What impact has two years of erratic in-person learning had on the children of New Jersey?
It’s not good, and we now have more proof.
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On Wednesday, New Jersey’s State Board of Education met and reviewed the state’s “Start Strong” exam results which were administered in September and October 2021.
There’s nothing “strong” about what they discovered. Roughly half of all students in grades 4, 5 and 6 kicked off the 2021-2022 school year requiring “strong support” to compensate for having fallen behind in mathematics; 6 out 10 students studying Algebra 1 appeared to be lagging, and 1/3 of our state’s high school freshmen were struggling in English and Language Arts. The numbers broken down by ethnic background are also pretty grisly which suggest – as many of us have argued for two years – that lockdowns continue to punish most cruelly those kids who need the most assistance.
All of this might be alarming even divorced from the context of our times, but we’re confirming the horrific effects of shutting down schools just as dozens of school districts across the Garden State are once again going remote and powerful teachers’ unions want to stay that way. We’re repeating the same mistakes over, and over, and over again because the unions and their pet politicians aren’t done playing politics with our kids. If you’re still not convinced, then look no further than what’s going on in Chicago.
I suppose the only question worth asking at this point is “when is enough enough?”
And as a follow up: what will it take to wake up stubborn lockdown apologists?
