Learning and Legend Loss

End of an era in England and the lingering effects of the COVID era in education.

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[Associated Press]

Learning Loss

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) recently came out with a report card that assessed the NAEP (National Assessment of Education Progress) long-term trend for reading and mathematics for age 9 students. In particular, this report wanted to “examine student achievement during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

As the report summarizes, “Average scores for age 9 students in 2022 declined 5 points in reading and 7 points in mathematics compared to 2020. This is the largest average score decline in reading since 1990, and the first-ever score decline in mathematics.” The learning loss was not equally distributed either. The students that experienced the greatest drop-off were the students that were already struggling before the pandemic.

These results were not particularly surprising, many experts and non-experts alike assumed student education took a hit during the pandemic, but the results are still startling to see published. It is a stark reminder that even though children were among the lowest-risk group to suffer health effects from COVID, they suffered from COVID in ways foreign to most adults.

I don’t necessarily want to get into all of the various partisan fights that have been raging for the last couple of years about what side handled COVID better because there isn’t much that we can do to change the past. All we can do now is face the reality that there is a generation of students that are further behind than previous generations in two of the most vital areas: math and reading.

As I have written before, I am a staunch supporter of school choice and will continue to promote it whenever I get the chance. There is no better time for school choice reform than right now. School choice is particularly useful in addressing a problem such as COVID learning loss because it allows schools to problem-solve the best way to address the gaps in student ability/knowledge. Individual schools or school districts can experiment and study best practices without relying on following the guidance of a centralized body. Schools and school districts that successfully do this will (theoretically) attract more students and more funding which will incentivize others to adapt.

Regardless of school choice, I believe this is an issue that Christians should be on the front lines seeking to address. Education is the pursuit of discovering what is true and orienting one’s life around the truth.

Christians have the opportunity to make the lives of children materially better while equipping them with the knowledge and skills to study God and His created order. Education is the process of discovering what is true and orienting one’s life around what is true. In John 14:6, Jesus declared that he was the truth. Since this is true, education is an amazing tool that God uses to reveal more of Himself to people and make them more like Him.

As people reckon with the loss of learning that COVID caused, Christians have the opportunity to promote a vision of education and create educational institutions that are not only concerned with creating future money-making machines but complete humans that know and love their creator.

Queen Elizabeth Dies

The entire world was in mourning yesterday as the news broke that the Queen of the United Kingdom, Queen Elizabeth II, died at the age of 96. Elizabeth was England’s longest reigning monarch having celebrated her Platinum Jubilee, in honor of her 70th year on the throne, earlier this year. Elizabeth is succeeded by her son, Charles, who becomes King Charles III.

I was recently asked a pretty common question: what famous person, dead or alive, would you want to grab coffee with? I never really know how to answer this question, but one of the people that I almost always mention is Queen Elizabeth. This isn’t because I am enamored by the British royal family as a whole but because she lived such a unique, long life.

Just from her sheer age, Elizabeth could tell stories about what it was like to live through World War II, the Cold War, the dissolution of the English colonies, the Troubles in Ireland, the fall of the Soviet Union, and so many other significant world events. On top of that, she was in a position that gave her an inside look at those world events and the leaders involved in many of them. This was someone who met Winston Churchill and every Prime Minister after him, 13 of the last 14 presidents (LBJ being the lone exception), The Beatles, and any other person of note in the last 70 years. What an extraordinary life.

While nobody else will live a life like hers, there are a lot of admiral qualities of Queen Elizabeth’s life that can be replicated. For example, Elizabeth essentially lived her entire life in service to the institution of the monarchy. Although being the Queen of England brought with it fame, wealth, and basically unlimited access, it also brought with it enormous expectations and I’m sure felt stultifying many times. Yet, Queen Elizabeth consistently laid aside her own desires to faithfully perform her duty as monarch.

This is evident in Queen Elizabeth’s unwillingness to do interviews. From what I can tell, Elizabeth did one interview in her entire 70 years and wanted to make it clear that it was a “conversation,” not an “interview.” Because of this, the public actually knows quite little about Elizabeth’s personal life and opinions. She was human so I am sure there were many times that Elizabeth wanted to voice her opinions or put herself in the spotlight; however, she consistently minimized herself for the sake of the larger institution of the English monarchy.

I’m not saying that the Queen was perfect or that I want a monarchical figurehead in America, but I do want American leaders to emulate the Queen in this aspect. Imagine if American presidents put aside their individual desires and ambitions for the sake of the Presidency as an institution. Imagine if Representatives and Senators put aside their individual desires and ambitions for the sake of Congress as an institution. We would have a significantly more functioning government and promote higher regard for and desire to protect our institutions.

Beyond politics, the Church would benefit from Christians who put the institution of the Church before their own desires or ego. Imagine how much healthier the Church would be with ministers or individual Christians that valued the institution of the Church over themselves.

Because our institutions would be healthier, society would also have more trust in those institutions; something that has been declining in the last few decades. As Yuval Levin argues,

“And that has to do with the sense that we trust an institution, because we think it forms people to do their job in a trustworthy way. So that not only does it perform an important function well, it shapes the people in it to do that with integrity, and defines an ideal of integrity for them. But what we've seen in the last several decades is a transformation in our expectations of institutions. So that we think of them less as doing that now and the more as giving people platforms.

Queen Elizabeth was a wonderful example of allowing an institution to shape her, rather than using the institution as a platform to promote herself.

God Bless,

Hunter Burnett