Excellent article. The California Dept of Education cares more about public perception than the education of children and learning from its disastrous performance during the pandemic. It's also interesting to see the ACLU take a position in favor of the First Amendment, something it used to consider its primary mandate and which it has largely ignored for decades.

It's the government; we cannot expect efficiency.

"The lawsuit, against the California Department of Education, the State Board of Education and State Superintendent of Public Instruction...charges the state with failing to prevent the deep learning loss imposed by the pandemic on low-income students and other high-needs students...."What are state officials afraid of?"..."That their performance in running the school system during the pandemic in fact aggravated the achievement gap? "

Before the pandemic, our state had quite a few public school programs that were basically homeschooling but under public auspices. San Jose Unified had a brilliant program, Homestudies, that operated for over 30 years and served students from all walks of life, from very gifted who needed college classes in middle school, to students with severe medical problems who could better succeed with the flexibility such a program allows rather than trying reproduce school exactly as in brick & mortar, to older kids who need to work to support their families, etc. The common thread is flexibility, customization, and independence, with educator guidance, allowed these students to thrive where they could not in a traditional brick & mortar context.

When the pandemic hit, rather than extending the tremendous lessons and knowledge of these programs to everyone so that both teachers and students could thrive, the state and districts CLOSED these programs (including in SJUSD) or forbad them from accepting any new students! It was as if they were afraid students wouldn't come back after the pandemic if they knew about this other world of learning so they let kids lose out. Unfounded fears kept the lessons of the pandemic from improving traditional education when people returned.

This was an incredible loss to the students of our state and others, especially the most vulnerable. I doubt the researchers even recognize this; regardless, researchers should not be constrained from testifying about anything that helps our kids. Thank you, ACLU.