EDITORIAL: School closure carnage even worse than expected

It appears that pandemic learning loss is even worse than expected. Where’s the accounting for those — such as the national teachers unions — that pushed devastating school closures and unleashed waves of vitriol on those who dared disagree?

On Thursday, the Department of Education released the first information on student test scores since the pandemic began. The news is grim, to say the least. Average scores in reading for fourth graders fell to 215 from 220 (out of a possible 500) in 2022. Math results were 7 points lower at 234.

“The results mark the largest drop in reading scores since 1990 and the first decline in math scores since the test began in 1971,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “Math and reading scores for the exam are now at their lowest levels since the 1990s.”

As expected, kids who were already behind suffered the most. One expert told the Journal that it “could take decades” for them to recover. Many students will now move on to higher grades even further behind than they might have been otherwise.

Keep in mind that the 2022 test numbers do reflect some remediation efforts, as the federal government has showered billions on school districts over the past few years in pandemic relief.

It’s also worth remembering that experts who insisted schools could be safely reopened in the fall of 2020 — and that the damage done by closures far exceeded the risks involved — were treated by many progressives as pariahs and ghouls who were advocating for the deaths of children and teachers. Scientists and other experts who signed the Great Barrier Declaration in 2020, urging the nation to emphasize protecting the vulnerable while moving toward normalcy, were lambasted and even banned from social media.

Meanwhile, one teacher union leader, in an interview with The New Yorker, raised the specter of 50,000 child deaths if classrooms were reopened in the fall of 2020. Union members demonstrating in Washington, D.C., made use of body bags to drive the point home.

They were wrong, horribly so. Yet a compliant national media amplified such unfounded alarmism while minimizing other now widely accepted perspectives as “misinformation” or worse. Fact is, the academic fiasco of remote schooling was utterly predictable — and scores of critics indeed predicted it. Yet many politicians — including the president — put union interests above children and families when it came to keeping classrooms shuttered. Now many of those children will suffer consequences for years to come.

A reckoning is in order. But don’t count on it happening soon.