Cruz Comments on Pandemic School Closure Data

A new report indicates that school closures did not stop the spread of COVID-19, showing that school closures also affected students. Republicans have long argued that school closures significantly affected students, and now they're responding to the data. Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R) has called the decision to enact school closure during the pandemic "disastrous."

The New York Times reported that "while poverty and other factors also played a role, remote learning was a key driver of academic declines during the pandemic, research shows - a finding that held true across income levels."

Dr. Sean O'Leary, a pediatric infectious disease specialist who was involved in helping write guidance for the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommended in June 202 that schools should reopen with safety measures, commented that "there's fairly good consensus that, in general, as a society, we probably kept kids out of school longer than we should have."

On social media, Senator Cruz commented on the newly released data, saying that it "shows that kids who were kept out of school the longest are the furthest behind AND that the inner-city school districts have been hit the hardest. Every person with common sense could have predicted these devastating results  - and we did. As Democrats gave billions more in funding to public schools at the behest of teachers unions, I forced a vote to condition that money on those schools re-opening their doors to students for in-person learning. Sadly, my amendment did not pass because every Senate Democrat voted against re-opening schools to our children."

"A year later, when schools still hadn’t fully reopened , I introduced the Catch Up Our Kids Act of 2022, legislation that would have combatted K-12 learning loss that American children incurred due to unscientific school closures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic," Senator Cruz added.

"If passed into law, the bill would have given parents options to rescue their children’s education from the clutches of the power-hunger teachers unions."