> What exactly went wrong? The decline began well before the pandemic, so COVID-era disruptions alone cannot explain it. The NEAP follows cohorts which are fo

> What exactly went wrong? The decline began well before the pandemic, so COVID-era disruptions alone cannot explain it. The NEAP follows cohorts which are four years apart in age - where (and how, and why) did The Atlantic rasterize this to "the decline"? ...and yes, the NEAP shows that all three of these cohorts suffered terribly from the school closures in parts of the USA, just as every serious expert predicted. The differences in the NEAP math unit are particularly obvious. It feels very strange to cast this aside with a single sentence and no further analysis.