The COVID-19 pandemic was bad for anybody in school at the time. Schools closed, teachers struggled with remote and hybrid instruction, and the return to normal, in-class routines was delayed and wildly uneven. There’s no question that all of this harmed students’ learning trajectories. But while educators rushed to address COVID learning losses, few Americans grasped that their children had already been falling behind for almost ten years. By 2019, before anyone had ever heard of Wuhan, N95 masks, or social distancing, eighth-grade math scores had already dropped to levels not seen since the early 2000s. And the declines continue.