The Nonsense Claim from NBC News That Biden Has Met His School Goal

In a headline that would make Pravda, North Korean state television, and the DNC blush, NBC News declares, “Biden hits schools goal even as many students still learn remotely.”

This is horsepuckey, although I suppose the first question is just what Biden’s school goal was. Biden originally promised, “A majority of our schools can be opened by the end of my first 100 days.” White House press secretary Jen Psaki later circled back to emphasize that a school being open for classes one day a week would qualify as “opened.” And then Biden said in a subsequent interview he meant five days a week: “I think many of them five days a week. The goal will be five days a week.”

The author of that NBC News article pulls many muscles straining to fit what has happened into the definition of a kept promise:

The survey, conducted in March by the Education Department and released Thursday, found that 54 percent of public schools below high school were offering full-time classroom learning to any student who wanted it. It marks steady progress since January, when the figure was 46 percent.

But even with that milestone achieved, most students continued to learn at least partly away from school. Almost 4 in 10 students continued to take all their classes remotely, the survey found, and another 2 in 10 were split between classroom and remote learning.

Note that 54 percent is the national average; some states are significantly lower. The Department of Education report found half of all students in the South and Midwest were learning entirely in-person in March, compared with less than 20 percent in the West and Northeast. In Maryland, 58 percent of students are learning entirely online, as of late April.

The AEI Return to Learn Tracker finds that as of April 26, 49 percent of American public-school districts are back and fully in person, 4 percent remain fully remote, and 48 percent are in hybrid. Frustratingly, the AEI tracker puts any amount from one day a week to four days a week in the same category; advocates of reopening would strongly prefer four days to just one or two. And some school districts have different schedules for different schools.  Chicago’s public-school system has some schools open four days a week, and some two days a week.

Burbio is a neat site that collects data and concludes that as of May 3, just 3.3 percent of U.S. kindergarten through twelfth grade students are in school districts offering virtual-only schooling, 29.6 percent are in districts offering hybrid, and 67.1 percent are in districts offering traditional/in-person every day schooling. But the site cautions that just because a school has opened its doors, not every student in the district is attending. “The percentage of students opting-out of in-person learning ranges from between 10–30 percent outside of urban areas to well over 50 percent in most cities. Many of these districts, including some large cities, currently offer traditional in-person, but they haven’t had to manage space as efficiently as they will need to if 90+ percent of their student bodies return. It would seem that the current guidance may become an issue in some of these areas at that time.”