
During COVID, the adults in leadership enacted numerous policies that traumatized the children. They forced children to wear masks, attend virtual school, take the experimental vaccine, cancel their social lives, and even isolate in little green tents during music class. All of the adults involved in these decisions should be ashamed, if not prosecuted for the harm they caused. The negative effects are still seen today in the Ohio Public Schools district performance data.
The data consistently shows that across the state, performance metrics fell significantly following the 2019-2020 school year and have still not fully recovered. Below is the chart for the average percent of students proficient or above for the entire state of Ohio.

We can see that from 2013 to 2015 scores were falling due to the implementation of stricter “Common Core” testing standards. In 2017, scores rose because the state lowered the proficiency threshold. By 2018, 71.3% of Ohio students were proficient or above in their assessments. These abysmal scores were already causing a lot of concern among those who follow the annual state report cards.
in 2019, all testing was cancelled because of COVID. Students returned to testing in 2020 and saw a 10 point drop in scores, coming in at 61.5% proficient or above. The latest year’s data in 2023 was still about 6 points below pre-COVID levels, at 65.6%. This data indicates that an entire generation of children have been setback thanks to the cowardly and selfish leadership from the adults in-charge.
The data looks even worse when drill down to some of the state’s largest districts. The charts below look at the state’s four largest districts: Columbus City Schools, Cincinnati Public, Cleveland Municipal and Olentangy Local. The top-3 districts are significantly below their pre-COVID levels while Olentangy, a suburb of Columbus, has almost fully recovered. Columbus and Cleveland are sitting around a shocking 30% proficient. Cincinnati is sitting around 40%. The trend since COVID has been up, but these districts still have a long way to go.



