"We are actively dealing with problems remote learning caused. A whole generation of kids is further behind than they were tracking to be behaviorally, mathematically, and in reading scores."
Gee I wonder what would do that, is it three+ years of unmitigated exposure to a virus that causes brain damage? No, the problem is they stayed home, which makes you developmentally challenged, as we all know. Oh, you don't want to get COVID? Then stay home.
I'm teaching students right now who were 11-12 during the lockdown and it absolutely affects them. They lost important years of socialization, they're teenagers and they don't know how to talk to each other. They're now also used to having the Internet do all their thinking for them.
I can literally give them the information to take notes on, ask a question that is directly answered by their notes, and their first instinct will be to Google the question and write down the first thing that comes up.
This is not exclusively a lock down problem, but it exasperated and multiplied already existing trends. Education is different now than it was four years ago. Technology went from being a tool to help learning to being a crutch to replace thinking.
Given that you recognize there are multiple factors that are going into declining education and student performance, deep systemic problems that long predate 2020, what makes you think you have enough information to blame any of it on lockdowns?
Lockdowns didn't last for years.
I had this exact problem with students (it was a widely discussed phenomenon) many years before Covid. I knew instructors frequently complaining about it even in the 00's.
I don't usually care when someone doesn't know what a word means and uses it instead of the correct word, and even if I did I wouldn't normally point it out. I'm sure I make errors like that at times too. But given the context here, I think it's relevant and fair of me to do so. "Exasperated?" Really? Anyway, you say it's not "exclusively" a lockdown problem, implying that lockdowns were still a major cause of the problem. But what evidence do you have that they contributed to it at all beyond a vibes-based opinion?
I'm not trying to be overly harsh with this response, but it really bothers me that people are blaming these long-standing, well-known issues on lockdowns when not only were lockdowns not the problem, but had they been longer (and better implemented in general) they could have actually saved millions of children from the cognitive decline they are now and will continue to experience as a result of a pandemic that literally gives them brain damage.