Lake County Gazette

State administrations throughout America approached the COVID-19 pandemic very differently with some states choosing to remain open and allow for their citizens to make their own decisions while other states chose to shut down, closing businesses and schools. 

In Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker chose to lock down the state completely. Adam Solano, Candidate for state senate IL-31, does not believe the action taken by the Pritzker administration was right and believes that the isolated nature of attending school online will have consequences.

"Long-term, unjustifiable school closures were a prominent fixture of Illinois Democrats’ response to the Coronavirus pandemic," Solano said in a statement. "Forcibly mandated by Governor JB Pritzker and supported wholeheartedly by out of touch Springfield politicians like Mary Edly Allen, these disastrous policies have permanently harmed the educational development of our children and continue to negatively impact their mental and emotional health. I demand that Mary Edly Allen apologize to the moms and dads of students in our communities for defending the destructive school closures that harmed their kids."

In December of 2021, a Chicago Tribune article reported on the test data from roughly 90% of the school districts that administered the mandated Illinois Assessment of Readiness for students in third through eighth grade and the SAT for Juniors in high school. The data showed that from 2019 to 2021 17% fewer students met grade-level standards in English language arts and 18% fewer met grade-level standards in math. The participation rates were lower than in prior years with a

AP News reported that America’s nine-year-olds' math and reading scores fell drastically during the first two years of the pandemic. In math, the average score for a nine-year-old fell 7% between 2020 and 2022, while the average reading score fell 5%. Daniel McGrath, the acting associate commissioner of the National Center for Educational Statistics reported that the decline following COVID-19 was the largest the branch of government had seen in 50 years.

McKinsey & Company conducted an analysis of the pandemic’s effects on K-12 students, showing a significant impact on learning leaving students on average 5 months behind in mathematics and four months behind in reading. The analysis also showed the pandemic severely affected the mental health of these students, with more than 35% of their parents very or extremely concerned with their child’s mental health.

The analysis also found that the pandemic will likely have a ripple effect on this generation’s prospects and constrict their opportunities far into adulthood. The company reported that unless steps are taken to complete unfinished learning it is likely that as this cohort enters the workforce, they will earn $49,000 to $61,000 less over their lifetime impacting the US economy by $128 billion to $188 billion every year.