It's Not "Learning Loss", It's Learning That Didn't Happen

In another installment of Red US vs Blue US, it looks like Red US had better educational outcomes (or, more accurately, not as bad educational outcomes) during the time of the 'rona:

A study shows remote learning led to large losses in achievement for students during the pandemic, with blue states and students from low-income areas hit the hardest by the losses.

"Interestingly, gaps in math achievement by race and school poverty did not widen in school districts in states such as Texas and Florida and elsewhere that remained largely in-person," Thomas Kane, a professor of education at Harvard and one of the authors of the study, said of the study's results in an interview with the Harvard Gazette last week. "Where schools shifted to remote learning, gaps widened sharply. Shifting to remote instruction was like turning a switch on a critical piece of our social infrastructure that we had taken for granted."

The study was conducted by Harvard University, the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the American Institutes for Research, and NWEA. The group analyzed data from 2.1 million students in 10,000 schools in 49 states, finding remote learning to be the primary cause for large losses of student achievement during the pandemic.

The researchers found that high-poverty schools were the most likely to spend more time in remote instruction, with high-poverty schools in some states outpacing others...

Kane warned that the achievement losses threaten the gains the U.S. has made in closing the gap between minority and white students, which had been narrowing for three decades.

(in deadpan voice) Shocking, I know.