RNC Statement on Jill Biden and Miguel Cardona’s visit to Greensboro | Eastern NC Now

Press Release:

    If you're covering Jill Biden and Miguel Cardona's visit to Greensboro today, please consider the following statement from the Republican National Committee.

    "Lockdowns and forced closures, all at the behest of Teachers Unions and Democrats, led to children missing critical benchmarks for education. Under Democrat leadership, our children have fallen behind." - RNC Spokeswoman Taylor Mazock

    Background:

• Child care, tuition, and day care is more expensive under Biden.
• Raising a child to the age of 17 now costs the average family over $310,000 - up more than $26,000 in just two years.
• 63% of parents report higher child care expenses compared to last year, with more than half saying they spend over 20% of their household income on child care.
• Parents are facing surging back-to-school costs thanks to Bidenflation.
• Parents of K-12 students will spend $864 on school supplies this year, up $168 since 2019 according to the National Retail Federation.
• Bidenflation is also causing grocery bills to skyrocket, forcing many parents to either resort to store brands, cut back on essentials, or do without certain types of food altogether.
• The Biden administration and Democrats are forcing masks onto children struggling to return to normal.
• The Biden administration is still trying to force masks on toddlers in federally-funded "Head Start" programs.
• In Democrat-run Prince George's County, Maryland, students as young as 4-year-old will be forced to wear masks this fall.
• In Democrat-run Philadelphia, all students will be required to wear masks for at least the first 10 days of the school year, and pre-school students as young as 3 will be forced to mask all year long.
• In Jefferson County, Kentucky, the liberal public school board has refused to end its mask mandate on its 96,000 students.
• Democrats forced children out of school, causing irreparable damage.
• National test results in elementary school math and reading have plummeted to levels we have not seen in more than two decades.
• Biden's Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said it was the "right decision" to close and go virtual, leading to massive learning loss for students across the country.
• The pandemic erased two decades of progress in math and reading, with the most vulnerable students faring the worst according to the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP).
• In the last two years, average reading and math scores for an American nine year old dropped by five points - resulting in the largest decline in reading scores since 1990.
• A GAO report found an estimated 1.1 million students grades K-12 registered for the 2020-21 school year but never showed up to class.
• Nearly half of public school teachers said they had at least one student enrolled that "never showed up for class" during the school year.
• Roughly three out of four teachers surveyed said they had more students unaccounted for by the end of the 2020-21 school year than a typical year.
• A National Burau of Economic Research analysis shows that 19 of the top 20 states for getting kids back to in-person schooling were led by Republicans.
• In contrast, 18 of the bottom 20 states and districts were led by Democrats.

   Contact: Taylor Mazock
   North Carolina Press Secretary
   Republican National Committee
   Email: tmazock@gop.com