An executive board member of a Virginia teachers union defended remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in an interview with ProPublica, saying that the learning loss suffered as a result of the education method made everyone “equal.”

In an interview with ProPublica, Melvin Hostman, a member of the executive board of the Richmond Education Association (REA), said that he found it hard to support the push for additional instruction time to combat learning loss when school districts have more important areas of need such as a “lack of toilet paper, school buses arriving late and widespread absenteeism.” After the COVID-19 pandemic, students suffered massive learning loss as only 13% of eighth graders met grade level expectations during the 2021-2022 school year and every state saw a decline in math scores since 2019.