Yeah, that's what really sucks about this pandemic compared to more physical natural disasters. Since the pandemic hurts people directly and not material things, it effectively increases inequality. Those living at the margins are hit hardest while those will lots of money and capital see most of that stay preserved.

What does it imply?

If any school district cares, all the kids will essentially end up repeating a grade. This is not the end of the world. If anything, it might improve student achievement. (Students who are born right after the cutoff for a particular elementary school class, in aggregate, outperform the ones born just before, the youngest in the class.)

Outside of college-bound seniors — a special case — the main price is their time, same as anyone else, and their caregivers' time.

1) there's no way parents will be OK with this, and

2) the count of districts ready to have a 7.7% student headcount increase in one year (you're doing this for 13 grades at once, plus have another coming in) on top of whatever growth they already expected approaches zero. I mean, hell, think of what that would do to the teacher labor market alone if even 10% of districts all did that, putting aside things like building space and bussing.

> If any school district cares, all the kids will essentially end up repeating a grade.

It sounds more like you haven't thought this through.

I shouldn't assume school districts care

voted +1 touché

You don't understand how urban school districts work if you think you can just get a grade to "repeat itself." Kids will drop out once they're 18 like flies.

To make matters even worse, the jobs those kids would get to offset a lack of schooling won't be available now.

I don't know if they'll be roaming the streets (the police in America are pretty unforgiving), but I can certainly say they will have it worse than ~2001 and ~2008 graduates.