The pandemic is driving academic proficiency and graduation rates down in U.S. schools. That’s the consensus of several studies assessing the impact of a string of COVID-19 related viruses on the education of America’s school children over the past two years. Michigan State University’s Education Policy Innovation Collaboration last month released a 350-page study, which quantified that the move to virtual instruction during the pandemic caused most of Michigan’s 1.4 million K-12 students to learn less. State statistics show 51 percent of Michigan school children qualify as economically “disadvantaged.” It was this group that was harmed the most by virtual instruction, according to the MSU study. Brown City Community Schools is a Michigan school district where all 750 students receive a free breakfast and lunch, and are considered by the state as economically and socially “at risk.” Brown City is a small farming town in rural southeast Michigan, an area …