Bryan Caplan writes, Given how little students actually learn in school, its only clear-cut benefit is daycare. Yet during Covid, many schools across the country were closed for over a year. Extraordinarily inconvenient for parents, especially moms. Yet virtually no one publicly stated the ugly-yet-obvious fact that great convenience for tens of millions of parents vastly outweighs a few extra Covid deaths.
I think you might be making an assumption about the linearity of school effects. The fact the going from public school to a charter school produces no lasting impact does not mean that removing two years of school will also not have an impact.
The effect of school is likely to be non linear (I mean, I agree with you about the null effect of most school interventions, but would you really argue that having *zero* school before age 18 would be the same as the status quo? Clearly school matters up to a point.). So I wouldn’t try to extrapolate too far based on studies of charter schools and similar interventions.
I concur with the social impact of lost schooling being perhaps the biggest long-term problem. My sons are seven and (almost) ten now, and the younger one has had many more problems with appropriate behavior in school than the older, even though they were basically the same through kindergarten, the point at which the pandemic hit the younger one's school career.
However, I would also not discount the academic impact. My kids are both in the same language immersion program at their elementary school, and the younger one is months or even a year behind where his brother was pre-pandemic. When one student misses a year or two of school, they have a peer group to catch up to. I suspect there will be little similar pressure for some of these kids to catch up to the pre-pandemic norm.
"The standard argument against school closures is that kids will fall behind in terms of learning. But this is difficult to reconcile with the Null Hypothesis, which is that attempts to measure the effect of educational interventions almost never find a significant, replicable, long-term effect."
Perhaps the standard argument would be better stated as "kids will fall behind their peers in the signaling game that is standardized testing, and thus college admissions, and who knows what else after that. "
Caplan gives some credence to the claims of "learning loss" which would seem to reject the null hypothesis, if students do not in fact catch back up as Alexander hopes they will but so far the ed experts say is not happening. And the money being thrown at catch-up doesn't seem to be buying much either. Indeed, there appears to be no evidence at all that any of the billions thrown at the schools in COVID funding resulted in socially beneficial outcomes but was in fact a mere payoff to the teachers unions for all of their electioneering support during their time off for the Biden campaign. In addition some researchers have already begun projecting life long learning losses based on school closures.
There are several (weak if you ask me) articles out claiming that based on different tests, such as the ACT, on average Black and Latinx students lost 4 to 5 months worth of learning achievement, and whites 1 to 3 months, but that Asians continued their steady ascent with even higher learning achievement scores, for the year that the schools were closed. So closing the schools for a year only results in a few months loss of learning, something that could be easily remedied as parents make the transition from the old and comfortable to the new and strange.
The "learning loss" claims need to be scrutinized with much more rigor. Closing the schools may indeed fail to reject the null. When the buy-the-parents-votes-with-lots-of-monthly-cash program returns, as it inevitably will, rather than raising taxes, the program could be funded with all the federal K-12 dollars currently being wasted. As the patterns of trade and specialization adapt to the new funding flows, who is to say that families would not improve learning outcomes using the greater autonomy control over dollars affords?
$30,000 a year is the average amount spent of two kids in K-12 per year. Just imagine what your average parent could do with $30,000 a year.
Last night saw entire stadium was maskless despite it being a violation of the COVID rules imposed by the very same maskless partiers. Today every single kid in LA will have to wear a mask all day.
COVID has exposed how public schools are worse than free. We've incorporated private school tuition into our budget expectations.
I think you might be making an assumption about the linearity of school effects. The fact the going from public school to a charter school produces no lasting impact does not mean that removing two years of school will also not have an impact.
The effect of school is likely to be non linear (I mean, I agree with you about the null effect of most school interventions, but would you really argue that having *zero* school before age 18 would be the same as the status quo? Clearly school matters up to a point.). So I wouldn’t try to extrapolate too far based on studies of charter schools and similar interventions.
Re: "let kids be kids." This applies also to the mask issue. The burden of proof is on schools who would impose masks on children all day for years.
I concur with the social impact of lost schooling being perhaps the biggest long-term problem. My sons are seven and (almost) ten now, and the younger one has had many more problems with appropriate behavior in school than the older, even though they were basically the same through kindergarten, the point at which the pandemic hit the younger one's school career.
However, I would also not discount the academic impact. My kids are both in the same language immersion program at their elementary school, and the younger one is months or even a year behind where his brother was pre-pandemic. When one student misses a year or two of school, they have a peer group to catch up to. I suspect there will be little similar pressure for some of these kids to catch up to the pre-pandemic norm.
Simplified: kids can study with the internet, but will annoy their parents at home, besides they need to go outside and socialize more.
There was a randomized study of pre-k that came out recently that showed negative results( I think likely selection effects) https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fdev0001301
"The standard argument against school closures is that kids will fall behind in terms of learning. But this is difficult to reconcile with the Null Hypothesis, which is that attempts to measure the effect of educational interventions almost never find a significant, replicable, long-term effect."
Perhaps the standard argument would be better stated as "kids will fall behind their peers in the signaling game that is standardized testing, and thus college admissions, and who knows what else after that. "
Caplan gives some credence to the claims of "learning loss" which would seem to reject the null hypothesis, if students do not in fact catch back up as Alexander hopes they will but so far the ed experts say is not happening. And the money being thrown at catch-up doesn't seem to be buying much either. Indeed, there appears to be no evidence at all that any of the billions thrown at the schools in COVID funding resulted in socially beneficial outcomes but was in fact a mere payoff to the teachers unions for all of their electioneering support during their time off for the Biden campaign. In addition some researchers have already begun projecting life long learning losses based on school closures.
There are several (weak if you ask me) articles out claiming that based on different tests, such as the ACT, on average Black and Latinx students lost 4 to 5 months worth of learning achievement, and whites 1 to 3 months, but that Asians continued their steady ascent with even higher learning achievement scores, for the year that the schools were closed. So closing the schools for a year only results in a few months loss of learning, something that could be easily remedied as parents make the transition from the old and comfortable to the new and strange.
One might reasonably suspect that permanently closing the schools would not create a reject-the-null outcome. Looking back to before COVID, the pre-existing pattern was one of Black, Latinx, and white annual learning achievement score declines and Asian increases. See for example: https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2018/10/22/act-scores-drop-only-asian-americans-saw-gains
The "learning loss" claims need to be scrutinized with much more rigor. Closing the schools may indeed fail to reject the null. When the buy-the-parents-votes-with-lots-of-monthly-cash program returns, as it inevitably will, rather than raising taxes, the program could be funded with all the federal K-12 dollars currently being wasted. As the patterns of trade and specialization adapt to the new funding flows, who is to say that families would not improve learning outcomes using the greater autonomy control over dollars affords?
$30,000 a year is the average amount spent of two kids in K-12 per year. Just imagine what your average parent could do with $30,000 a year.
Last night saw entire stadium was maskless despite it being a violation of the COVID rules imposed by the very same maskless partiers. Today every single kid in LA will have to wear a mask all day.
COVID has exposed how public schools are worse than free. We've incorporated private school tuition into our budget expectations.
This was a good piece BTW:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/01/what-i-saw-at-the-school-board-meeting/
Recently the parents of my county served affidavits to their own school board. The image of it is surreal. The parents in normal clothes unmasked.
https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/02/09/IMG_1583-1200x675.jpg
The school board members masked and surrounded by some kind of plexiglass cubicles for each one. Like something out of a dystopian movie.
https://images.foxtv.com/static.fox5dc.com/www.fox5dc.com/content/uploads/2022/02/932/524/02401.jpg?ve=1&tl=1