Zoom School Was Catastrophic for Kids

So, why is NYC bringing it back?

America’s COVID-19 school shutdowns began in March of 2020 and, in many states didn’t end until nearly two years later. During those years, many schools offered “hybrid” options, which included placing children as young as five-years-old on Zoom at home, and students in middle and high schools on “Zoom in a room,” inside school buildings.

Both options proved to be dismal failures. Remote ‘learning’ could not compare to real, in-person learning with teachers in every classroom.

It is now widely accepted that childhood and adolescent rates of depression, anxiety, obesity, delayed speech and language development, along with learning loss spiked during school closures.

Children missed key developmental milestones that they can never make up.

To this day, as we watch college campuses erupting in acrimony and aggression, one thing that keeps coming up is that the same young people who missed out on community and socialization in high school, are now seeking it in less productive, more damaging ways.

America’s youth are screaming for help.

But politicians and school administrators are not listening.

America’s school closures were avoidable- if only teachers unions didn’t play politics with children’s lives. If only teachers unions weren’t still doing it now.

In 2022, the nation’s report card showed average declines in fourth and eighth grade math and reading from the previous measurements in 2019.  The students affected the most were Hispanic, black, economically disadvantaged, and those living in rural areas.

In the 2020/21 school year New York City schools offered hybrid learning to elementary school students- with intermittent shutdowns, including 10-day closures for two positive Covid cases, even in large, multi-school campuses- a disrupted school year.

NYC also had a monstrous Zoom-in-a-Room option for middle and high schoolers who chose to be in-person in classrooms, while teachers Zoomed in from their homes. So, it is no surprise that the schools’ fourth grade performance declined even more than the national average.

The demographic faring the worst mimicked that of the nation.

Tired of watching as teachers’ unions and blue state politicians ignored the learning loss and declines in physical/mental well-being of schoolchildren, infuriated parents took matters into their own hands. In 2021, Restore Childhood’s Natalya Murakhver led a New York parent group in suing the city to fully reopen schools.

Today, we are completing a documentary about the impact of the school closures- it is entitled “15 Days…” and will be released later this year.

So why are NYC school officials considering remote learning options now?

In September of 2022, Governor Hochul signed a bill pushed by the United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew that would limit class size throughout the state. The limit applies to virtual classes as well as in-person classes and varies for class type.

As if NYC schools were not already failing thousands of students, now school officials plan to offer remote learning as a “temporary” option to shrink the number of students in each class.

Officials conveniently cite the success of a pilot program of two tiny virtual schools which opened in 2022 as the reason for their confidence in this virtual school expansion. The problem is that the cohort of students who attend these schools are a small number of self-selecting high school students who claim they benefit from virtual learning without any definitive, long term evidence that this is actually true (the schools are just two years old!)

Additionally, expanding this program to younger students will not only harm math and reading but also social/physical development and health. We witnessed it during pandemic school closures and we know marginalized students will be impacted most, though no child who is placed in remote will be spared.

New York City and all school districts considering virtual school should abandon these plans immediately and follow the science- kids need to be in school with teachers in every classroom.

And parents must advocate for in-person learning for all kids- we know that remote school simply cannot achieve parity to in-person learning.

Our children are counting on us.