EDITORIAL: Case closed: Prolonged school closures needlessly hurt students

You won’t solve America’s education problems by listening to the same special interest group that got it so wrong during the coronavirus pandemic.

On Monday, The New York Times published a lengthy piece headlined, “What the data says about pandemic school closures, four years later.” As you likely remember, many schools didn’t open in the fall of 2020. Those students languished in distance learning for months or even the whole year. The Clark County School District kept its students locked out for most of the school year.

Republicans such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who pushed to have kids back in schools faced vicious attacks. Florida’s largest teachers union sued him to stop schools from reopening. At the time, Vicki Hall, a union official for Florida school employees, said the move was “putting lives in danger.” The Times featured a July 2020 article on how nationally “many teachers are fearful and angry over pressure to return.”

But Gov. DeSantis and other Republicans were right. Keeping schools closed didn’t stop the virus from spreading. But it did keep children from learning.

“While poverty and other factors also played a role, remote learning was a key driver of academic declines during the pandemic, research shows — a finding that held true across income levels,” the Times noted.

That learning loss isn’t easy to reverse.

“Students in districts that were remote or hybrid the longest — at least 90 percent of the 2020-21 school year — still had almost double the ground to make up compared with students in districts that allowed students back for most of the year,” the article said.

There are a couple of important takeaways here. First, leadership matters. DeSantis and other Republican governors correctly understand the data in real time — not four years later. Evidence from Europe, death rates among children and the failure of lockdowns all pointed toward reopening. These Republicans also had the courage to defy media and union pressure and do what was best for students.

That’s in stark contrast to California Gov. Gavin Newsom. He sent his kids back to in-person learning at their private school months before his state’s public schools reopened.

Another point is that teachers union officials weren’t looking out for the best interest of students. Throughout the country, they worked to delay students’ return to the classrooms. Remember that when unions oppose school choice. They prioritize the interests of adults ahead of children.

As the pandemic shutdowns showed, that’s the path to terrible educational outcomes.