STARR Report: Texas Kids' Ability to Learn Hit Hard By Pandemic

DALLAS, TX —It's all fun and games until someone has to wear the dunce cap.

There's not a solitary soul who can spin this so it comes out looking pretty. After years of Texas students improving across the board in math and reading requirements, COVID has nearly atomized those results.

Students whose educations were conducted primarily remotely logged "significant declines" when measured alongside those who were able to attend school in person, as reported in the test results issued Monday by the Texas Education Agency.

Of greatest alarm were children whose districts conducted more than three quarters of their classes remotely. Among them, students who were able to achieve grade-appropriate reading skills plummeted by 9 percent from 2019. And math skills among the group fell by a staggering 32 points.

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Even kids who were able to attend class took a hit. Students in districts where less than a quarter of the instruction time was remote still tumbled 9 percentage points from 2019 indicators, while reading levels dipped, but only by 1 percent.

It's no surprise that lower-income and students of color display a greater disparity as well, although not nearly as statistically significant as the remote vs. in-class learning gap.

These numbers are certainly on the minds of educators today, but what about Texas lawmakers?

Gov. Abbott will spend the day tomorrow touring the border wall, blaming Biden, Obama, Nancy Pelosi and everyone back to FDR and the New Deal for trying to ruin America. And should someone ask him about Critical Race Theory, he'll delight to say that it will never be taught so long as he has authority in the state.

And when you're spending more time telling people what kids shouldn't learn than what they should? To quote Apollo 13: "Houston, we have a problem."

Texas kids are suffering intellectually, and that is no way to prepare them to compete on the national and world stage in a few short years. Legislators should be working with teachers to find new solutions to a home-schooling problem that could recur — whether with a spike this fall of the delta variant or in another hundred years when the next unexpected pandemic arises.

Instead, they're too busy grandstanding and throwing red meat to their base. It's more politically expedient to brag about what won't be taught to kids about America's checkered history in race equality than to make sure their heads are as full of every kind of worthwhile information they can hold.

Mike Morath, Texas' Education Commissioner, didn't mince words when he addressed reporters about the numbers Monday.

“The impact of the coronavirus on what school means and what school is has been truly profound,” he said. "What we know now with certainty is that the decision in Texas to prioritize in person instruction was critical.”

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