Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Getting Hammered in its new relaunched independent iteration.

And one thing we have always liked to do on getting hammered is talk about issues

that I think are actually really important and aren't getting enough attention.

And we don't always have time to do that in the day-to-day onslaught of news.

So I'm making time for it, and I'm bringing one of my favorite people to do it.

Karen Vaits is a literacy, curriculum,

education writer. She deals in trends and all the nitty gritty of how students actually learn.

And we really appreciate her for that. Karen Vates, welcome back to the show. You have been on once

before. This is my return tour in 2025. So what a way to take the year out.

We love to have you here. And I want to do a couple subjects with you. I want to talk about an

oldie but a goody because we're going to reminisce with these new studies coming out that

school closings were surprised bad for students. We're going to talk a little bit

about that. I also want to talk about the University of California, San Diego revelations about the

lack of college readiness in high school seniors and what that means about what we're actually

teaching in schools.

And last, I want to talk about the Southern Surge,

which you've written about, the Mississippi miracle, as some refer to it as,

and the new skepticism thereof.

And so we can get into that.

So I'm just setting the table.

There are three topics today that I want to get to.

Okay, so number one, the New York Times is out with a very helpful piece on an epidemiology journal study that finds

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