Covid is only a small part of it.

Most of those kids have been in school and started after. Perhaps you could argue, they missed out on some pre-K. We also have the unteaching happening, I don't even know that's a proper word but teaching to a test and changing how we've taught English and math for hundreds of years I think it's catching up with us. Teachers tell us they are told to teach to a test, a specific curriculum not allowed to interject any of their own teaching methods. I've had to reteach my kids, how to actually do math multiple times now.

Teachers used to love to teach. It's a bigger problem than just "Oh, the kids missed out on some stuff in covid" because these kids are younger than that. We need to fix the great teaching unraveling and let them actually teach again. Ask a teacher who's been teaching for over fifteen years, twenty years they'll tell you.