Folks, sometimes there are no words, other than, "Wow, holy cow, nobody saw this coming, nobody predicted it, this is literally coming out of nowhere:"

National test results released on Thursday showed in stark terms the pandemic's devastating effects on American schoolchildren, with the performance of 9-year-olds in math and reading dropping to the levels from two decades ago.

This year, for the first time since the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests began tracking student achievement in the 1970s, 9-year-olds lost ground in math, and scores in reading fell by the largest margin in more than 30 years.

The declines spanned almost all races and income levels and were markedly worse for the lowest-performing students. While top performers in the 90th percentile showed a modest drop — three points in math — students in the bottom 10th percentile dropped by 12 points in math, four times the impact.

Okay one small quibble:

"The pandemic" did not have a "devastating effect on American schoolchildren." Shutting their schools down and ruining their education is what did that. That was a deliberate, conscious, premeditated choice made by government authorities.

Here's the New York Times, meanwhile, going for the understatement of the century:

The setbacks could have powerful consequences for a generation of children who must move beyond basics in elementary school to thrive later on.

Yep.

Too bad this wasn't probably the most easily foreseeable, predictable, obvious outcome in the entire world. Thank goodness experts and authorities didn't abandon their better judgment and ignore all the obvious warning signs invest tons of energy smearing and denigrating anyone who opposed school closures.

I guess there was just nothing that could have been done to stop this. It's nobody's fault. Nobody is to blame. Right?

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