American kids have suffered what is routinely characterized as a generational learning loss due to the COVID-19 pandemic and related school closures. Students from disadvantaged communities, where school buildings have been more likely to be shuttered, have suffered much worse. The effects on the mental health of teenagers, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned in December, "has been devastating." And on an institutional level, despite record amounts of emergency funding from Washington, government-run schools, particularly in big cities, face sharp enrollment declines and a looming financial "Armageddon."
Amid this education-provision crisis, the Biden administration has made it an urgent priority to make providing education even harder.
