It’s not just the pandemic, the New York Times assures us. And they’re more right than they know.

The data comes from what the NYT calls a “gold standard” of metrics on education, the National Assessment of Educational Process (NAEP), a test administered in schools for decades under the aegis of the Department of Education. Whether one has issues with standardized testing results or not, this is at least a stable longitudinal effort that measures performance in schools. And to call this a failing grade may be an understatement:

The federal standardized test, known as NAEP, was given last fall, and focused on basic skills. The 13-year-olds scored an average of 256 out of 500 in reading, and 271 out of 500 in math, down from average scores of 260 in reading and 280 in math three years ago.

Achievement declined across lines of race, class and geography. But in math, especially, vulnerable children — including Black, Native American and low-income students — experienced bigger drops. …

The last time math performance was this low for 13-year-olds was in 1990. In reading, 2004.

Gee, why might that have happened? Could it have resulted from, oh, locking schools and forcing children into remote learning for the better part of two years in most states? That certainly would explain why economically disadvantaged children suffered more of a drop-off, since they would be more at risk for learning loss in a remote environment — and some might not have had ongoing access to remote education at all.

That doesn’t explain it all, the NYT assures us. They likely anticipate the criticism this will prompt against teachers unions and politicians that conspired to keep schools closed. But if that’s the case, this argument will backfire:

Performance has fallen significantly since the 2019-2020 school year, when the coronavirus pandemic wrought havoc on the nation’s education system. But the downward trends reported today began years before the health crisis, raising questions about a decade of disappointing results for American students.

If that’s an attempt to keep Randi Weingarten off the hook for two years of shutdown pressure, it fails in two ways. First off, we know that we got no benefit at all from the shutdowns — we knew in the summer of 2020 that children and schools were not vectors for community transmission from European data. The post-pandemic part of the plunge proves that not only did we get no benefit from those policies, we did real damage to the cognitive development of our children, and almost certainly their social and psychological health as well. The fact that scores had been falling previous to the pandemic does not negate that conclusion at all — it proves that our pandemic policies made an already-bad situation worse, and for no good reason whatsoever except to prove Weingarten’s political clout.

Secondly, though, the long decline points back to Weingarten’s and AFT’s control over public education and the radical changes to curricula in the years between these scores and their equal antecedents 19 and 33 years ago. We may have abruptly shut down schools in 2020-22, but we stopped making public schools about education a generation ago. Instead, they have become social-engineering laboratories for extremists and indoctrination centers for ideological warriors. They focus more on CRT than ABCs, and the outcomes show the result.

This has been true for decades, but it’s getting even worse, and we all see it. Drag queens demand access to elementary school children. Transgender activists want gender ideology taught at the same level. Critical-race theory gets inserted in every academic discipline. Progressive teachers focus on political agendas, such as climate change, rather than core foundational education, and the teachers that resist that are trapped in politicized curricula. Public schools — and no small number of private schools — have become battlegrounds for the conceits and egos of adults rather than places of learning core skills like reading and mathematics.

Why should we be surprised that scores in those areas are falling back to levels not seen in a generation when schools aren’t focused on teaching those skills?

Keeping schools open is a start, but only a start. Forcing schools to get back to basic education, especially in the early grades, is the only way to improve performance on fundamentals like reading and mathematics. That means chasing the activists out of the classroom and getting rid of all the distractions, including teachers and administrators who focus on their own agendas and other adults who exploits students in attempts to validate their own choices.

Occasionally, people wonder why we spend as much time on these issues as we do. I’d argue that results like these speak to that focus — and perhaps the lateness of the hour, too. We are losing a generation to indoctrination at the expense of education. Should we lose them without a fight and any hope of salvaging them?

Addendum I: Here’s an interesting data point. Mull that one over in light of the national scores, and in light of the upcoming national elections.

Florida's 4th graders had zero learning loss in reading and math between 2019-2022.

Florida has regularly scored above the national average, but notable that there was no loss during the pandemic. pic.twitter.com/R4M6biPwlP

— Tim Meads (@TimMeadsUSA) June 21, 2023

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