On that note, I have had students that have come from third world countries and have had no formal education their entire lives.  They are usually up to grade level within a couple of years.  It honestly isn’t super difficult for students to catch up as long as they are willing to work for it.  I will admit it does require some buy in from the student though.

Just improve the teaching over distance till vaccines are in mass production.

No. Schools should not reopen in the US this fall. Had everyone cooperated and practiced proper social distancing, stay at home, mask wearing from the get go maybe we would be in a position to reopen. I am enrolled in graduate school myself and all my courses have been moved online. Yes, it sucks but time does not wait for anybody. If we hunker down and halt the community spread until a vaccine is ready then society can open back up again.

For those arguing that we're going to make a whole generation of kids dumb by distance learning for a year is there any evidence that this is going to have that kind of permanent effect? Kids get homeschooled quite often, I was homeschooled for a year when I was about 11-12 and I don't think it affected much. Shit, I even correctly used effect and affect in this response. If that's not a testament to my education I don't know what is.

Basically, do we have any evidence that these kids are going to be educationally stunted for the remainder of their life from distance learning for a year? My wife is a kindergarten teacher and she's adamantly in the "online learning" camp. Thankfully we're in a district that agrees.

Absolutely not. If I was a teacher in USA, I would protest/boycott. It is either this:

1. Lockdown and save 100,000+ lives. Everyone loses a year of normal life.

or

2. Don't lockdown, people die. Everyone loses 2 years of normal life, some many more years due to underlying conditions from Covid.

Honestly, I am amazed Trump is still president he has 10,000+ American blood on his hands and people haven't removed/ attacked him.

Absolutely no.

Yes. Just put the teachers in full face visors for $100 per teacher.

Or sack them all and give the $12,000 education budget straight to the parents if the teachers can't teach.
https://www.governing.com/gov-data/education-data/state-education-spending-per-pupil-data.html

You do understand that with distance learning not only are the teachers still teaching... but they are doing a lot more work than normal too.  The only thing parents have to do is make their kids sit at the computer and do it...

Sure, send the students back to school... but let the teachers stay home.

No reason to send them to an obvious suicide mission.

I only know about 'distance learning' in UK schools and it's been near non-existent.

If teachers are working harder than ever then I'm sure parents will continue to pay them the $12,000 tuition fees.

$60,000-$100,000 seems like a fair salary for distance teaching 5-7 kids.