The Los Angeles Times (LAT) recently published an article asserting that “rising heat is causing students to underperform across the globe.” This is false. This is the kind of tidy, single‑cause climate narrative that papers love for two reasons. First, it absolves one of their favorite liberal institutions, the public school system, of responsibility for poor student performance. Second, it points to climate change as a convenient scapegoat for public schools’ failure, no matter how ridiculous that connection sounds to any reasonable person. The LAT’s claims don’t square with history, which includes decades of education policy that have steadily watered down standards. It also ignores an easy solution to improve student comfort, air conditioning.
The author of the LAT article, “Rising heat is causing students to underperform across the globe,” claims, “[e]ven on days when temperatures were between 80 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit, the data show that students can experience heat stress, followed by a drop in cognitive performance.”
That’s a sweeping generalization ignoring the fact that correlation is not proof of causation.
Basic historical perspective matters. The author of the LAT article ignored the fact that the 1930s were far hotter than at present—yet no nationwide academic collapse followed. See the figure below from the EPA:
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