JACQUELINE TOBOROFF: Children's learning is being destroyed by ideology

It’s settled science that lockdowns in response to the COVID pandemic created significant learning loss amongst children. Eric Hanushek from the Hoover Institution predicts the fallout will produce two nasty side effects. Students will have a lower lifetime income and individual states will suffer financially due to the dearth of students’ learned skills. 

Let’s consider two scenarios. First, Hanushek is right. Second, Hanushek is wrong. 

Either outcome is predicated on this; eighth graders’ math and reading performance fell in every state, according to the “Nation’s Report Card.” Between the 2019-20 to 2022-23 school years, the average scores for 13 year olds declined 4 points in reading and 9 points in mathematics. Math scores highlight the severity of the problem as they’re the largest decline since the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) began tracking long-term trends in student performance. Hanushek presents another way to interpret the data; the learning loss reflected in the test scores is “roughly equivalent to three to four years of schooling.”

Hanushek’s essay, The Economic Cost of the Pandemic, State by State, notes that the NAEP results show a range of differences in learning loss across the nation. Combined with the size of each individual state’s economy, financial repercussions will vary. He predicts, “Students on average face 2 to 9 percent lower lifetime income depending on the state in which they attended school.” Moreover, annually, for the remainder of the twenty-first century, states will feel a 0.6 to 2.9 percent hit to their GDP on account of a lower-skilled future workforce.

This is because historically, those with higher education, better scores, and a functioning brain earn more. Learning loss disrupted this pattern, meaning, the state’s economy must be impacted. The response to the pandemic implies “that the future workforce will be less prepared to contribute to economic growth."

"Even if education returns to its pre-pandemic quality, there is a cohort of students that will move through the future labor force with lower skills and achievement”, Hanushek said.

Based on numbers, it’s clear - lockdowns and school shutdowns have financially imperiled America. California stands to lose $1.3 trillion because of its sizable economy. Texas, New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania are estimated to lose $500 billion, explains Hanushek. Even a state with a smaller economy loses money in a proportional manner, so the impact is profound. 

Hanushek’s theory is what should happen based on precedent and numbers. 

However, while relatively current (written in 2022) and data driven, Hanushek’s forecast is made prior to the House Committee on Education hearing on antisemitism on college campuses. Data, numbers, and precedent have gone out the window in a DEI world. Harvard President and plagiarist, Claudine Gay, is not resigning. Harvard says: "We unanimously stand in support of President Gay." What does this mean? 

It means that everything about education that made learning possible in the first place has gone topsy turvy: rigorously trained teachers, let alone presidents of Harvard past, are gone. They’re in a different league; classically educated, demanding, and patriotic. The foundation was one built on American excellence which consigns them to another epoch - one before COVID and George Floyd. Students are now admitted based on race. Oftentimes, because of subpar grades. Democrat activist teachers are hired. Rigorously trained traditional teachers are pushed out. Personifying the DEI agenda makes one a Harvard President. Being a black female insulates Gay. Presiding over race based admissions and calls for the genocide of Jews is seemingly part of the job description. The plagiarist aspect might even be a boon to Gay; copying others’ work is a middle finger to white "ways of knowing," or whatever the postmodern excuse du jour is. And those excuses are already starting. The president of the NAACP has already said, “The recent attacks on [Gay's] leadership are nothing more than political theatrics advancing a white supremacist agenda.”

Moreover, as long as DEI continues (and it will be a war to vanquish), “learning loss” might not be, as Hanushek posits, a detriment to getting a job. Ironically, a report from Harvard Business Review in 2022 says, “U.S. companies spend roughly $8 billion a year on DEI training—but accomplish remarkably little.”

Actually, this is wrong. DEI has successfully crippled academia, iconic brands like Bud Light and Victoria's Secret, and urban centers like New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Portland. DEI czars and apparatchiks  are in high demand in academia, government, finance, entertainment, and bureaucracy. There are even calls to hire more DEI “professionals” to fix the problems DEI created vis-a-vis antisemitism. 

As far as the economic toll on individual states that Hanushek says will be felt on account of lost skills - this, too, is based on a time when American elected officials put America and Americans first, irrespective of party. Leaders, from New York City Mayor Adams, to Governor Newsom, to President Biden put illegal aliens first. Then criminals. Then, maybe, citizens. They’re bankrupting taxpayers to continue on with Replacement, which is linked to DEI. America’s economy resembles a ponzi scheme that continues to print money to finance things that go against the will of the people and free market. For example, 82 percent of Americans are concerned about the border but our rulers are unfazed. 

Whether the outcomes Hanushek predicts come true or not, they should be true. The powers that conspired to lockdown kids and shutdown schools either consciously or unconsciously tanked America’s economy. And not only that, but their ideology is on its way to tanking future generations' economy -- and prospects -- forever.