Twitter critics note omission in Biden message on how COVID-19 hurt students: ‘This was politics related’

Critics challenged a concept posted to President Biden’s Twitter account about how the COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted children’s education, suggesting it left out crucial particulars and failed to focus on all the appropriate culprits.

“Because of to the pandemic, youngsters are driving in math and reading through,” Biden’s Twitter account examine Tuesday. “We know how to aid bridge this hole. I am calling on colleges to use American Rescue Strategy funds to grow tutoring, summer time mastering, and afterschool systems and to offer 250,000 additional tutors and mentors for our little ones.”

“Academics unions fought to keep educational facilities closed for around a 12 months,” Corey DeAngelis, national director of investigate for the American Federation for Kids, responded. He provided illustrations to assistance his assertion.

DeAngelis recalled a tweet from the Chicago Instructors Union in December 2020 that browse, “The press to reopen universities is rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny.” The union deleted the concept following backlash.

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Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Academics, speaks just before a group of striking educators at Funds Significant Faculty in Charleston, West Virginia, U.S., February, 19 2019. REUTERS/Lexi Browning
( REUTERS/Lexi Browning)

A number of others argued that it wasn’t the COVID-19 pandemic by itself, but how instructors and leaders responded to it that resulted in dropping take a look at scores and lower proficiency rates. Reports located that two a long time of inconsistent in-individual and at-residence learning also negatively impacted students’ psychological overall health.

“Recent facts from Harvard scientists uncovered that (sic) it was not so considerably the pandemic itself but choices by metropolitan areas and states in response to the pandemic that determined how substantially children fell behind,” ProPublica’s Alec MacGillis tweeted.

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“It was not due to the pandemic,” Fox News contributor Karol Markowicz tweeted. “It was due to the Democrats and their slavish devotion to unique curiosity teams like Randi Weingarten’s.”

“Children have been not remaining powering for the reason that of the pandemic,” Markowicz told Fox Information Digital. “They were being left powering because of the response to the pandemic in blue states. Democrats chose the teachers unions around the young ones. When Gavin Newsom’s young ones went again to in-human being studying at their personal college, the general public educational facilities in their place stayed closed. This was not pandemic linked. This was politics relevant.”

Seattle radio host Jason Rantz also blamed “Democrats and unions” for kids’ stunted academic growth. He additional in a dig at Biden’s American Rescue Strategy.

“Democrats and unions shut educational facilities about a virus that scarcely impacts youngsters,” Rantz wrote. “Biden’s deal with? Shelling out money we never have in a way that can make inflation worse.”

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In a person of the a lot more notorious illustrations to recommend teachers unions assisted delay the reopening of colleges, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and Nationwide Instruction Affiliation (NEA) ended up uncovered to have corresponded with the Centers for Ailment Manage and Prevention (CDC) on final-minute adjustments to college-reopening advice very last calendar year.

AFT and NEA, the two major instructors unions in the U.S., obtained a duplicate of the assistance ahead of the CDC produced it to the public, which involved a phased reopening method for K-12 educational facilities primarily based on coronavirus cases in the place. AFT’s senior director of health difficulties, Kelly Trautner, emailed CDC Director Rochelle Walensky on Feb. 11, 2021, a working day right before the CDC publicly posted the advice. In the electronic mail, Trautner advised the CDC insert the line: “In the party superior-neighborhood transmission final results from a new variant of SARS-CoV-2, a new update of these suggestions may perhaps be required.” 

Two of the AFT’s strategies were being reportedly “adopted nearly verbatim” in the remaining textual content of a CDC document on reopening guidance.

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Fox News’ Joe Schoffstall contributed to this report.