The economic, educational, medical, and social costs caused by the government lockdown during Covid are becoming more obvious. A flood of reports is describing the damage that is increasingly visible.
Hopefully this will be first in a series of posts describing government imposed destruction.
A few articles describing the devastation in education:
6/21/23 – Wall Street Journal – Pandemic Learning Slide Continues for 13-Year-Olds, Making Full Recovery Unlikely – The destruction of learning for a generation of students is becoming visible in test scores. The National Assessment of Educational Progress report for testing during the last half of 2022 shows the willful devastation imposed by the educational and political world.
Math scores for seventh and eighth graders dropped to the lowest point since 1990, while average reading scores only dropped to the lowest level since 2004. There is a loss of 32 years progress in math and 19 years progress in reading.
Article says testing scores plummeted during the pandemic, which is a surprise only to professionally trained educators and politicians. This round of testing shows the declines have not stopped.
For those who focus on social justice, please know the consequence of shutdowns is the gap between high-performing and low performing students is widening. The government imposed school closures have disproportionately affected those previously having trouble keeping up.
Good job.
One teacher, the president of a national association, said the teachers have so much ground cover that they are teaching faster than students can absorb the material. That is a guarantee students will fall further behind.
A professor is cited as saying that schools across country do not have the “tools” to get students caught up.
His analysis points towards students having lost half a year in math and a third of a year in reading as of the spring of 2022. Study above indicates students were still losing ground in the fall of 2022.
7/27/23 – The Spectator – The damage of Covid lockdowns is only now becoming apparent – Author identifies several stats which points towards long-term devastation from government imposed lockdowns with those consequences barely visible at this point. We are going to see long-term destruction.
In England, the number of people out of work because of long-term sickness has increased from 2.1 to 2.5 million, up 400,000. Half of them report depression as the primary factor. That is also the category out of 10 illnesses showing the largest increase in three years.
An economy cannot grow with that many people not working because they are severely sick.
Large number of students are still missing class in fall 2022 with 24% of students missed 10% or more of classes and 2% of students have missed over half the classes.
Keep in mind that is after government decided to allow classes to resume.
Also mentions missing lots of classes is a predictor of eventual slide into crime.
Probably the most staggering issues mentioned in the article is test scores don’t show any decline.
The reason? In 2020 and 2021 teachers were allowed to report progress based on their “prediction” of their student’s performance, not the actual performance in class. That means the official statistics show everything is hunky-dory, peachy keen in terms of student learning and educational achievement.
A different way to put that is educators are lying to themselves and lying to us. Intentionally lying.
8/2/23 – Wall Street Journal – “How Do I Do That?” The New Hires of 2023 Are Unprepared for Work – Remote learning has left many new hires lacking in basic skills reasonably expected of everyone.
Article starts with a mechanical engineer who did not know how to work a lathe. An experienced engineer took three hours (minimum billing rate $300 per hour) to provide a crash course.
Widespread lack of skills is one factor why productivity in the United States has dropped in each of the last five quarters.
High school graduation rates have fallen.
Entrance exams for colleges have dropped to the lowest point in 30 years.
Screening tests for entry to the military are showing plummeting scores.
Article provides a host of individual data points of people entering the workforce without foundational skills needed to function even at a minimum level.
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