Florida Reopened Its Schools in 2020.
Chicago, L.A., and San Francisco Waited Over a Year. The Test Scores Never Fully Came Back.
- -9NAEP math, age 132020→2023 — the steepest drop since long-term-trend testing began — NAGB
- 45%12th graders below NAEP Basic in math2024 — highest share ever recorded — NAGB, Sept. 9, 2025
- 13 monthsChicago Public Schoolsclosed to full in-person instruction, March 2020 to April 19, 2021
- +51%rise in ED visits, suspected suicide attemptsgirls 12-17, Feb.-Mar. 2021 vs. same period 2019 — CDC MMWR
By the fall of 2020, kids in Florida and Texas were back in classrooms full-time. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) issued an emergency order requiring every district to offer in-person instruction five days a week; Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) did the same. In Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, the doors stayed shut, or half-open, for another year or more — while Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D), Mayor Eric Garcetti (D), and Mayor London Breed (D) negotiated reopening terms with local teachers unions — negotiations that, in Chicago’s case, dragged into the spring of 2021.
That gap wasn’t just a scheduling quirk. It shows up, years later, in the only nationally representative measure of what American kids actually learned during those years: the National Assessment of Educational Progress — the Nation’s Report Card. Thirteen-year-olds lost nine points in math between 2020 and 2023, the steepest decline since long-term-trend testing began in the 1970s. By 2024, forty-five percent of high school seniors scored below NAEP’s most basic performance level in math — the worst share ever recorded.
Behind the closure gap sits a documented federal decision: in February 2021, the Biden-appointed CDC accepted line-by-line edits to its school-reopening guidance from the American Federation of Teachers, the union that represented many of the teachers still refusing to return. And in the same stretch of months those blue-city schools stayed remote, the CDC’s own data show a measurable spike in emergency-room visits for suspected suicide attempts among teenage girls — a toll researchers have linked, cautiously and specifically, to prolonged isolation.
Chicago Public Schools reached a partial K-8 reopening deal with the Chicago Teachers Union on February 7, 2021 — nearly a year after closing. High schoolers didn’t return until April 19, 2021, thirteen months after the district shut down. In Los Angeles, elementary classrooms reopened April 12-13, 2021 under Superintendent Austin Beutner; middle and high schoolers followed the week of April 26. San Francisco’s City Attorney, acting on Mayor London Breed’s watch, sued the city’s own school district on February 3, 2021 for failing to produce a reopening plan — SFUSD’s first elementary classrooms didn’t reopen until that same April 12. New York moved fastest of the four, with Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) launching a hybrid model on September 21, 2020 — still only two or three in-person days a week for most students.
Florida (statewide): in-person instruction mandated, 5 days/week — July 2020 emergency order.
Texas (statewide): in-person return required — fall 2020, remote opt-out preserved.
New York City: hybrid model began Sept. 21, 2020 — Mayor Bill de Blasio (D).
Chicago: K-8 partial deal Feb. 7, 2021; all schools April 19, 2021 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D).
Los Angeles: elementary April 12-13, 2021; secondary April 26, 2021 — Mayor Eric Garcetti (D).
San Francisco: city sued its own district Feb. 3, 2021; elementary reopened April 12, 2021 — Mayor London Breed (D).
The gap wasn’t only local. It reached the CDC itself. Ahead of the agency’s February 12, 2021 school-reopening guidance, the CDC shared a draft with American Federation of Teachers senior director Kelly Trautner in late January 2021. Over the weekend of January 30-31, Trautner returned line-by-line suggested edits. On February 1, 2021, she emailed CDC Director Rochelle Walensky thanking her for “openness to the suggestions made by our president, Randi Weingarten, and the AFT.” Two of the union’s suggested changes made it into the final document nearly verbatim: language softening schools’ ability to reopen from “can” to an “option,” and new language allowing the guidance to be revisited “in the event high-community transmission results from a new variant” — language later cited by local unions to justify continued closures.
“Suggestions from AFT are being incorporated with just a few small tweaks.”
Rochelle Walensky, CDC Director · reply to AFT senior director Kelly Trautner · Feb. 1, 2021 email, per U.S. House Oversight Committee record
Randi Weingarten (D), AFT president since 2008, testified before the House Oversight Subcommittee on April 26, 2023 that there had been no “conspiracy” with the CDC — only, in the Committee’s own release title, “uncommon influence.” The distinction matters less than the document trail: a national teachers’ union helped shape the federal guidance that local unions then used to keep classrooms closed, in cities where mayors were unwilling or unable to overrule them.
