Do not close the schools again

The harms to kids from being out of school, on the other hand, are severe. They are accumulating. And they could last for decades.

Online learning isn’t the same as in-person learning. A report by McKinsey examining Covid-19 effects on the 2020-21 school year found that the pandemic left students five months behind on math and four months behind in reading. Schools with majority Black and brown populations saw deeper losses: six months behind in math and five to six months behind in reading. A separate study analyzing the impact of remote learning found that math and reading passing rates were lowest in poor areas and that going from fully virtual to fully in person counteracted the low math passing rates by 10 percentage points.

And that’s for students who were in school. One million students expected to be in school didn’t show up in person or online at all, with the largest declines in the youngest learners and in families living below the federal poverty line.