COVID-19 Outbreak Information Updates (Reboot) [over 150.000,000 US cases (est.), 6,422,520 US hospitilizations, 1,148,691 US deaths.]

The insistence of "in-person education" is NOT about learning loss, but it is due to American's capitalistic society conflating child care and education.

The truth is that virtual learning SHOULD HAVE reasonably been a successful way to continue education while reducing the potential for spreading the disease. However we have treated internet connectivity as a commodity, when in today's day and age it should absolutely be considered a utility.


Colleges have successful online classes that are robust and rigorous. As a matter of fact many school districts and states (Including Louisiana) have fully online options for students even before the pandemic.


People can say what they want about it not spreading through children, but what about the teachers? We have a massive teacher shortage right now. Do you have any idea how many classes are meeting in gyms and auditoriums around the country right now because there is no content teacher to teach or even sub in that class?

People who think canceling schools was a "mistake" are so far removed from the nuance of what is happening on campuses in America right now it's ridiculous.


If you want to talk about learning loss, do you have ANY IDEA how much time is spent in a 50 minute class setting to take everyone's temp, then log that, fight students to get them to comply with mask mandates, then stop the lesson early so there is time to sterilize the surfaces.


If we learned anything about education during the pandemic, I hope we learned (and there is empirical data to support this) that internet access should be available to all K-12 students, devices should be available to all k-12 students, and America thinks of teachers as baby-sitters.


But we didn't learn anything.

Our education system was broken before the pandemic, students from families that have means, can help with, and care about prioritizing the education of their children were significantly more successful academically, than students that come from families that do not have means, are unavailable, or don't prioritize education.

The early data that I have seen suggests that the gap between "haves" and "have nots" widened significantly during the pandemic.