Being away from a bad family environment and around non-threatening people for a few hours every day is a huge benefit to many people. But there are also good families, where children thrive and can learn well remotely or through homeschooling. Not all families or students are the same. Indeed the effects of the lockdowns on students prove that. Some kids did well. Those who were already struggling got permanently destroyed (for all intents and purposes) by the lockdowns. Overall the lockdowns were bad because, imo, teachers cannot teach well remotely. Remote learning is not a hard problem. Remote teaching— that’s the problem.
It's only close to true for those kids that would have done reasonably anyway.
For those kids that don't have the kind of family environment that will allow them to catch up, it's gonna be a long haul. And they may never get there. That weighs on them for the rest of their time — on the education system, while they're still in it. And it weighs on us, in terms of the resources they take away from other children in education, and then on wider society later in life.
Since the lockdowns, there seems to have been a change in the mindset of some groups — skipping school has been made acceptable. There's a whole bunch of kids that might never return to education as a normal routine. It's likely the hangover will be long and painful for some groups.
Reading the teachers subreddit I have seen post after post complaining about letting kids graduate who willfully missed 100-200 days of school. I was not aware it was as large of a problem if the reddit posts are to be believed.
I think you're really missing the forest for the trees.
Schools aren't the solution to the problem you're describing (children with bad homes) and was a problem before COVID.
Bigger picture is that it is better to keep a larger portion of the population from dying or developing long term complications than slightly (very) protect a few children that are already being abused.
If you're really going to stand by your position then I suggest a reasonable compromise and that is expanding access to licensed professional social workers and community health programs that are there to help parents and children succeed in life.
