President Trump has held strong in his opinion that schools must reopen amid the Coronavirus pandemic and in a shocking admission, the New York Times agreed. After New York City announced a plan to shut down schools because of recent spikes in the virus, despite the fact science shows that schools have not been a major source of transmission. New York Times opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof published a piece titled, “When Trump Was Right and Many Democrats Wrong.”
The article interviews multiple teachers who show the negative impact socially distanced learning is having on students. The repercussions of keeping children out of schools will have years-long impacts that could very well follow them into adult life. In the piece, Kristof blames Democrats for instinctively lining up against Trump and politicizing the issue.
In an article from the New York Times:
Trump has been demanding for months that schools reopen, and on that he seems to have been largely right. Schools, especially elementary schools, do not appear to have been major sources of coronavirus transmission, and remote learning is proving to be a catastrophe for many low-income children.
Adeola Whitney, chief executive of Reading Partners, an outstanding early literacy program, referred to the traditional “summer slide” in which low-income students lose ground during the summer months and told me: “The ‘summer slide’ is now being dwarfed by ‘Covid slide’ projections.”
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I’ve been writing since May about the importance of keeping schools open, and initially the debate wasn’t so politicized. But after Trump, trying to project normalcy, blustered in July about schools needing to open, Republicans backed him and too many Democrats instinctively lined up on the other side. Joe Biden echoed their extreme caution, as did many Democratic mayors and governors.
So Democrats helped preside over school closures that have devastated millions of families and damaged children’s futures. Cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., have closed schools while allowing restaurants to operate.
Throughout the piece, Kristof hammered on facts and data that point to the irreparable damage that keeping children out of school will have, especially on children from low-income backgrounds. Dropout rates will most likely rise as a result and children will struggle to catch up on missed materials. Countless Republicans have supported reopening schools meanwhile lost on the Left have bought into a life of fear at the price of children’s education.
