School Closures and Mask Mandates Contributed to ‘Alarming’ Standardized Test Results

The devastating consequences of pointless and ineffective school closures during the pandemic continue to unfold in ever more concerning ways.

While much of the focus has been rightfully been on the consequences of lockdowns and restrictions on younger children, a new report makes it abundantly clear that closures and masks hurt older students in too.

According to Axios, the average ACT test score for the 2022 class dropped to the lowest levels seen in over 30 years.

The CEO of the ACT group explained that these results are extremely concerning, saying that students seemingly aren’t prepared for the next level of education:

"The magnitude of the declines this year is particularly alarming, as we see rapidly growing numbers of seniors leaving high school without meeting the college-readiness benchmark in any of the subjects we measure.”

Axios, naturally, blames the disastrous results of school closures and mandatory masking on the pandemic, instead of the actual cause.

The pandemic didn’t force schools to close, incompetent “experts,” politicians and school administrators forced schools to close.

Virtual school and remote learning became part of life for millions of students (Getty Images)

None of this was necessary. There were plenty of examples that should have placated local officials’ fears, none more obvious than the fact that many schools in Europe remained open or reopened as quickly as possible.

But the politicization of expertise in the United States is so pervasive and all encompassing that contradictory voices that opposed Fauci and the CDC were immediately shot down and dismissed as “conspiracy theorists.”

The Great Barrington Declaration, as early fall 2020, forcefully advocated for schools to open, a position that’s now been proven entirely correct.

Beyond the overall results, Axios reported that individual subject outcomes were even worse:

“42% of students failed to meet any of the ACT's subject benchmarks in English, reading, science and math, which are the minimum test scores required for students to have a reasonable chance of success in typical first-year college courses, per ACT.”

Nearly half of students couldn’t even reach minimum benchmarks in the most important subjects, an astonishing number.

Maybe if schools were less focused on appeasing radical gender ideology, enforcing the performative theater of mask mandates, or returning to remote learning at the first sign of a sneeze, this could have been avoided. 

Until the blame for this debacle is correctly attributed to politicians and the monstrously incompetent experts who advised them, it’s impossible for any lessons to be learned.

But because much of this failure falls on the Democratic Party and their nonsensical assertions that they were “following the science,” major media will ignore the actual cause.

Party before reality, always.