Some on the Left, such as Mehdi Hassan, are still on a crusade to convince Americans that the shutdowns and mandates during COVID were great for everybody.

Last week he did a show focused on how closing schools down during COVID was a good idea (although, in a fascinating twist, he sometimes seemed to imply that time in school itself is bad for kids). You can watch his idiocy here:

Mehdi Hassan is such a political shill that he would rather twist logic and reason to justify school closures, rather than accept the simple fact that this position pushed by the Democrats was deeply harmful. Luckily he is on MSNBC where no one watches. https://t.co/jW0S4yJV0e

— Vinay Prasad MD MPH (@VPrasadMDMPH) August 25, 2023

I’ve written before about the missing students–millions of students have just disappeared off of school rolls since COVID, and haven’t shown up in private school or home school rolls either. They just disappeared, and I am willing to bet a million dollars that much of our crime wave is related to those missing students who now roam the streets as predators.

But there is another cohort that doesn’t get enough attention: students who are on the books, but who attend school quite irregularly now.

As I was reading Alpha News, the excellent local news source that tells the stories that the MSM ignores, I ran across this depressing story:

Consistent attendance has dropped by 15% statewide.https://t.co/clTqWoIpw7 pic.twitter.com/E5ApAz4aSa

— Alpha News (@AlphaNewsMN) August 30, 2023

You read that headline right: the majority of students in Minneapolis, Minnesota’s largest school district, no longer consistently attend school. And throughout the state large numbers of students have become part-time students in essence, as they no longer go to school with sufficient regularity.

Since 2019, the last time attendance data was released, the number of students with consistent attendance records has dropped from 85% to 69.8%, according to data for the 2021-22 school year.

In Minneapolis, the number of students consistently attending school that year was just 45.8%.

The data also found that, based on 2023 statewide assessments, 50.3% of students are not proficient in reading and 54.7% are not proficient in math.

Minnesota prides itself on its education system. In fact, a persistent myth in our state is about the “Minnesota Miracle,” which refers to the state taking over the primary responsibility for funding schools, ensuring their enduring quality.

What crap. Half of all students in the state can’t read or do math at grade level, and in the urban districts, the stats are worse.

Public schools get far too much slack. Because we remember those teachers we loved as kids–I certainly do, and can still name a few a half-century later–we don’t give a hard-headed look at what the schools are doing right here and right now. Far too many kids are getting cheated out of a decent education, and it shows.

Bad teachers should be fired, good teachers rewarded, most administrators should be cut from the payroll, and money should follow the students to whatever school serves them best.

It’s time to drop our nostalgia for what was; what is there today is corrupt and should be transformed or abolished. Period.

In many cases, public schools do more harm than good, and in most cases, even the good they do doesn’t reach the bare minimum we should be allowed to expect.

I would happily see every good teacher make twice as much money. I would even more happily see every mediocre teacher or bad teacher let go.

Yes, I know that the parents are often the problem. I know that the rules make being a teacher nearly a fool’s errand. At least we can do something about the latter. The former? The minimum is getting the disruptive kids out of the classroom.

No more talk about the “school-to-jail pipeline” or other nonsense. Get the schools under control, kids attending, and real learning happening. That comes first. Then find a way to save the kids going down the wrong path and help as many as possible. That comes second. And for the rest? They will likely wind up in jail–which is no worse than what happens now. At least we are helping the other two groups, instead of ruining schools for everybody in a vain attempt to salvage the unsalvageable.

COVID shutdowns made everything worse, and the George Floyd/BLM riots and the coddling of the rioters made things infinitely worse. The one good thing they did was lay bare how indifferent school officials and the teachers’ unions are to student well-being.

And here we see the result: millions of children have simply given up on school.