The Nation’s Report Card is the only test given to a nationally representative sample of American students on a fixed schedule going back decades, which makes it the cleanest before-and-after measurement available. Nine-year-olds lost five reading points and seven math points between 2020 and 2022. Thirteen-year-olds lost nine math points between 2020 and 2023 — with the decline concentrated among already-struggling students. Fourth- and eighth-grade reading each fell three points between 2019 and 2022, landing below every prior year since the early 2000s. Eighth-grade math fell eight points from 2019 to 2022 and has not recovered in the two years since.
Reading: 283 — the lowest average score since the grade-12 trend line began in 1992. 32% of seniors scored below NAEP Basic, the highest share on record.
Math: 147 — the lowest average since the scale began in 2005. 45% scored below Basic, also the highest share on record.
College readiness: NAGB-commissioned research estimates 33% of seniors were academically prepared for entry-level college math in 2024, down from 37% in 2019.
There is a real recovery story buried in the newest numbers — it just isn’t a complete one. Results for nine-year-olds, assessed in winter 2024-25 and released June 10, 2026, showed reading climbing four points off its 2022 low, enough to be statistically indistinguishable from the pre-pandemic 2020 score. Math also gained four points — but remained four points below where it stood in January 2020. Five years on, half the damage has healed. The other half hasn’t.
“It's time to dismantle the teachers unions.”
Corey DeAngelis, school-choice researcher · reaction to 2024 NAEP results, via NH Journal
Mark your calendars: On June 10, @EdNCES will be releasing the 2025 NAEP long-term trend results — showing how 9- and 13-year-olds are performing in math and reading and how results compare to the 1970s. Stay tuned for more details.
Test scores were not the only thing the CDC was tracking in real time. A Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published in June 2021 found that emergency-department visits for suspected suicide attempts among girls aged 12 to 17 ran 50.6 percent higher between February 21 and March 20, 2021 than the same four weeks in 2019 — the exact winter stretch when Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco students were still locked out of classrooms. Visits among boys the same age rose a comparatively modest 3.7 percent. CDC researchers pointed to disrupted routines, lost peer contact, and prolonged isolation as contributing factors — language that stops short of naming any single policy, but lines up with the calendar of which cities were still closed when the spike hit.
A follow-up CDC report found that combined emergency-department visits across all adolescents eased back near their 2019 baseline by the fall of 2022 — but the same report’s own breakdown found girls’ suicide-related visits were still running about 14 percent above that baseline, even as the acute spring-2021 spike cooled. The learning loss, by contrast, is still being measured five years later, in a generation of students who were in elementary and middle school when their classrooms went dark.
Randi Weingarten just had another total MELTDOWN on MSNBC over Trump's plan to abolish the Department of Education. 'I'M SO MAD!' 'I'M SPITTING MAD ABOUT THIS!' 'It's like EVISCERATION by a thousand cuts!'
Lori Lightfoot (D) — Chicago mayor, 2019-2023; fought the Chicago Teachers Union over reopening through spring 2021.
Bill de Blasio (D) — NYC mayor, 2014-2021; launched the earliest of the four blue-city hybrid returns, Sept. 21, 2020.
Eric Garcetti (D) — LA mayor, 2013-2022; LAUSD reopened elementary campuses April 2021 under Superintendent Austin Beutner.
London Breed (D) — SF mayor, 2018-2025; her own city attorney sued SFUSD in Feb. 2021 to force a reopening plan.
Randi Weingarten (D) — AFT president since 2008; union staff line-edited the Feb. 2021 CDC reopening guidance.
Rochelle Walensky — Biden-appointed CDC Director who accepted AFT’s suggested edits.
Ron DeSantis (R) and Greg Abbott (R) — governors of Florida and Texas; mandated statewide in-person return by fall 2020.
Linda McMahon (R) — current U.S. Education Secretary; called the September 2025 grade-12 results a “national emergency.”
Florida had kids back at their desks by the fall of 2020. Chicago needed until the following spring, and San Francisco’s own city government had to sue its own school district to get there. The Nation’s Report Card says what that year cost: the steepest score declines in the history of the test, a documented hand from teachers unions in writing the federal guidance that justified staying closed, and — in the exact months the doors stayed locked — a measurable spike in how many teenage girls ended up in an emergency room. Reading has mostly recovered. Math hasn’t. Neither has the year.
