![A Fox News panel descended into chaos Tuesday over how the coronavirus and lockdowns hurt children's education. [Screenshot Fox News]](https://images.dailycaller.com/image/width=960,height=411,fit=cover,f=auto/https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Screen-Shot-2022-10-25-at-3.06.34-PM-e1666724843715.png "A Fox News panel descended into chaos Tuesday over how the coronavirus and lockdowns hurt children's education. [Screenshot Fox News]")
A Fox News panel descended into chaos Tuesday over how the coronavirus and lockdowns hurt children’s education.
The disorder unfolded on “The Faulkner Focus,” when American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp and Fox News Democratic guest and former Ohio congressional candidate Desiree Tims were discussing new data showing math and reading scores dropped among young students over the past few years.
The Education Department announced Monday that math scores declined in every state during the pandemic, with students in fourth and eighth grade representing the largest drops ever recorded.
Tims insisted there had been no other choice but to force students to stay home during the pandemic. (RELATED: Students Needed To Make Up Pandemic Learning Losses. Instead, Expectations Were Lowered, Study Shows)
“We absolutely did not have a choice but to keep our children home. Better yet, the story is not how many children died during COVID because we shoved them into classrooms,” Tims said, arguing while some private schools may have smaller classes, larger districts were not able to safely practice social distancing. “We know that the COVID spread is very, very real, and so yeah, it’s something that we have to fix, but it was a pandemic, a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I have faith in our children’s ability to climb back to the top.”
Schlapp fired back by recounting his own experience with his daughters during the pandemic.
“As the father of five daughters who went through this intimately as parents did across the country, our schools were shut. And my kids go to Catholic schools, and the state told them they also had to shut. But then they started to push back when they realized kids were not dying from the virus, as was feared in the beginning,” Schlapp said.
Schlapp argued the fight to re-open schools and “take masks off ours kids” ended up having to go to the courts because Democrats, he said, politicized the virus and “advocated for keeping these schools closed for too long.”
Faulkner tried to switch gears, but Tims insisted she respond to Schlapp.
“I just want to come back to COVID-19 disinformation that he just said. Children can absolutely get COVID-19 and they can die just as well,” Tims argued.
Schlapp and Faulkner both contended the former didn’t say children couldn’t catch the virus, with Faulkner arguing Tims was pushing “talking points” and hadn’t listened to what Schlapp said.
Tims then chimed in and begged Americans to “vaccinate your children and have them wear masks.”
“Are you a doctor?” Faulkner asked, as Schlapp interjected and said his kids would not be vaccinated.
The panel continued to talk over each other before switching topics, with Schlapp shouting “Hands off my kids! They’re my kids,” before the panel moved on.
Other studies show math and reading levels in K-12 schools between 2020 and 2022 have dropped back two decades, with lockdowns taking the brunt of the blame. Reading scores between the two years showed the largest recorded drop, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Reading levels for students aged 9 were down five points over the last two years, while math levels for the same-aged students were down seven points.