Remote ed was a disaster

Just about every teacher, parent and student who endured the sad and dragged-out mess of online learning during the pandemic understands that it was a disservice to young people. It hurt them academically and emotionally, and whatever was gained from a public health standpoint wasn’t fairly balanced against all that was lost.

That evidence, plain as it is, remains anecdotal and personal. But a crucial study this month from the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University gives us a scientific sense of who was hurt most by the wrongheaded decisions to lock the schoolhouse doors and keep them locked for months on end.

The exhaustive study reviewed testing data from 2.1 million students in some 10,000 schools in 49 states. Its conclusions are a must-read as we look back on the decisions of our politicians, public health authorities and teachers unions that kids should stay home.

“High-poverty schools were more likely to go remote, and they suffered larger declines [in learning] when they did so,” the study’s authors note.

Meanwhile, Black and Hispanic students were much more likely to be placed in remote learning and were kept in remote learning for longer periods of time during the 2020-21 school year.

That is unconscionable, and its effect could ripple through a generation.