By Sherman Frederick/Properly Subversive
I’m sorry that teachers look bad after the pandemic. But pretending they didn’t do what they did does no one any good.
The Associated Press reports that “Math and reading scores for America’s 9-year-olds fell dramatically during the first two years of the pandemic, offering an early glimpse of the sheer magnitude of the learning setbacks dealt to the nation’s children. Reading scores saw their largest decrease in 30 years, while math scores had their first decrease in the history of the testing regimen behind the study.”
The setback to American children kept from in-person schooling during most of the pandemic, “erased two decades of progress in American test scores.”
To compound the situation, students of color were hit the hardest. Math scores dropped by 5 percentage points for white students, compared with 13 points for Black students and 8 points for Hispanic students. The divide between Black and white students widened by 8 percentage points during the pandemic.
It’s a brutal position we now find ourselves in. Communities in rural Nevada will no doubt recover more quickly than the metro areas. It’s important that we look back at the mistakes that were made and avoid them in the future.
To that end, I point you to an exchange between the newspaper USA Today and Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers. In an interview recently with the newspaper’s editorial board she was asked if she regretted what she did during the pandemic.
“What I regret is COVID. What I regret is the fear. What I regret is the misinformation. Would I have liked us to have a crystal ball, and know then what we know now, so we could have been more firm about saying, if you do X and Y and Z, we can reopen schools in person? Yeah. Because I think that being in person is most important.”
Really? She thinks that in-person school is most important?
Thankfully, the editorial board, which is usually supportive of teacher unions, called BS on Weingarten’s attempt to rewrite history.
The board rightly wrote: “Weingarten led the charge in pushing back against schools reopening from the beginning. Even as European schools opened to in-person learning in spring 2020, Weingarten told her members to ‘scream bloody murder’ if they felt the slightest bit unsafe.
“And they did.
“Even though top medical experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci and others at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said early on that prioritizing in-person learning was vital for children’s well-being – and outweighed the risks of COVID – teachers unions prevented a return to the classroom in many districts in the fall of 2020.This continued into 2021. Although teachers were placed at the front of the vaccination line, it still wasn’t enough. Nor were the billions in COVID-19 relief dollars sent to schools.
“The scientific guidance was firmly on the side of getting kids back to school – until teachers unions got involved.”
Way to go, USA Today.
It does us no good as a nation to rewrite history. Teacher unions, and leadership-deprived politicians (like Nevada’s Gov. Steve Sisolak) did our kids wrong during the pandemic. Let’s not forget it, because we have one helluva deep hole in front of us, especially with minority kids.
SWEET SPOT
Two readers took the time to comment on my recent column on the Trump FBI raid. One said I was stuffed fuller than a Christmas turkey, the other gave me a big “atta boy.” I must have hit the sweet spot on that column. In the immortal words of Evis: “Thank you. Thank you very much.”
ONE MORE THING
– When you think about the vastness of interstellar space, the size of our galaxy, how big our planet is and how small we are … am I really – really! – eating too much cheese?
– Boomers: When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.
Gen X: When life hands you lemons, create a start-up to market lemon juice as a healthy, low-carb alternative to lemonade.
Millennials: Hahaha. As if life would ever hand you lemons.
– What did the buffalo say to his son when he left for college? Bison.
I may go to hell for that last “bison” pun. But not today. Until then, avoid soreheads, laugh a little and always – always! – question authority.
“Properly Subversive” is commentary written by Sherman R. Frederick, a Nevada Hall of Fame journalist and co-founder of Battle Born Media, a news organization dedicated to the preservation of community newspapers. You can reach him by email at shermfrederick@ gmail. com.