In a blistering opinion piece, The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board accused President Biden of trying to rewrite history after his administration took credit for reopening schools after COVID-19 closures.
The White House released a statement Monday, touting Biden’s “swift actions and historic investments” that led to “every school in America” safely opening for in-person instruction after the pandemic. The WSJ’s editorial board mocked the notion this was something the White House should be proud of writing, “What an achievement—three and a half years after the start of the pandemic, all schools are open.”
Schools would have been open much sooner if the administration hadn’t followed the advice of teachers’ union leader, Randi Weingarten, the WSJ argued.
“The Administration omits that its own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took dictation from union chief Randi Weingarten for its reopening guidelines,” the WSJ wrote. “Those guidelines gave unions in urban school districts like Chicago cover to delay the return to full in-person learning.”
“Schools would have opened much sooner had Mr. Biden used his bully pulpit and leveraged federal money,” the paper added. “The Administration could have conditioned the nearly $200 billion in Covid funds that Congress appropriated for schools on their reopening. Instead, schools were showered with more money than they could usefully spend.”
Students didn’t benefit from these additional funds, the WSJ argued. While the hiring of school employees like social workers and nurses skyrocketed since the pandemic, test scores and student attendance continue to go down.
“The share of students reporting five or more days of missed school in the last month has doubled since 2020,” the WSJ cited. “Nor has the Covid money done much to make up for learning loss. Eighth grade U.S. history test scores this year hit an all-time low. Average reading scores for 13-year-olds were the worst since the 1970s.”
COVID-19 SCHOOL CLOSURES LEAVE LASTING IMPACT ON KIDS
In the midst of this stark reality, the paper recoiled at Biden joking about summer learning loss during a visit to a Washington D.C. middle school on Monday.
“The hardest thing is to come back after three months of not doing any work, not doing any homework, and all of a sudden you got a lot to make—everybody has a lot to catch up on from the end of the last year,” Biden told students.
The WSJ found this admission ironic, considering how long some schools were closed for.
“Imagine how much harder it is for them to catch up after ‘learning’—i.e., staring at screens—at home for a year,” the paper slammed.
The paper concluded that these problems were only made worse by Biden, but that was a “truth” his administration wouldn’t acknowledge.
“It will take years for students to dig out of the pandemic hole, but the truth that honest Joe won’t acknowledge is it didn’t have to be so deep,” the WSJ wrote.
During the 2020 election, Democrats widely condemned then-President Trump and Republican governors like Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., for aggressively pushing for schools reopening in fall of 2020.
“Floridians deserve science-based action from Gov. Ron DeSantis,” Biden said prior to the 2020 election. “While other large states continue to take strong, urgent, and sweeping action to stop the spread of COVID-19, Florida has not.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Thomas Catenacci contributed to this report.
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