COVID Lockdowns Cost Students Nearly A Year Of Learning
COVID lockdowns around the world were a tremendous failure.
Even countries like Australia or New Zealand that seemed to be able to avoid significant COVID spread during the early part of the pandemic saw cases and deaths soar throughout 2021 and 2022. Mask mandates, shutting down restaurants, gyms, bars, beaches...none of it was remotely necessary or effective. While causing massive ancillary harms in the process.
READ: MASK MANDATES AND COVID LOCKDOWNS WERE USELESS, NEW STUDY CONFIRMS
It's often difficult to determine which of these policies was the most actively harmful. But one of the most obvious answers is, of course, school closures.
"Experts" around the world universally panicked and over-reacted in the early part of the pandemic, ignoring years of carefully prepared planning documents when they were most desperately needed. Masks, school closures, border restrictions...none were evidence-based policy. They were the whims of a terrified, embarrassingly incompetent class of politicians and public health officials. Spurred on by teachers unions eager to use the opportunity to their advantage. And we're only just beginning to unpack the consequences.
A new study from the Program for International Student Assessment, the first to check how students in dozens of countries fared academically during the pandemic, found, unsurprisingly, horrifying results.
Setbacks were described as "historic," with both math and reading scores dropping dramatically. Thanks Randi!
WASHINGTON, DC - Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, speaks during a March for Our Lives rally against gun violence on the National Mall on June 11, 2022. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
COVID Shutdowns Were A Monumental, Generational Mistake
Declines were so prolific that the United States actually technically rose in global rankings because our massive learning loss declines were slightly less than other countries.
According to the study, the average international math score dropped by around three quarters of a year. Reading dropped by about half a year's worth of learning.
The results were described as an "unprecedented drop in performance," with lockdown countries like Germany and the Netherlands some of the most affected. Overall, math and reading average scores fell by 10-15 points since 2018, the first time any scores had dropped more than five points.
The worst part is that all of this was avoidable. There was never a need to close schools or force children, especially low-income children, to remote learning for well over a year. COVID spread was almost entirely unaffected by human "intervention," rising and falling at predictable, seasonal intervals around the world.
We caused this damage, set an entire generation of students back with historic losses, all for nothing.
So Where's The Apology?
What's equally infuriating about the unnecessary learning loss and harms to social and mental health caused by lockdowns is that there's been no accountability or apology for any of it.
The politicians and "experts" involved have largely been rewarded, with cushy professorial posts, speaking tours or lucrative book deals. COVID inquiries, like those in the UK, started out with promise, but have been largely a farce. Politicians and "experts" defending their actions or, unbelievably, suggesting we should have locked down earlier and harder.
Union leaders like Randi Weingarten have claimed that, actually, they were trying to get schools open all along. Despite countless news stories and public statements confirming the exact opposite.
Like so many other inexcusable policies; vaccine mandates, business closures and forced isolation, there should be universal condemnation. Instead, those involved are more concerned with protecting themselves and their allies than the children they're entrusted to educate. And with few national publications willing to blame the actual culprits instead of vague hand-waving at "pandemic disruptions," that's unlikely to change.