“Kids Are Behind in Math Because of COVID-19.”

Well this is another nonsense education article.

When they say kids are behind in math, we should interrogate what exactly that means. What is behind? https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/12/02/kids-are-behind-in-math-because-of.html

They are “behind” an arbitrarily defined timeline of performance standards that have little to do with an understanding of math. “Behind” the standards that allow adults to convince students that they are dumb, lazy, or flawed.

The thing about these standards is they don’t help children become better at math. But they do convince many of them that they should give up.

The “Covid slide,” like the “summer slide,” is wordplay to cover up the fact that kids aren’t learning in school. They’re just performing. And the slide is only relevant if you are constantly testing and assessing kids on their ability to perform calculations for speed on cue.

The beauty of an institution creating meaningless standards is that they then get to focus on the students’ failure to meet those standards, convincing the rest of society that the institution is necessary to help remediate the failures.

Even though the failures only exist within the institution that has no relevance outside of the institution.