EDITORIAL: This debate is long over

More than two years after the pandemic began, it’s dawning on some progressive news outlets that allowing national teachers unions to dominate the debate over school closures may not have been a great idea.

The Washington Post this week examined a school district near Colorado Springs, Colorado, that bucked virus panic and insisted on keeping kids in the classroom while refusing to impose mask mandates. While many districts across the country now deal with the ravages of remote learning, schools in Colorado’s Lewis Palmer District aren’t among them.

“Results from standardized tests show that the average student in Lewis-Palmer made gains in reading” during the pandemic, the Post found. “While they lost ground in math, they performed better than the average Coloradan. SAT scores remained steady.” At the same time, “No child was hospitalized with the virus.”

This stands in stark contrast to many big-city districts, which ceded their authority to union bosses intent on closing schools regardless of the damage inflicted upon students.

“In the country’s largest school systems ... teacher unions and concerned parents fought plans to reopen,” the Post recounts. “Public health officials warned that social distancing would save lives, and schools responded by devising hybrid programs or simply sticking with virtual learning. But, over time, these measures also imposed costs: Today, students are contending with significant learning loss and mental health issues.”

While initial school closings were understandable in March 2020, shutdowns that extended into the next school year — and even the one after that, thanks to omicron — were indefensible as it became clear the virus represented little threat to kids and that transmission rates were not high on campuses. It’s also worth remembering the shameful politics at work. The New Yorker last year reported that teachers unions dug in for closures only after then-President Donald Trump came out in favor of keeping schools open.

The result was a disaster in places where union politics dominated.

“Yet thousands of school districts — typically small ones in conservative-leaning counties — reacted to the pandemic like Lewis Palmer District 38 did,” the Post reported. That they were able to stave off the worst pathologies associated with empty classrooms and remote learning “offers evidence for those who say schools could have avoided some of the prolonged closures — and the serious academic and social impacts that came from them.”

Despite this, the Post story argues that “debate continues over which approach was the right one.” No. That debate is over. Union officials who insisted we keep children out of school lost in a rout — and tragically, they took too many kids down with them.