There are some moments that truly make you question your sanity, like this past week when Randi Weingarten, President of American Federation for Teachers, the nation’s largest teacher union, testified before Congress that she had worked fervently during the Pandemic to get schools to reopen:
“We spent every day from February on trying to get schools open. We knew that remote education was not a substitute for opening schools,” she testified. “We know that young people learn and connect best in person, so opening schools safely—even during a pandemic—guided our actions.”
Wait, what?!
Weingarten was literally the leading national voice against reopening schools for nearly two full years. In July of 2020 she threatened a strike saying, “nothing is off the table” if schools were forced to reopen. When President Trump and Secretary DeVos pushed to reopen the schools that fall, Weingarten said they were, “Reckless, callous, and cruel.” In an op-ed for USA Today in January of 2021, Weingarten continued to advocate for keeping schools closed to in-person learning, saying, “The latest COVID-19 surge is a clear cause for concern, and it must be addressed before schools reopen for in-person instruction.”
CNN’s Scott Jennings got the chance to confront Weingarten live on the air about her dishonesty and, he did not miss. Click here to watch.
The consequences of prolonged school closures on children and teens were absolutely devastating. The New York Times notes that, “Nine-year-olds [as a category] lost the equivalent of two decades of progress in math and reading, according to an authoritative national test. Fourth and eighth graders also recorded sweeping declines, particularly in math, with eighth-grade scores falling in 49 of 50 states.”
Beyond academics, mental health experts have blamed prolonged school closures for an epidemic of teen depression and suicides. The isolation and separation from school was far more detrimental to young people than the actual COVID-19 virus.
There’s plenty of blame to go around for keeping schools closed for as long as they were closed in many parts of the country, but truly, no one deserves more blame for this devastating approach than
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