By Steve Holland and Trevor Hunnicutt
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden visited a Washington, D.C. public middle school on Monday, highlighting the federal government's efforts to combat cratering U.S. student performance since the COVID-19 pandemic, as Republicans target public education in the run-up to the 2024 election.
Biden, who returned on Saturday from a week-long vacation, marked the first day of public school in the U.S. capitol with his own trip to Washington's Eliot-Hine Middle School. He and first lady Jill Biden were greeted by excited young teenagers, shouts of "Joe Biden" and squeals as he walked into a classroom.
"The hardest thing is to come back after three months of not doing any work, not doing any homework, and all of a sudden.... everybody has a lot to catch up on from the end of the last year," Biden told students.
The Capitol Hill area school for children aged 11 to 13 is working to boost its predominantly low-income students' arithmetic with a tutoring program in partnership with George Washington University.
The Biden administration has pushed Congress to hike funding for public schools, including those that hire mental health professionals, through a bipartisan gun safety law last year. The vast majority of American kids, some 49.4 million in 2021, attend one of the country's nearly 100,000 free public schools that run though 12th grade.
They're mostly funded by local taxes, but Biden has also been directing more federal money into after-school programs, teacher apprenticeships, schools serving low-income students and public-private partnerships that bring tutors into classrooms.
Republicans, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, looking to elevate hot-button issues in the presidential campaign have made what American children are taught in these schools a key focus, and pushed for private schools that teach some six million kids to get more government funding.
This effort has included attempts to restrict trans athletes competing in school sports, altering school curriculums and, in some districts, removing books that teach about LGBTQ issues and the U.S.'s history of racism.
Former President Donald Trump and several of his rivals for the Republican nomination have suggested eliminating the federal Department of Education, a step that would require an unlikely act of Congress.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused lengthy school closures, sent teachers fleeing the profession amid pushback on mask mandates and other public health measures and frayed children's mental health, reasons cited for sharp declines in U.S. reading and mathematics test scores since 2020.
Biden aides, who see this learning decline as a threat to long-term economic growth, hired an academic focused on the issue as an adviser to Biden this month.
Biden, 80, is seeking another four-year term in the 2024 election. The largest U.S. labor union, the National Education Association, a group of public school teachers numbering 3 million, endorsed him just a day after he announced his re-election bid.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, Steve Holland and Jasper ; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Heather Timmons and Andrea Ricci)
