CV NEWS FEED // A Monday New York Times article conceded that Democrat-backed COVID school closures harmed children.
The Times article also acknowledged that the school closures did not accomplish their stated goal of “stopping the spread” of COVID.
In the article, titled “What the Data Says About Pandemic School Closures, Four Years Later,” authors Sarah Mervosh, Claire Cain Miller, and Francesca Paris wrote that the “more time students spent in remote instruction, the further they fell behind.”
“While poverty and other factors also played a role, remote learning was a key driver of academic declines during the pandemic, research shows — a finding that held true across income levels,” the authors outlined.
They explained their findings:
At the state level, more time spent in remote or hybrid instruction in the 2020-21 school year was associated with larger drops in test scores, according to a New York Times analysis of school closure data and results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, an authoritative exam administered to a national sample of fourth- and eighth-grade students.
…
In [school] districts where students spent most of the 2020-21 school year learning remotely, they fell more than half a grade behind in math on average, while in districts that spent most of the year in person they lost just over a third of a grade.
“A separate study of nearly 10,000 schools found similar results,” the authors added.
>> FAUCI: I’M ‘NOT CONVINCED’ SCHOOL CLOSINGS NEGATIVELY IMPACTED KIDS <<
They further indicated that among school districts “with similar remote learning policies, poorer districts had steeper losses” in children’s academic performances.
“But in-person learning still mattered,” the article continued. “Looking at districts with similar poverty levels, remote learning was associated with greater declines.”
Also in their report, Mervosh, Miller, and Parish quoted infectious disease experts who concluded that school closings were not a useful policy in protecting people from COVID.
They wrote:
That was largely unknown in the spring of 2020, when schools first shut down. But several experts said that had changed by the fall of 2020, when there were initial signs that children were less likely to become seriously ill, and growing evidence from Europe and parts of the United States that opening schools, with safety measures, did not lead to significantly more transmission.
“Infectious disease leaders have generally agreed that school closures were not an important strategy in stemming the spread of Covid,” said Dr. Jeanne Noble, who directed the Covid response at the U.C.S.F. Parnassus emergency department.
The authors even acknowledged the partisan divide over controversial COVID school policies.
“Some schools, often in Republican-led states and rural areas, reopened by fall 2020,” they noted. “Others, typically in large cities and states led by Democrats, would not fully reopen for another year.”
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Many longtime critics of school closures and other COVID restrictions weighed in on the Times’ stunning report.
The Daily Signal’s Jarrett Stepman stated that the “reality has been known for some time.”
“The New York Times piece noted that the lockdown discussion was ‘one of the most polarizing and partisan debates of the pandemic,’” he wrote.
“Maybe it was, but one side was now obviously right, and the other, just as clearly wrong,” Stepman added:
Those who insisted in 2020 that keeping students in a sustained lockdown often called opponents reckless, “anti-science” killers of teachers and children.
As more than a few pointed out on social media, The New York Times report is a remarkable shift in news media tone from a few years ago.
National Review Senior Writer Dan McLaughlin took to X (formerly Twitter) to post screenshots comparing the new Times report with the overwhelmingly negative media coverage of Republican governors’ COVID policies in 2020.
“I detect a slight change in tone,” he wrote.
Author Jennifer Sey agreed.
“It took the [Times] 4 years to write this,” she wrote on X. “[The Times] contributed significantly to prolonging the closures with their ‘reporting.’”
“They are implicated though I see no apology,” she emphasized. “Anyone with a brain knew all of this from day 1, because it was obvious.”
The Daily Wire pointed out that the Times repot “sought to let Democrats off the hook for how their policies hurt children, claiming ‘there were no easy decisions at the time.’”
Physician-scientist Dr. Vinay Prasad wrote: “As an academic doctor who wrote many op-eds against school closure, it’s gratifying to see the NYTimes at last be honest.”
“Sadly their coverage helped keep schools closed,” he stressed. “A full audit is still needed.”
Christina Pushaw, a senior aide to Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, replied to Prasad: “Absolutely agree.”
“The New York Times is (unfortunately) still seen as an authoritative source of information by many influential commentators and policymakers,” Pushaw continued:
The [Times] coverage of COVID in the past was hysterical advocacy for lockdowns [and] extended school closures.
By continuing to employ Apoorva Mandavilli as a journalist after she made numerous basic math errors that exaggerated the risks of COVID to children and terrified readers into accepting school closures, the NYTimes proves they have no regrets about their role in this catastrophe.
Again from The Daily Wire:
Among Republicans, [DeSantis] led the country in pushing back against tyrannical measures that were disrupting people’s lives during the pandemic. In late Spring 2020, DeSantis introduced his plan to reopen schools in the state and get kids back in the classroom.
Readers can find the full New York Times article here.
