The anti-science decision to lock down schools during COVID, along with other political choices, have broken education in more ways than one.

Much has been written about students who have become chronically absent since the pandemic led some politicians to tell them schools weren’t important enough to remain open. But there has also been an increase in teachers missing school days using their sick days. Nearly 15% of teachers were absent in a given week in Michigan last school year, up from 10% in 2019. One in five public school teachers in New York City missed 11 days or more last school year.

Whether this is due to an increase in safetyism influencing teachers to take more time off for minor problems or whether it is due to trying to get away from misbehaving students is in dispute. Nearly 80% of teachers say that the lasting effects of the pandemic on students’ grades and school behavior have been negative. A majority of high school teachers say their students have little to no interest in learning.

The problem is evident from the parent side as well. A Pew poll found that 51% of people think the public education system is going in the wrong direction, compared to 16% who think otherwise. Of that 51% majority, 54% think teachers are pushing their personal politics in the classroom too much and 69% say students are not learning math, reading, science, and civics, the basic things schools should be teaching.

Schools (generally) aren’t teaching children the basics, whenever it is that both students and teachers decide to show up. Grades are bad, as is student behavior. It is hard to blame teachers (generally) and even harder to blame students for this decay. This is the fault of bureaucrats and administrators who have pushed students away from proven ways of learning to fill their diversity, equity, and inclusion ideals. It is the fault of politicians and bureaucrats pushing politicized curricula onto schools and making it harder to discipline students who act out.

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And, most importantly, it is the fault of teachers unions and politicians who shuttered schools for a year (or more) based on their anti-science view of the pandemic. The rise in student misbehavior and decline in grades and test scores are directly tied to school closures, which indicated to students that schools and their education are not important.

Lockdowns broke education in many ways and exposed other ways in which it was already broken. It can be repeated ad nauseam, but these problems don’t get solved by allowing the teachers unions, bureaucrats, and politicians who made these decisions in the first place to continue to hold their power. Schools should not be a lost cause, but they will be without a full revaluation of every political decision that has been made, from COVID to curriculum to disciplinary rules.