NYT’s Leonhardt: I’m ‘Skeptical’ about How Money to Address Learning Loss Is Being Used, This Will Be a ‘Lifelong’ Issue

On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” New York Times Senior Writer David Leonhardt stated that the issue of learning loss from school closures during the coronavirus pandemic “will be a lifelong problem” for the current generation of children that amounts to “a decades-long debt to anyone who’s under the age of 20” and that he’s “skeptical about how well” money allocated to address learning loss by coronavirus relief spending packages is actually being used.

After MSNBC Contributor Mike Barnicle asked whether the learning loss story is undercovered and how we address learning loss going forward, Leonhardt discussed the lack of coverage of the issue. He added that the issue of learning loss is “a national crisis. … The stimulus, the pandemic rescue bill included a lot of money for catchup. I’m a little bit skeptical about how well that money’s being used. But, we’ll find out at some point. I think it’s important to remember that this generation of kids, this will be a lifelong problem. And this country, essentially, has a decades-long debt to anyone who’s under the age of 20 today because we disrupted their schooling in a way that none of us experienced. And that really is going to have long-term consequences. And we essentially owe those kids.”

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