Dixon, GOP allies train their focus on Whitmer’s COVID school closure claim
Livonia — School learning loss during the pandemic was the dominant issue at a Sunday campaign rally for Michigan gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon as she and her surrogates jockeyed for votes in the final days before the Nov. 8 election.
Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, accused Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of lying during her debate Tuesday with Dixon when Whitmer said schools were closed “for three months” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“My kids were in virtual school for over a year and a half,” said McDaniel, who lives in Northville. “They never went back to five-day school for a year and a half so, Gretchen Whitmer, get your facts straight before you lie to the kids and the family of this great state.”
Whitmer closed schools for three months in the spring of 2020 and then let local school boards decide whether to reopen in the fall of 2020, operate in a hybrid format of a couple of days per week in-person or remain in remote-learning mode with school buildings closed to students.
In November 2020, Whitmer’s health department closed high schools for nearly two months during the second wave of COVID-19 infections before the vaccine became widely available in early 2021. Many Michigan schools continued to operate in hybrid or remote learning mode well into the spring of 2021.
McDaniel spoke at a campaign rally Sunday in Livonia for Dixon, who is trying to deny Whitmer a second term.
“It is time to fund students, not systems,” Dixon said. “We had the opportunity to talk about what’s happening in schools and what we’re going to do to get kids back on track, and I still haven’t heard from Gretchen Whitmer what she’s planning to do.
“She stands up there and no one holds her accountable. What are you going to do to get these kids back on track?” Dixon said. “We got our reading scores back from the spring, nearly 60% of our third graders failed.”
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Many in the crowd held “Dixon for Governor – Protect Girl Sports,” yellow yard signs.
In May, Whitmer proposed the MI Kids Back on Track tutoring plan, which would invest $280 million of Michigan’s $3 billion in additional revenue to tackle unfinished learning after the pandemic with tutoring or other forms of personalized instruction before, after or during school. According to Whitmer’s office, she has raised $52 million toward the program.
Michigan saw student test scores plummet for fourth and eighth graders in reading and math between 2019 and 2022, according to national test results released Oct. 24.
Michigan dropped in state rankings in fourth-grade and eighth-grade reading according to 2022 results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation’s Report Card, which were released Oct. 24 by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.
In fourth-grade reading, Michigan went from 32nd in 2019 to 43rd in 2022. In eighth-grade reading, Michigan’s ranking dropped to 31st in 2022 compared to 28th in 2019. Michigan improved in state rankings in fourth-grade math to 36th compared to 42nd in 2019. In eighth-grade math, Michigan’s ranking rose to 26th compared to 28th in 2019.
“While Dixon tries to divide voters with her extreme plans, Governor Whitmer has brought people together to make the biggest investment in K-12 education in Michigan history, close the funding gap between schools, triple the number of reading coaches, expand before- and after-school programs, and boost tutoring as well as mental health care for students – all without raising taxes,” said Maeve Coyle, spokeswoman for Whitmer’s campaign, in an email on Sunday.
Dixon called the school closures a critical setback for young learners.
“That’s the core part of our problem here in the state of Michigan, because from kindergarten to third grade, you are learning to read,” Dixon said at the rally. “From third grade on, you are reading to learn, so you miss that crucial step and then you can’t unlock the door to the rest of the information you need to know in life.”
Coyle called Dixon a “dangerous conspiracy theorist who platformed a historian who believes Martin Luther King Jr. should be removed from textbooks.”
“And on top of attempting to rewrite history in school curriculums, Dixon would impose her DeVos-backed agenda to gut public education, send taxpayer dollars to for profit institutions, and create handouts for billionaires like the DeVoses at the expense of public schools,” Coyle said, referring to former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
The conservative west Michigan DeVos family is backing Dixon’s campaign for governor. The DeVos family’s education advocacy group, the Great Lakes Education Project, also is trying to influence some Metro Detroit school board races with money.
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Others at the rally included the co-founder of Save Our Kids, an organization created to support the reopening of schools during the pandemic, and the founder of Let Them Play, an organization that supported the reinstatement of participation in athletics during the pandemic. In February 2021, Whitmer’s administration lifted a ban on high school sports practices and competitions during the second major wave of COVID infections.
Dixon supporters said they were angry with Whitmer’s executive order closing schools during the pandemic, children being mandated to wear masks and canceled sports.
Shane Hernandez, Dixon’s running mate for lieutenant governor, told the crowd he didn’t like the direction Michigan was headed.
“They’re (Democrats) taking everything they can possibly get,” he said. “You have the Department of Education telling teachers (to) ask the kids about pronouns, ask them about their gender, ask them if they want a different name then their parents gave them …'”
McDaniel asked the crowd to use the last nine days leading up to the election to tell their friends and family to vote for Dixon, saying from the governor’s seat to school boards, “we are going to send those Democrats packing.”
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