How to Mislead the Public, by Katie King, staff writer of the Virginian Pilot

 Katie King has written a front-page article blaming Governor Glenn Younkin for politicizing the closure of Virginia's public schools during the Covid epidemic.  

She admits that closing schools to in-person teaching hurt student grades.  She then quotes Younkin critics who say that everybody agrees with that.  But that's not true.  At the time, what was called "remote learning" was touted as a great substitute.  Here's an article from the Virginian Pilot that presents the "close the schools" approach to dealing with Covid.  The teacher's union was adamant that in-person teaching was not an option.  

That was then, this is now and we have to deal with the impact of school closings and lost educational opportunities that have put students behind for the rest of their lives.  What have we learned?  Katie King simply ignores the issue and uses the article to slime Younkin.

Here's the big thing that's missing from her article.  Nowhere in her article does Katie King cite actual studies that prove that closing schools had no measurable impact on spreading Covid or reducing deaths.  She refers to a CDC statistic that's totally irrelevant to the issue.  She glides over the fact that there is evidence that closing schools to in-person education only had negative effects and no measurable positive effects.  

The real reason for Katie King's article is that it's another in a long list of attacks but the Virginian Pilot on Governor Younkin and his policies.  

Finally, she quotes an academic - a member of Big Academia - to blame Younkin for a teacher shortage.  In Virginia, as in many other states, parents are taking their children out of public schools and enrolling them in private schools or homeschooling.  One of the reasons for Younkin's election was the fact that so many Virginia school districts actually put their students at risk, including the risk of rape, as well as introducing racism into schools via Critical Race Theory (CRT).

Parents, having seen what their children are being taught, are rejecting the public schools and educating their children in private schools that reflect their values and do a better job of teaching them how to think rather than what to think.