It has been four and a half years since public schools across the country closed their doors to in-person learning. There is evidence that this generation of K-12 students has not fully recovered academically — and may never do so.goplay

Test scores on core subjects are lower than they have been in decades, and the achievement gap between rich and poor students has widened even further. When I interview teachers, they tell me that some of their students are behaviorally and socially stunted in ways that aren’t always captured by statistics.

Americans are not happy about the state of education. Though satisfaction with the quality of education has recovered a bit from its record lows in 2023, Americans’ overall sentiment toward K-12 public schools is still “underwater,” according to Gallup.

I was really hoping that in an election year, the serious problems facing K-12 education — which are not limited to Covid learning loss — might merit attention from Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. And yet, neither candidate has really addressed primary education. The entire topic of education barely came up in this year’s presidential debates, beyond a few brief mentions of student loans and school shootings.

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Trump’s concept of a plan for education is about banning critical race theory and abolishing the Department of Education. He’s focused on inflaming culture war issues, not on building fundamentals. “Harris and Democrats have talked as much, if not more, about early childhood education and child care than they have about K-12 policies,” according to NPR. While I agree with the Democratic Party platform that “free, universal preschool for 4-year-olds” would be really nice to have, budgets are finite and I wish Democratic politicians would focus more energy on the K-12 system that already exists and is in need of funding and imaginative and effective policy.

The downward trend for America’s schools started about a decade ago, so the pandemic destabilized an already weakened structure. Then the Covid shutdowns were like “this comet that hit our education system,” said Michael Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Instead of being honest about the scope of the problems kids are facing, he said, “most of our schools have decided that that’s just the way it’s going to be, that this generation of kids is not going to catch up.”

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