We’ve been saying for six years that kids would pay a large and long-lasting educational loss from COVID school shutdowns. Unfortunately, we were right on the mark. Our hope that we would see a return to pre-COVID test scores has been dashed.

The just-released results of the worldwide PISA tests show there is a worldwide crash, and America is no exception. In fact, we’ve crashed to just about the OECD average in math and dropped in reading right in line with other countries:

The relative bright spot is science. But even there, although the U.S. is above the current OECD average and avoided a drop, our students are below where the world was just last decade.

Just as we also feared from school lockdowns, the poorest and lowest performing suffered the most severe learning deficits. The bottom 20% will struggle to understand anything but the simplest of texts, or even a utility bill or bus schedule. Those kids are candidates for prison or poverty.

Mediocrity is setting in as the new education standard in government-run schools. And instead of every kid being above average, these test scores reveal that most kids are BELOW what used to be average.

Whose brilliant idea was it to let the government run the schools?