viruses during the COVID-19 pandemic may have increased the chances of children becoming severely ill with acute hepatitis.

Economically, the lockdowns will have ramifications for many years. In September 2020, Hoover Institution senior fellow and economist Eric Hanushek, and Ludger Woessmann, a professor of economics at the University of Munich, found that accrued lockdown-related learning losses will amount to $14.2 trillion in current dollars. Clearly, these losses grew for those stuck in locked-down schools in the ensuing months.

Tragically, none of this had to happen. Sweden never closed its schools and not one child died from the disease, and teacher cases were rare. In a study published in the International Journal of Educational Research, a team of researchers at Stockholm’s Karolinska University analyzed data from 97,073 primary school students across Sweden. They could find “no evidence of a learning loss regarding early reading skills in Swedish primary school students.”

But unlike Sweden, we have arrogant phonies in charge, such as the megalomaniacal Anthony Fauci, who obnoxiously proclaims, “I represent Science” and American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, who in March 2021 falsely asserted, “We’ve been trying to reopen schools since last April.”

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