Karine Jean-Pierre blames TRUMP for schools not opening and the drop in learning

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday former President Trump shoulders the blame for learning loss during Covid-19 closures for ‘mismanaging the pandemic.’ 

Earlier that day a sobering report from the federal government’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) found math scores among third grade students dropped five points from 2020 to 2022 and reading scores dropped seven.

Asked if Biden shared any blame for not pushing schools to open ‘sooner,’ Jean-Pierre replied: ‘Let’s get back to where we were not too long ago, when this president walked into this administration, how mismanaged the pandemic the response to the pandemic was.’ 

‘In less than six months, our schools went from 46 percent being open to almost all of them,’ she continued. 

Reading scores saw their largest drop in three decades and math scores fell for the first time since records began, according to the federal government’s National Center for Education Statistics

‘That was the work of Democrats, in spite of Republicans,’ she said, blaming the GOP for voting against the American Rescue Plan which offered $130 billion for schools. 

‘Every Republican in Congress voted against that money – that is the reality. We had to do this on our own,’ Jean-Pierre continued. 

Reading scores saw their largest drop in three decades and math scores fell for the first time since records began, according to the new report. 

All groups were affected, but black and Hispanic students saw sharper falls in math scores than their white counterparts.

Asian American and Native American students bucked the trend with no discernible drop in scores. 

Although it marks a sharp drop since 2020, the average reading score was 7 points higher than it was in 1971, and the average math score was 15 points higher than in 1978, the study found. 

The declines, measured from 2020 to 2022, hit all regions of the country and students from most backgrounds — underscoring how home-learning during the pandemic was no substitute for in-classroom teaching. 

Much standardized testing didn’t happen in the early days of the pandemic, so the findings released Thursday gave a taster of Covid-19 disruptions. A fuller picture of the damage is expected later in the year.

NCES acting associate commissioner Daniel McGrath lamented ‘some of the largest declines we have observed in a single assessment cycle in 50 years’ of the Nation’s Report Card, as it is known informally.

‘Students in 2022 are performing at a level last seen two decades ago.’ 

Republicans, meanwhile, blamed Democrats and teachers’ unions for the drop in scores. 

The declines underscored how home-learning during the pandemic was no substitute for in-classroom teaching

‘President Biden, Randi Weingarten, and their Democrat counterparts across the country deserve equal blame for undercutting the educational pursuits of America’s children,’ Rep. Virginia Foxx, ranking member of the House Education and Labor Committee, told DailyMail.com in a statement. 

‘After being forced to learn in front of a screen for months on end – and being robbed of in-person instruction alongside their peers – it comes as no surprise that students continue to fall behind in core subject areas. This is a textbook example of government and union-driven rot that’s plaguing our future leaders.’

‘Actual science didn’t support school closures. Democrats were too busy following political science to care. We lost decades of gains in reading and math scores as a result,’ Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa., wrote on Twitter of the new sobering statistics. 

‘The historic ‘falloff’ of test scores is a result of forcing children into social isolation and allowing left-leaning teachers’ unions to call the shots instead of parents. We are now facing the repercussions of locking down our schools and society in the name of ‘public health,” added Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C.